Virgin Media retention deals (post your haggling successes)

Klippety

I have just called 020 3743 6947 and said I'd received a missed call from them. They went through my package and offered it for £97 per month. I was paying £68 per month, so I obviously rejected it. The person I spoke to on Friday offered it for £78 per month, which I rejected and went through with the cancellation. It's very odd. What should I do next? 

Kim_13

£22 for BB only offered and accepted today (Volt 250 as bill payer has been with O2 since before the merger.) They wanted £27 with the line.

Biting the bullet and getting rid of it makes it a lot easier to switch in future. 

How long have Virgin been taking to send the contracts lately? All the pre-contract stuff came through fine while the retentions person was still on the line, but on logging into the VM account, the phone comes up as unknown so it appears to be in progress.

Edit: Now all present and correct, with existing continuing for 30 days notice as we are dropping a service. I would suggest diarising and taking the initiative, as their reminder email came with less than 30 days to go before 'standard' pricing kicked in.

Kim_13

Klippety said:

I have just called 020 3743 6947 and said I'd received a missed call from them. They went through my package and offered it for £97 per month. I was paying £68 per month, so I obviously rejected it. The person I spoke to on Friday offered it for £78 per month, which I rejected and went through with the cancellation. It's very odd. What should I do next? 

I would wait at least 14 days before doing anything - the offers are bound to get worse if you retract your cancellation.

Klippety

Retentions have called again this morning and said the best price they can do it for is £97 per month. Apparently discounts on TNT Sports and Sky Sports aren't available to Virgin Media these days. This would represent a £29 per month increase on my package. Are they likely to come back with a better offer? I have never had this scenario before with them and usually get a discount once Retentions have called me. 

For info my current package is:

Maxit TV with Sky Sports and TNT Sports (Not HD)
2nd box
M250 broadband
Landline with Weekend Chatter

Kim_13

Absolutely no logic to these calls at all, there was another one today offering £1 extra per month to keep the line and up the broadband to Volt 350. It was all present and correct at £23 on the pre-contract summary so accepted and active with a credit on the account as we don’t have to serve out part of the notice period on the line at the undiscounted rate.

Klippety, I would price up a package with Sky and present that to VM, and/or look for streaming offers (even if you only have one at a time) and then ask VM what the price would be for BB + line only. They might then decide to find a more reasonable offer(s) for you including TV.

latecomer

Yup always have the call armed with the price of the alternatives.  You can always add cashback offers etc or point out what new customers get.    If they dont give you anything then just say you think and try again in a couple of days 

I dont usually go as close to the cut off as I did this time but still got decent deal

Kim_13

latecomer said:

Yup always have the call armed with the price of the alternatives.  You can always add cashback offers etc or point out what new customers get.    If they dont give you anything then just say you think and try again in a couple of days 

I dont usually go as close to the cut off as I did this time but still got decent deal

We’ve also gone closer to the cut off in the past - but there are no guarantees as to how many times they’ll call so if an acceptable deal is offered it makes sense to take it. The deal won’t be there if you phone back and an agent may phone offering a worse deal than you have already declined.

I’ll think about it only really works if you haven’t put in the cancellation yet - as you should get someone else when you phone back, and a different offer. If outbound are calling you then the thinking time is really by asking what can you do if I take/drop X. You have the right to cancel as a consumer within 14 days if you later decide you’d prefer to leave, though obviously you’d have to start the notice period again on your previous package.

Frank_Prenesti

I've just had a "gentle" reminder that my last deal is about to end (which I got after some haggling). This is what I have now at £32.64 a month (I don't use the phone line) and VM want to put it up to £55.48.

Volt M250 Broadband WiFi Pod (white) 1 WiFi Guarantee with WiFi Max Price Rise Charge O2 Full Tracker Weekend chatter

 I live in North London and FTTP is not offered by anyone else even though I live about 200 metres from the local exchange and the copper line to my home from the street cabinet is terrible, so I'm worried about connection quality. BT hasn't got anything to match. I also looked at 3's 5G offering but we seem to be in a dead spot according to their own map. Appreciate any thoughts/recommendations on other providers.

Andy017

Andy017 said:

PZ19 said:

Andy017 said:

Just recieved an email saying my contract is coming to an end in September and the discounted price I am currently recieving will also end. 

Currently paying £97 and its going up to £158  Needless to say I have gave them my intention to cancel!

Package I have currently is
M500 Broadband
Maxit TV
SkySports & Cinema
TNT Sports
Weekend Chatter
1 extra box.

Any ideas what I should be looking to pay for the above? Ideally wouldn't really want to change anything from my package

Put cancellatIon in and when they come back a few days later with a price ask how much extra for Netflix aswell, this opens up the top package, which it seems they can discount heavily.  I reckon you could get that for around £60-65. Make sure you go through with cancellation though and wait till retentions call you back.  Make sure your marketing preference settings in your account are set so they can call you

Wish I had seen this earlier! 

Had my first phone call back today, women was very kind but could only offer me my existing package at the price i'm currently paying ( £97 ) which I still think its very steep compared to what some others have managed to get on here..

So I kindly declined her offer and its now a waiting game to see if they'll phone again.

Still haven't had a call back since a week ago today so if others are in the same boat then don't worry!

wibbler

Haggling for my father in law at the moment. He's paying £87 a month for 250MB internet, MaxIt TV and Talk Weekends. The lowest they would go down to is £78 for the same package (or £74 for the 125MB internet), so I'm now through to retentions. Had much better success in the past (for example, earlier this year I negotiated £45 a month for 18 months for 500MB, MaxIt TV and Talk Weekends for myself) - have they become harder to beat?

Update: After going through to retentions and saying I was going to cancel and move to Sky, got the same current package for £39 a month for 18 months. Had to prove the Sky deal I found. They insisted on a move to 360 to get the Virgin deal though. Still, £50 a month saving, after being told for a day that £75 was the best I could get!