Virgin Media increasing price by 24.1% for me (still under contract) :(

InvesterJones

Sad days. I read about the 'average' increase being 13.8% from the MSE article but mine is going up from 1st May by 24.14%. I'm out of contract at end of July, but I should be able to end early since there was nothing in my contract about price rises during it (in fact it was sold to me on the promise of no increases).

What do I need to prepare for cancellation? Can I give a cancellation date to give me time to try and get a new service set up or could they disconnect on my notice of cancellation?

frosch411

I feel your pain...I was emailed yesterday..my rise is just under 31%!
And my contract will go well into 2024.
Now I have the hassle of haggle and possible provider change... 😞

summer_daze009

InvesterJones said:

What do I need to prepare for cancellation? Can I give a cancellation date to give me time to try and get a new service set up or could they disconnect on my notice of cancellation?

As per the terms and conditions you will need to give 30 days notice to cancel your contract with virgin, more than enough time to arrange an alternative if that is what you require.

If you do cancel it is highly likely that you will receive a call from retentions after a couple of days offering you a better deal 

SaverRate

If you want to stay with Virgin Media:

Call them and say you are wanting to renegotiate due to the price increase.

Tell them you can get it cheaper elsewhere or as a new customer.

They should offer you discount on your package or a new contract. Whats your current deal and how much are you paying now? We can advise if its currently a good deal if its not you can negotiate it down further.

If they don't play ball you can cancel for free.

Then call outbound retentions on 020 3743 6947 and see if they can do a better deal for you. Outbound retentions arnt the same as normal retentions and can offer way better deals. 


EDIT - If they offer a new contract rather than discount your existing deal you will be subject to a non-cancellable price increase in 2024 which is the standard of other providers. Price increases from 2024 are RPI + 3.9%. 


If you just want to cancel:

Call up and say you want to cancel for free due to the price rise. They will try and offer you what they think are better deals. Just say you want to cancel and they will. 

You have to give 30 days notice to cancel. You can set up another provider in this time or alternatively you can set up Virgin as  new customer but in another persons name on the 31st day if you wanted to 

InvesterJones

Currently £29/month for ~100Mbps fibre. Other providers generally offer up to 67Mbps for my property, and even then I'm a bit dubious because although the house previously had Openreach it looks like the Virgin engineer cut the cable to the box when they were setting up Virgin so am a bit fearful that home setups will fail and I'll be without service until there's a free engineer slot.

SaverRate

So for £29 a month as a new customer you could get M250 broadband plus an o2 10GB phone sim. 
M125 on its own is £26.50 

The above deals are what I would be pushing Virgin to give me without increasing the price this year. 

Vodafone offer 100mbps for £23 a month plus £115 voucher so you could push Virgin further and get them to reduce their price more. Use the Vodafone price to negotiate even if you dont want to move to them. 

Just remember if normal retentions dont give you a price you are happy with, cancel your Virgin then give outbound retentions a call.