The great line rental scam

imi1ahmed

Sorry for taking so long to come back.. As the OP I should have replied earlier.

LittleRock (post: 9th Sep 16, 11:03 PM) is right, I have a BT line which is friends and family and I've had the phone number for 30 years and am in no mood to change. I'm happy with BT as my phone line provider.

The Virgin bundle comes with "Line Rental for phone line" and I can't break out the line rental from the bundle without increasing the bundle price. Taking broadband and tv separately is more expensive... which is completely rubbish!

I feel like im being forced to pay virgin line rental when I don't want a virgin phone line.
Virgin broadband and tv services come down a fibre wire with the phone line having a separate wire solely for the phone service.

Virgin basically use this ploy to force u to ditch ur phone line provider to go down to one line rental - that can't be right or fair...?!

AndyPK

What do you mean by "which is friends and family " ?
Do you mean they have that number ?
or you expect to get a discount for dialing 10 of your friends landlines ?

If you ring up Virgin and tell them you want to leave because of the prices, and say you don't use the phone, then I'm 70% you will find the price will drop.

prowla

I told Virgin I wanted to do away with my phone line and they offered me a discount to keep it. I've never made a call on it though.

I've also got a BT (EE) phone line, primarily because I need it for a standby Internet connection; the last time I told them I didn't want it they offered me a discount. However, it seems that all I really have it for is so that cold callers can bug me.

So I have two phone lines I don't want.

AndyPK

Do you make use of the EE internet ?

Maybe a 4G dongle and sim would be cheaper if you get good reception ?

Naf

imi1ahmed wrote: »

Virgin broadband and tv services come down a fibre wire with the phone line having a separate wire solely for the phone service.

A separate wire where? Because my Virgin services all came down a single cable under my lawn. And where have you seen "line rental for phone line"? I don't recall ever seeing it put like that.

dazzaofdagenham

I used to have the triple play services from Virgin. TV phone and broadband

Now I only have broadband from Virgin

Why can't BT do the same and have a product of BB only ?

Surely in this generation, a lot of people have mobiles and use that exclusively rather than a BT line as well ?

Ian011

Naf wrote: »

A separate wire where? Because my Virgin services all came down a single cable under my lawn. And where have you seen "line rental for phone line"? I don't recall ever seeing it put like that.

Take a closer look at that cable. You'll see it is actually two cables side by side. One delivers internet. The other delivers phone. That's how Virgin works.

iniltous

dazzaofdagenham wrote: »

I used to have the triple play services from Virgin. TV phone and broadband

Now I only have broadband from Virgin

Why can't BT do the same and have a product of BB only ?

Surely in this generation, a lot of people have mobiles and use that exclusively rather than a BT line as well ?

The point if this post though is that although VM will give you a stand alone product , it costs more than a bundle if services, even if that bundle contains something you don't want or need
You have VM broadband only ( so do I) but probably pay the same as someone who has a phone line and broadband from VM
As the OP has found out, tell them you don't want a part of he bundle the price doesn't go down like you may expect, but goes actually goes up
So, if BT did start offering broadband without a phone service, the price will be about the same as line and broadband, just like VM

littlerock

In reply to posters who said VM offer a discount if you say you want to leave, not to me they didn't. When I said i needed to get the cost down all they could offer was a small discount on a more expensive service, so I would still be paying more monthly. I asked if i could remove the phone line from the bundle (phone tv broadband) as I no longer used it, and they said if I unbundled the deal by removing the phone, the cost of the rest would increase by more than the cost of the phone line rental. If you want cable (and there is no BT infinity locally and none planned and I live in a large town not a rural area) then Sky has a virtual monopoly. I would rather see the individual elements honestly priced.

Cycrow

littlerock wrote: »

In reply to posters who said VM offer a discount if you say you want to leave, not to me they didn't. When I said i needed to get the cost down all they could offer was a small discount on a more expensive service, so I would still be paying more monthly. I asked if i could remove the phone line from the bundle (phone tv broadband) as I no longer used it, and they said if I unbundled the deal by removing the phone, the cost of the rest would increase by more than the cost of the phone line rental. If you want cable (and there is no BT infinity locally and none planned and I live in a large town not a rural area) then Sky has a virtual monopoly. I would rather see the individual elements honestly priced.

The problem is that all virgin services come down a cable, so which ever service you have, you have to pay for that line that it comes down. Thats why its cheaper to bundle the services together, because then multiple services can share the cost of the line between them.

The phone service itself costs pretty much nothing, once you have a line. Which is why its usually given free with other services, and why removing it makes no difference to the overall price