Virgin Media Haggling

PZ19

khickey88 said:

I called up yesterday and as I don't care about the TV channels I've got I'm happy with freeview they offered me.. 
100mb broadband 
Lowest TV package (freeview) 
Talk weekends(which I don't use)
All for £50 a month 
Does this seem expensive? 
Should I ask to cancel to see if they can offer better? 

I would say yes.  From my friends experience this morning they were offering him £27 for the broadband and talk weekends part (with a SIM card thrown in).  The tv is mainly freeview so that’s not £23 pm worth.  Go through to them say it’s too expensive, they may offer you a price, then says that’s still too much and you will get put through to cancellation department, they have better discounts.  The theory then is if you’re still not happy, put cancellation in and hope their outbound retentions team call you with an offer.  Note not everyone gets a call back, and make sure in your account preferences you have the marketing consent set so you agree they can contact you. You gave 30 days to then change your mind about cancelling should no one call you

n15h

khickey88 said:

I called up yesterday and as I don't care about the TV channels I've got I'm happy with freeview they offered me.. 
100mb broadband 
Lowest TV package (freeview) 
Talk weekends(which I don't use)
All for £50 a month 
Does this seem expensive? 
Should I ask to cancel to see if they can offer better? 

In November 2021, I took out their offer (through MSE) of 100MB broadband and free weekend calls for £24pm plus £100 credit. I don't really watch live tv so i didn't get a tv package. Virgin also offered something similar again at the start of this year. It looks like you would have the same product deal (if you removed tv) but you've been offered it for 2x what I'm paying, just for the benefit of having freeview.

I would suggest asking them to offer better - if not, put in your 30 day cancellation notice and as @PZ19 mentions, hope to get a call from the Retentions team. Check the other forum on Virgin Media Retention Deals forum where you can get an idea of the prices/services that others have successfully haggled.

HaroldWren5

khickey88 said:

I called up yesterday and as I don't care about the TV channels I've got I'm happy with freeview they offered me.. 
100mb broadband 
Lowest TV package (freeview) 
Talk weekends(which I don't use)
All for £50 a month 
Does this seem expensive? 
Should I ask to cancel to see if they can offer better? 

Do you have an Openreach line which you can receive Broadband on? Because if you are just watching Freeview, you can get that for free to your TV with an aerial. There are FTTC and FTTP broadband prices which would be cheaper than £50 a month. 

wiccaanne

Hi - just tried to haggle down my mother's contract - she's 88 and only watches the main stations.  She has anytime calls plus broadband.  She is paying £70 per month - and I have just discovered she is out of contract.  Just tried ringing and the best price they would give me is £59 - apparently she is just on freeview and not any other stations.  I did not get put through to the 'retentions' department - just told this was the best price.  I'll try again on another day.

My mother lives 400 miles away so I said I would be going to see her in May (true) and would be cancelling the Virgin contract and looking for something cheaper - I can get NOW for around £25 with same contract - plus extra stations.  I need to check the status of her telephone line before I cancel anything - there is an ariel on the roof so I might just set her up with freeview and a contract for broadband and anytime calls.  I was just trying keep everything as similar as possibly for her as she will get confused with new settings. 

PZ19

wiccaanne said:

Hi - just tried to haggle down my mother's contract - she's 88 and only watches the main stations.  She has anytime calls plus broadband.  She is paying £70 per month - and I have just discovered she is out of contract.  Just tried ringing and the best price they would give me is £59 - apparently she is just on freeview and not any other stations.  I did not get put through to the 'retentions' department - just told this was the best price.  I'll try again on another day.

My mother lives 400 miles away so I said I would be going to see her in May (true) and would be cancelling the Virgin contract and looking for something cheaper - I can get NOW for around £25 with same contract - plus extra stations.  I need to check the status of her telephone line before I cancel anything - there is an ariel on the roof so I might just set her up with freeview and a contract for broadband and anytime calls.  I was just trying keep everything as similar as possibly for her as she will get confused with new settings. 

You need to cancel to get thru to retentions.  If your mum only watches freeview channels then she doesn’t really need to be with virgin at all for tv.  If she needs broadband and she has a BT line into the house then now (via Quidco for cash back) is cheap for broadband

Filo25

Having a nightmare with them at present, I had moved onto O2 to take advantage of the Volt upgrade.

