Virgin Media Price Hike

Myrtle12Springs

I currently have my broadband, digital tv [Drama, Lifestyle, Documentaries, Sport Life], BT Sport, Sky Sports, tv essentials and home phone talk more anytime and line rental with Virgin Media as a package. With the proposed price hike I'm looking at alternative arrangements. 

My main areas of concern are the sports channels, my wife is an avid tennis fan, this is the sole reason for having the channels, and I subscribe to Amazon Prime for the same reason. 

Although I have been paying for Sky sports these channels have been little used during the period of the pandemic and I really should have tried to suspend these out of the package but never got round to it. 

Is there any way the Sky/BT sports channels can be obtained on a kind of pay-as-you-go platform? If so how would this work? 

I would then continue with Virgin Media for broadband, phone and basic tv service and also with Amazon Prime and buy the rest on an as needed basis. 

Thank you for reading this, any help/advice/suggestions would be most welcome.

flaneurs_lobster

BT Sport can be had as a stand-alone streaming service via their app for £25/month. I've never seen it discounted other than when bought as part of a BT/EE mobile contract.

Sky Sports similarly can be had as part of their NOW streaming service, currently £33/month but often discounted. Can be bought for a day for about a tenner.

JJ_Egan

Personally i would start out with what you actually want .

EG Tennis  Amazon Prime  can use any provider .

BT Sport   for what likewise Sky Sports .

BT incorporate the NOW services .

BT Sports pass monthly .

I would price up the services you want on BT and Sky then negotiate with VM

Myrtle12Springs

Thank you flaneurs_lobster and JJ_Egan for your advice. I'm still ploughing through the options but finding it difficult getting a breakdown of the cost of individual items in the package from VM. Previously these used to be individually itemised but I cant find this in my account! One thing I forgot to ask, given that I have a 'smart tv', is there any real benefit in getting a Firestick?

Will get back to you when I've worked things out.

Thank you

flaneurs_lobster

Myrtle12Springs said:

 One thing I forgot to ask, given that I have a 'smart tv', is there any real benefit in getting a Firestick?

If the TV has, or can get, the NOW, Amazon Prime Video and BTSport apps or any others you may be interested in then no.

mwarby

Myrtle12Springs said:

I would then continue with Virgin Media for broadband, phone and basic tv service and also with Amazon Prime and buy the rest on an as needed basis. 

Thank you for reading this, any help/advice/suggestions would be most welcome.

When I spoke to virgin media retentions yesterday, the broadband only price was only £1 less than the package with mixit tv (plus entertainment and docs pick) and weekend\evening phone calls.

You might get a better price if your able to move your broadband too (I can only get 10 Meg with ISPs using openreach infrastructure, and alternatives are Virgin or 4G, so I can't really leave virgin completely).

You'll likey be initially offered some money off to keep things as is, it's only if you say you still want to get price after cancelling part of your service will you get passed to retentions, who have better offers.

rabialiones

i have been trying to get through to VM for the past 3 days, i just get put on hold for hours then call is ended.
please could you let me know how you got through to someone.
thanks

JJ_Egan

Try a Sunday morning .

rabialiones

Thanks 
Was trying yesterday morning, still same issue 

cfw1994

Anyone timing how long the Virgin retentions hold music lasts?
I'm only coming up on 20 minutes in, but wondering if I need to start doing other things for a few hours or what 👀

Curiously irritating how they have an electronic voice pop in every 5 minutes offering me a discount, equal to the planned March 1st price rise (£5.75 in my case).   
NO!   I want to speak to someone to figure out how our bill went from £77 in Nov '18 to over £100 from March....with zero improvements 🙄

We do make more use of fire sticks nowadays.....we use Netflix, Disney+ & have Amazon prime, so VM TV is far less important (BT Sports is "nice to have").  Maybe it is time to jump ship, & get a new customer offer in a year or two
Bit irritating, as they are the only ones offering over 36Mb broadband (we are on cable 200Mb) to us.   Maybe they will cut some deal to drop speed a bit and price a lot 🤷‍♂️

MuckChucker

I did my annual reneg call earlier, total call time was 45m20s. I would say hold was maybe 20mins, I left it on loud speaker on the desk. My plan (old bigger bundle - might have been called Full House at the time) was £46 going up £5+, they tried to offer the new bigger bundle for £55pm. It's £45pm for new customers (not to mention TCB options) which I pointed out and he kinda jumped on the opportunity to offer it. I definitely could have got him down a few more quid but the call was long enough and I don't think the clash of both of our non-UK accents was helping the conversation.

So in the end, I'm losing some kids channels for the £1 I'm saving. I'm happy enough with that as with the wife's O2 mobile, our bandwidth was doubled a while back so 200mbps, TV with BT Sport and a landline that's never been connected for £45.