Have Virgin Media Retentions Stopped Negotiating??

BigTezza

I've been with Virgin Media for about 25 years. Well, my cable company was called something else back in the day and eventually/unfortunately it got bought out. My current contract is due to end in mid-June. I have...

Big Bundle TV (I think that's what they're calling it now)
Sky Movies added
M100 broadband

I also have a Virgin landline* but I don't use it - some people still call me on it though.
*I've now switched over to their watered-down VOIP system so the home phone now plugs into the hub and not the old wall socket.

I'm currently paying just over £66 pm for the above, I tried calling them first and after sitting in their annoying phone queue for nearly an hour, I got through to an off-shore agent on a line that appeared to be routed via the backside of Pluto judging by the quality. The upshot was that the 'special' deal they offered me would see me paying £69 pm. The guy wouldn't budge on that, even though I explained I was trying to cut costs with a minimum loss of service - not pay more for the same thing! I asked to be transferred to Retentions and after 5 minutes of listening to crackling nonsense, I got through to another agent who offered me the same thing and she had nothing to do with Retentions!

After posting on the VM forum, someone suggested that I try their WhatsApp service to negotiate. After some wait, an agent picked up the chat and I ultimately got the same disappointing offer. I again asked to be put through to Retentions. That was at the end of Hour #1. Three hours later, someone allegedly from Retentions picked up the chat and I got absolutely nowhere with them either. Their suggestion was to remove Sky Movies and pay £54 pm. However, in the 3 hours I was waiting for Virgin to engage their backsides and pick up the chat, I had another webchat with BT. They offered me a deal with Fibre 100 broadband & 'Big Entertainment' which includes Sky Movies and also a few Sky channels that I don't currently have access to with my current VM package, such as Sky Atlantic. The cost for that would be £58 pm.

I've heard horror stories about BT service but the service I've received from VM recently hasn't exactly been sparkling. On one occasion, I opened a complaint and they handled it so badly that I ended up creating another complaint about the way they were handling my original complaint! BT customer care can't be worse than that....or can it?

Has anyone out there, maybe with a similar VM package to mine, had any recent success in haggling with them? It seems to me that my 25 years of loyalty is counting for b*gger all in this situation and I am disappointed - to put it mildly!!

Cheers

Nonum2018

They are absolutely terrible now. Be warned make sure you are ready to move and get your new service setup for when it finishes as otherwise you can be without service. 

I was on the max OOmp, they won’t let me have any other package on rolling until my new install is done so I have to Pay the full cost £147 - or lose internet and make alternative arrangements im until my new can be installed.

They are horrible horrible to deal with now.

ladruid

I was on the ultimate oooomph bundle for £89 for a few years, with two Virgin v6 boxes, fully inclusive Virgin mobile sim, all HD Sky TV channels, Anytime phone, 600Mbit Internet. Contract was coming to the end, was going to be £139 or so so I had the age old battle of cancelling. They offered it me for £129 as a special as I was a 'valued customer'.

Ended up telling them to shove it and I'd live with fibre bb at a lower speed with another provider, Netflix and prime for entertainment. Was in the process of signing up with another provider and then....

Got a call back about a week later and they offered me their Ultimate Volt bundle comprising of :-
Volt 1Gbit Fibre BB
2 x Virgin v6 TiVo boxes
Sky Sports HD
Sky Entertainment HD
Sky Movies HD
Maxit TV
Kids pick
Anytime calls

£74 for 18 months. Was like thanks very much, I'll have a slice of that. Least thats no worries for another 18 months.

Don't get me wrong, they still stuffed up the billing and I had to have 2 or 3 calls to their lack-of-support line to sort it out, least I got a bit of compo for it.

Moral is, plan to move and if a deal comes, embrace it. Hope you get a deal that works for you.

Regards
La

BigTezza

ladruid said:

I was on the ultimate oooomph bundle for £89 for a few years, with two Virgin v6 boxes, fully inclusive Virgin mobile sim, all HD Sky TV channels, Anytime phone, 600Mbit Internet. Contract was coming to the end, was going to be £139 or so so I had the age old battle of cancelling. They offered it me for £129 as a special as I was a 'valued customer'.

Ended up telling them to shove it and I'd live with fibre bb at a lower speed with another provider, Netflix and prime for entertainment. Was in the process of signing up with another provider and then....

Got a call back about a week later and they offered me their Ultimate Volt bundle comprising of :-
Volt 1Gbit Fibre BB
2 x Virgin v6 TiVo boxes
Sky Sports HD
Sky Entertainment HD
Sky Movies HD
Maxit TV
Kids pick
Anytime calls

£74 for 18 months. Was like thanks very much, I'll have a slice of that. Least thats no worries for another 18 months.

Don't get me wrong, they still stuffed up the billing and I had to have 2 or 3 calls to their lack-of-support line to sort it out, least I got a bit of compo for it.

Moral is, plan to move and if a deal comes, embrace it. Hope you get a deal that works for you.

Regards
La

Cheers for that. One thing that concerns me - as I've not had to do it before - is signing up for another service while waiting for someone to call me back. If I contact BT again and sign up for their deal and then VM decides to see sense, can the new deal be canceled without any fuss or penalty?

Garf

ladruid said:

I was on the ultimate oooomph bundle for £89 for a few years, with two Virgin v6 boxes, fully inclusive Virgin mobile sim, all HD Sky TV channels, Anytime phone, 600Mbit Internet. Contract was coming to the end, was going to be £139 or so so I had the age old battle of cancelling. They offered it me for £129 as a special as I was a 'valued customer'.