Was previously paying £37 for M500 standalone (3 months to run on that contract), following my Volt "upgrade" I am now paying £38 for M500, when I rang them to point out that this wasn't quite doubling my package for the same price I got complete disinterest, they just said the 1 gig was expensive so they weren't going to do that, I must have missed that in the Volt marketing spiel.

Also if I now take advantage of the O2 cooling off period as I haven't received the benefits of the Volt upgrade (I only really wanted the speed increase, I had enough O2 data already), and lose Volt they will put it up to £56 a month, they rarely are a shameless company. 

Trying to go through complaints at present but based on past experience with their customer service I won't be holding my breath

PZ19

Filo25 said:

Having a nightmare with them at present, I had moved onto O2 to take advantage of the Volt upgrade.

Was previously paying £37 for M500 standalone (3 months to run on that contract), following my Volt "upgrade" I am now paying £38 for M500, when I rang them to point out that this wasn't quite doubling my package for the same price I got complete disinterest, they just said the 1 gig was expensive so they weren't going to do that, I must have missed that in the Volt marketing spiel.

Also if I now take advantage of the O2 cooling off period as I haven't received the benefits of the Volt upgrade (I only really wanted the speed increase, I had enough O2 data already), and lose Volt they will put it up to £56 a month, they rarely are a shameless company. 

Trying to go through complaints at present but based on past experience with their customer service I won't be holding my breath

That doesn’t sound right, the volt upgrade is to move your broadband to next category.  I would put complaint in

Filo25

PZ19 said:

Filo25 said:

Having a nightmare with them at present, I had moved onto O2 to take advantage of the Volt upgrade.

Was previously paying £37 for M500 standalone (3 months to run on that contract), following my Volt "upgrade" I am now paying £38 for M500, when I rang them to point out that this wasn't quite doubling my package for the same price I got complete disinterest, they just said the 1 gig was expensive so they weren't going to do that, I must have missed that in the Volt marketing spiel.

Also if I now take advantage of the O2 cooling off period as I haven't received the benefits of the Volt upgrade (I only really wanted the speed increase, I had enough O2 data already), and lose Volt they will put it up to £56 a month, they rarely are a shameless company. 

Trying to go through complaints at present but based on past experience with their customer service I won't be holding my breath

That doesn’t sound right, the volt upgrade is to move your broadband to next category.  I would put complaint in

I actually did speak to 2 more people since then and thankfully do seem to have reached a resolution with one who was actually both competent and interested! Basically now getting 1 gig at the old price as I should have done.

Happy with the outcome, but there does seem to be quite a big adviser lottery when dealing with Virgin!

Bigphil1474

I'd second that Filo. I dealt with my dad's broadband, phone and extra TV. He was paying about £50 a month and was happy with the price and service but was coming to end of contract and price was going up to about £75. I rang to see what they had on offer. Told advisor that he was happy with package but didn't want to pay £75, could they keep him on same price at least. Advisor said no, he could have the same package and put price down to £40 a month. Great.
Did an online chat to sort mine out a few months later and they would only offer a slightly better package (we didn't need) and charge us more. Had to go through the 'I'm cancelling then' spiel and wait for a call back to get anywhere. Ended up paying a tenner less but such a pain. I'm sure some of them just make it up as they go along.

Peters04th

Just been on to the Virgin 'I'm thinking of leaving' team. Been on the Ultimate Oomph TV, Broadband, SIM package and with all sorts of discounts applied had been paying £80 per month. It was about to increase to £147. I called and said I'd compared with similar Virgin packages for newbies which were coming in at £79 or £85 although they were without SIM but I didn't need that anyway. Also mentioned that my wifi hub was always showing an overheating light (even though it seems to work fine). He offered me my current deal but at £99. I ummed and arred and said I was really looking to try and keep the costs closer to the £80 I had been paying and was there anything else he could do, otherwise I'd have to speak with my better half and possibly look at moving to Sky. He said he could apply his own personal discount and reduce it to £89. I asked if there was any further wiggle room but he was adamant that was all he could do. I took the deal as it was so close to the current newby deal for their Ultimate Volt bundle (£85) but my current package has more in it eg a 2nd box. So I think that's a result !!