Virgin Media and leaving

tazdev

Last week I cancelled my VM broadband (50mb) contract after 5 years. Fed up with haggling every 6-12 months, its either end of discounted contract or another price rise letter. Was offered 6 months @ £33.48 then 6 months @ £36.48.....so I gave my 30 days notice. Plusnet were offering £70 cashback - to pay for a new Openreach install.
VM rang today offered £19 for 50mb (& £24 for 100mb). Told em to shove it!

So, it seems like only when they were contacted by BT/Openreach did they take me seriously, and it wasn't a call centre in India or Philippines for a change.

#cutoffmynosetospitemyface

hss

Thanks for that. I just don't like the prospect of having to cancel to get a decent deal. Glad it worked for you. It certainly looks like they only take threats seriously when customers do cancel & go elsewhere, although I'm not a fan of BT either. So good luck!

Darenth87

after 15 years with VM i think i am done.
in the past they have managed to sort out some kind of improved deal but recently i noticed that in October I was paying £37 a month for broadband TV and phone line now I am up to £51 a month and got the recent letter stating this is due to go up to $54.50 in sept.

that is a whopper of an increase of 40% in 10 months whichever way you cut it. sorry but no. no call outs no package changes. TV is medium about 105 channels.

i dialled 150 then option 4 then option 2 thinking I was through to Retentions in the hope we could "negotiate" and it turns out I was through to Billing - a guy who spoke english but not in a very easily understood accent (asia call centre?) The guy right from the off......well where do they recruit them from.......what skool of hard knocks do they get them from?......this guy was rabbiting on like I dont know what and I could not easily get a word in - he was a babbler not a listener. He point blank asks what price do I want to pay? I said well BT can offer me a deal of about £42 pcm at 50mb speed (speed of BB is not something |I am so bothered about even though VM bang on about their super fast 100mb speeds) . he said we cant do that and went on about 100mb speed and new customers would have to pay around £60 a month yet ive just seen one VM deal with 77 channels 100mb and weekend calls(who uses a land line anymore anyway to use this?) for £29 a month new custom only. it stinks really. is the true price/cost the price the new customers pay or are they subsidised by the existing punters - is it them who are paying the true cost? its one of those easily hidden by smoke and mirrors type industries IMHO. make the cost up as you go kind of approach and hope you get enough customers.

this was his exact response. and bear in mind i was out of contract months ago. If i can call back in september once the next rise has gone through they will see what discounts can be applied.
it just smacks of making it up as they go to me. I expect with a monthly of 54.50 they might discount the rise of 3.50 off to get back to 51.00 a month. some of the deals out there are like half the price.

i asked the guy to put me through to the 2nd line of billings as he clearly wasnt going to put me through to retentions-almost like he playing gatekeeper. the phone went went dead and i waited 5 mins then just gave up. at least play me the muzak to suggest the lines not actually dead!

nope. ive had it with virgin. and why is it, if you are a new UK customer you go through a UK person in a UK call centre and the phone is answered at the click of a switch youre never on hold yet if you want something from them and need after sales customer services youre on hold for ages and its through to a call centre where handily for virgin media the conversation is often stifled and your problem exaggerated because its longer and harder to get your point across or understand everything they are saying to you?

how some people manage to pay £75-100 a month for their tv and BB packages i dont know or think they are getting value for their money. thats a lot per month. i think the whole broadband things becomes a rip-off when its all just fed down a cable.

seen plenty of good things about Now TV and the deals they have so will be leaving VM and transferring across to about £30 a month. much more reasonable i think.......I really just want an email account and access to the internet. will be perfectly happy with freeview tv.

presumably the virgin cable is virgins and now tv will need to come and install a new cable?

Browntoa

Now TV is openreach line , standard ADSL or fibre

hss

My son is with TalkTalk on their Fast Broadband which just includes phone line rental. He pays £23.95p per month plus £10 for Unlimited UK calls boost. I am tempted to change as its just the same as VM, don't want or need the TV package as have freeview, but don't want the inconvenience of changing the email address, which is my husbands'!

JJ_Egan

If its a VM email address then its lost you dont own it .
Year 2019 nobody should rely on an email address that is owned by an ISP .Move to an non ISP email like GMail etc .

hss

Our email address is ntlworld.com as it was once Bell cable media! It's just the inconvenience of having to change it incase someone doesn't know its been changed or I don't receive important emails, then what please?

Mister_G

I had the same issue with my email address when leaving VM about four years ago.

However, I bit the bullet and changed to a Hotmail address. Yes, it's a pain have to tell everyone about the change, and you are bound to miss one or two, but it gives you the freedom to shop around for your ISP.

I found that VM kept my VM address live for about a year after I left, so that helped pick up the ones that I missed initially.

JJ_Egan

hss wrote: »

Our email address is ntlworld.com as it was once Bell cable media! It's just the inconvenience of having to change it incase someone doesn't know its been changed or I don't receive important emails, then what please?

Dont change and pay VM price to keep your email .
You can start changing your email anytime and let contacts know .
As said VM email may be live for a couple of months after leaving . Usual is that an ISP does a block deletion of old accounts .


Millions have gone down that route in the last ten years .

hss

Thanks for all your replies & advice. Heather