Ended up telling them to shove it and I'd live with fibre bb at a lower speed with another provider, Netflix and prime for entertainment. Was in the process of signing up with another provider and then....

Got a call back about a week later and they offered me their Ultimate Volt bundle comprising of :-
Volt 1Gbit Fibre BB
2 x Virgin v6 TiVo boxes
Sky Sports HD
Sky Entertainment HD
Sky Movies HD
Maxit TV
Kids pick
Anytime calls

£74 for 18 months. Was like thanks very much, I'll have a slice of that. Least thats no worries for another 18 months.

Don't get me wrong, they still stuffed up the billing and I had to have 2 or 3 calls to their lack-of-support line to sort it out, least I got a bit of compo for it.

Moral is, plan to move and if a deal comes, embrace it. Hope you get a deal that works for you.

Regards
La

I got exactly the same deal. I just waited on WhatsApp Chat for a few days!
 I contacted them 1 month before my last 18 month deal ended (Ultimate Oomph now Ultimate Volt basically).

acb828

Virgin media for us was terrible. The wifi kept going down and running slow after a few years. After several weeks of going back and forth with them we called up to try and negotiate a better deal seeing as we weren’t getting what we bargained for. 

The guy on the phone just laughed and said “you’ll be back” when we said we were offered a better deal by Sky. Moved to sky and after a few initial teething problems (wrong modem being installed, speeds not being correct) they’ve been great. Never returning to virgin with their poor attitudes and shoddy services

RogerBareford

BigTezza said:

 It seems to me that my 25 years of loyalty is counting for b*gger all in this situation and I am disappointed - to put it mildly!!

I think that's the problem right there. You've been with them for 25 years and they can see that so it doesn't make good business sense for them to give you a good deal when it's most likely you won't leave them.

They will probably also be able to see that you have spent hours trying to get through to retentions by speaking to multiple operators and using multiple forms of communication. If i were them i wouldn't give you any discount as everything points you are likely to stay with them and just want to see what price you can get.

The best thing you can do is switch to another company with a deal you are happy with and then if they decide to call and persuade you to stay then that's when you can push for a better deal and mention how it has to be good to to deal with the "hassle" of cancelling the new service. But they won't give you a good deal if they think you won't leave as that wouldn't make any sense.

BigTezza

Well, the BT offer apparently includes Netflix and as I have my own Netflix contract, I should be able to save another £11 pm if I take that deal. I've put all this in the WhatsApp session and I was allegedly transferred to their 'Relations Team' at 1.30pm. It is now 8pm and I've had no reply. Surely BT service can't be worse......

It would be a faff to move but it's now looking very likely. One thing I forgot to ask those of you who have jumped suppliers before - what happens to your email address? My current VM email address is used everywhere in many accounts I have online - can you take an email address with you?

RogerBareford

BigTezza said:

Well, the BT offer apparently includes Netflix and as I have my own Netflix contract, I should be able to save another £11 pm if I take that deal. I've put all this in the WhatsApp session and I was allegedly transferred to their 'Relations Team' at 1.30pm. It is now 8pm and I've had no reply. Surely BT service can't be worse......

It would be a faff to move but it's now looking very likely. One thing I forgot to ask those of you who have jumped suppliers before - what happens to your email address? My current VM email address is used everywhere in many accounts I have online - can you take an email address with you?

You can't take an email address with you which is why it's commonly recomended to never use an email address supplied by an ISP or linked to any other service.

So your best bet is to get an independant email adress now (definetly don't use BT if you switch to them) and start transferring everything over and changing it on every website. Even if you don't move suppliers this is a good thing to do anyway and gives you a bit of time if you start now.

BigTezza

RogerBareford said:

BigTezza said:

Well, the BT offer apparently includes Netflix and as I have my own Netflix contract, I should be able to save another £11 pm if I take that deal. I've put all this in the WhatsApp session and I was allegedly transferred to their 'Relations Team' at 1.30pm. It is now 8pm and I've had no reply. Surely BT service can't be worse......

It would be a faff to move but it's now looking very likely. One thing I forgot to ask those of you who have jumped suppliers before - what happens to your email address? My current VM email address is used everywhere in many accounts I have online - can you take an email address with you?

You can't take an email address with you which is why it's commonly recomended to never use an email address supplied by an ISP or linked to any other service.

So your best bet is to get an independant email adress now (definetly don't use BT if you switch to them) and start transferring everything over and changing it on every website. Even if you don't move suppliers this is a good thing to do anyway and gives you a bit of time if you start now.

Yes, you're right. It's obvious now but back in the day, this wasn't thought of, and once you were allocated an address that was kind of 'it'. I have an existing googlemail.com account so I guess I could start using that as my main account - unless there is a different provider out there that you would recommend? Cheers for the advice - I need to join the 21st century

smipsy

In previous years they would call back. This year I put my notice of cancellation at the end of the April, and my Virgin contract expires in about 8 days. They never called, all I had is an email saying "sorry you're leaving, ring us on 0330 303 5301". But when you ring that number it's just an automated message saying "we tried to call you, you don't have to do anything, we will call you again", even though they never did call!

So I think they don't do retentions anymore, so I might have to go elsewhere! If I do for example apply for BT/Sky/etc, what fees would I have to pay to them on the off chance that Virgin rings on my last day of the cancellation period? Failing all that, I wonder if I can get away with my spouse getting a new contract now instead of mine.