Virgin Media Price Increase (Speaking to the correct Department about Cancelling Price Increase)

sarahj1990

Virgin Media are increasing my package by £7.00 a month. I just phoned 0345 454 1111 and choose the option "Thinking about Leaving" The person I was talking to was in a call centre in Asia. I told them about my frustration. She said she would look into it for me and put me on hold. After 5 minutes the line went dead. Does anyone know the correct number to call where I can speak to someone in the UK and get this price cancelled. Its a joke speaking to someone in a call centre in Asia.

Ryan_Holden

You've got the right number but you have no control over the call centre.

If it's any help, I have literally just had and done the same with Virgin. I have a £30 pcm 18 month contract and I am 14 months into it. They told me it would be going up £7.

I rang that number, hit "thinking of leaving", it offered me a £3.50 reduction straight away.

I stuck with it, got through to a woman, who then offered me £5.60. I told her that I still had a contract, that it wasn't what I wanted and that I could get a better speed from Vodafone for the same money, and after a few minutes on hold she credited my account with the £7 per month until August thus wiping the rise out.

Give them another try

freeganneist

When I haggled last year, my first call to them was cut off. I called back and ended up paying less per month than before. 
I phoned to haggle today and my first call to them was cut off. Maybe it's a technique, to see how persistent you are?

I didn't get anywhere much with them today. It was a very confusing conversation with some language difficulties. I was offered less than the £3.50 discount I was offered by the automated system, so I said I'd cancel, we discussed the cancellation date, then she said she'd leave the account as it was and hung up.  I'm now quite baffled and will phone back tomorrow. I'm not paying £7 more and am perfectly prepared to cancel. 

Ryan_Holden

I was also cut off the last time I had to haggle prior to 2023. I think you could be right.

freeganneist

I've just managed to get the £7 increase reduced to zero until my contract ends in August. I was offered a new 18 month contract but at a price I wasn't happy with. There was no wiggle room on the new contract during two phone calls. 

It was a very lengthy process with lots of holds and pauses. Saying I would cancel at the end of April, before the price rise, did not result in an offer. I was only offered the reduction after I said I wanted to cancel immediately (which I was prepared to do). 

abelmag

I received a £7 increase email in Feb from VM saying this was now an annual rise so I signed up with another supplier. As per that email I called VM to cancel before the deadline of 9/3/23 to enable me to leave penalty free. The call was routed through to their retentions department (not my choice) who offered to drop the tariff to £30 which I wasnt interested in having already switch to a cheaper provider. It was a poor line speaking to someone for whom English wasnt their first language but at no stage did I say I would stay with VM. After no email confirmation I called again on 23/3/23 to be told their operator had noted my account to the effect that I was "thinking about staying with them". In short they hadnt cancelled my contract and said their Complaints Dept would listen to the call and phone me back. As of today I received no call. This is clearly a tactic to get you to call to cancel and then claim you hadnt. I am raising a complaint with them before going to the relevant Ombudsman. Moral is if you have to call VM get them to rely by email immediately.   

TractorFactor

Is it fairly easy to get the price rise knocked off without changing contracts?
Even if it's for 6 months for us as our contract will be up by then anyway and it's likely other fibre providers will have muscled in so would switch to one of them.

Last time the line automatically said it could discount it for 6 months, so just wondering if that's the same still?

Ryan_Holden

Yep, I did with 4 months left on my contract. Just stick to your guns.

SimonMall

I was astonished to see my Virgin package (250MB broadband, Maxit TV and landline with Talk Weekend) not only go up from £40 per month to £93 this month, when the 18 month contract ended, but to then get a letter announcing another increase of £15 from May 2023 to £108 per month, a shocking 170% increase! 

I also had the same problem others report with Virgin hanging up the first time I rang-up to ask them to sharpen their pencil.

Fed up with with their tactics, having had to go through this palaver every 18 months for the last 10 years with Virgin, I rang back and said I wanted to cancel. I was transferred from Customer Service, to a pre-recorded offer of a £7.50 discount, to the Retention Department that offered a reduced price of £56, then ultimately to the Disconnection Team who came down to £52 per month, possibly with some other incentives as well, but hard to be sure with a foreign call centre and distorted (low bandwidth?) phone line. But anyway still a whopping 30% increase on what I have been paying. I got the hard sell from Virgin and the phone call took up the best part of an hour.

It seems that if you press them hard, tell them the best offer you’ve had with their competitors and keep hanging on, they can come down to half the sticker price.

Fed up with Virgin's shenanigans every 18 months and disreputable mid-contract price hikes, I have cancelled them, and am getting ultrafast broadband elsewhere, now that Openreach FTTP is available where I live for £30 per month.

Sad to be losing our much loved Virgin Tivo set-top box 20 years after we first got one, but it’s not worth paying another £22 a month for, especially with so many channels on Freeview and with a new 500MB broadband line for streaming iPlayer etc.

Ryan_Holden

There is definitely a trend with Virgin of figuring out exactly how much they can sell you a service, how much they can extract from you for the product for rather than setting a price for a service and offering it to you.