how can i haggle with virgin media?

freefee

hi, a while back i haggled a new deal for my 89 year old mother as i was unhappy with what virgin were charging, i phoned sky and got similar deal for half the price, man on phone did not say sky now only install cable broadband phone and tv, they did not tell me that it was not available in my area, after months of open reach coming out and getting new dates for installation, i cancelled sky, it seems that i can only get virgin media in my area, live by mom, her contract with virgin is coming to an end again, 3 months left, but how do i haggle with virgin media for better price when it seems they are the only option, can go through to retentions and chance my arm, but i cannot disconnect, all ideas welcomed, many thanks

freefee

think there was too much work involved and thus cost to make it worth their while, had to go back to virgin with tail between legs, so i guess they know the issue, wasn't either a new customer as for some reason had to keep paying for landline

steven141

Sky don’t install cable at all. They still have Sky Q via satellite or you can get Sky Stream over the internet. For broadband and phone they may use CityFibre or Openreach. 

freefee

i mentioned that it was openreach that was doing the cabling, customer services at sky said i had no choice but a cabled connection, it seems openreach do not have a telephone number to chasse them up, just got the odd text, had to go through sky for everything, dates kept getting moved, about 3 months from the original date of installation

QrizB

freefee said:

i mentioned that it was openreach that was doing the cabling, customer services at sky said i had no choice but a cabled connection

Cabled as opposed to what, exactly? Wireless? Satellite? What alternative were you expecting?

freefee said:

 it seems openreach do not have a telephone number to chasse them up, just got the odd text, had to go through sky for everything

You as a consumer have no contract with Openreach and no reason to speak to them. If you did somehow find a phone number for someone at OR, they wouldn't speak to you. Your contract is with Sky.
It would be like me complaining to Heinz when Tesco run out of beans.

iniltous

I suspect with Openreach , the area is now upgraded to FTTP , as the OP has no current Openreach based service , being a Virgin customer , they would have no choice but to take FTTP if they chose to get service from an Openreach based provider like Sky  , the existing Openreach copper cables are not going to be reactivated if Openreach FTTP is available, if there was delay or some complication around installation of this new FTTP service , presumably the OP cancelled the Sky order because of this delay

 …..so the question is how do they get a better deal out of Virgin , they ask , they  possibly serve notice to quit and hope to be contacted with a great offer to cancel the cancellation, but ultimately VM will offer a price that is either acceptable or isn’t acceptable to the OP , If it isn’t acceptable you leave , I doubt VM have a list of customers that have threatened to leave in the past but got cold feet and never actually did leave , but if they do , obviously they know that they can afford to play hard ball knowing that the customer will fold and accept the VM offer , I dare say that VM also have a price level they won’t go below, so the OP price expectations may be unrealistic.

freefee

i was expecting a satelitte service told it had to be a cable service, sky told me to connect my mom the would have to connect new cable from off my mom's property which involved getting permission from council,  the road being closed off while work was being done, i just think they kept moving the dates as they had no intention of doing job, it would have cost them a fortune, got about 150 quid compensation for them missing the installation dates, of which there were many, i believe they just didn't want the job

freefee

was told by sky salesman on original phone call it would take 1 to 2 weeks to complete job, mom was and still is paying virgin about 135 quid a month sky's price was about 70 quid a month for basically the same package, she is obviously old now and cannot really learn new things as her memory is in bad decline, she is forgetting to do the very basic things that weren't  as much of a problem when i tried to switch, virgin phoned while i was there last week and offered a less than 2 pound monthly  reduction of her bill. although he said she would get sky movies added for free, she wouldn't watch them, so no point, she has 3 months left on present contract, do not want to switch really as i am not sure she could cope with the change, for some reason she has the full bundle package with virgin, which my sister set up, she only really watches the first 5 terrestial channells, although she does pay for netflix also, but rarely watches, i have asked her to replace her package but she won.t go against my sister. she has the tv phone and an ipad, but the set up for a big family using many computers, i don.t want to get too involved really after the chaos of last time

iniltous

Referring to Sky as using cable is confusing as Virgin is ‘cable TV ‘ , Sky can use broadband to deliver its TV services , Sky Stream , a box connected to the Internet and Sky Glass , a TV with built in internet TV access are available and obviously need the internet to work , but AFAIK , Sky also still sell Sky Q which is delivered from a satellite dish , so it’s seems odd that Sky wouldn’t sell you Sky Q if that’s what you wanted ,  but needs internet for some facilities, if you wanted a bundle , so Sky TV and Sky broadband, then as stated they use Openreach and if Openreach FTTP is available, then it needs to be installed, Sky do not have an external broadband network , in the main Sky broadband uses Openreach broadband infrastructure.

freefee

i am not a techie all i know is they needed to install new cable to outside of my mothers house, involved a lot of digging work, old cable needed replacing i seem to remember, i may be a bit thick, but they should just have said at the begging it will cost too much to set up so we don't want the business, customer service at sky in general was a joke, just checked texts sky sent me, 26th september was original instalation date sky said openreach would connect the line, got texts off openreach also as stated26th sept original date, then moved to 17th of october 2 days before agreed date, on 16th of october got another date from openreach giving new date as 13th december, which i thought was totally unacceptable and cancelled, which sky seemed more than happy to do, whatever way you look at it, terrible service by both companies, my family were getting on my back about it, it was a really stressful time

iniltous

The cable they needed to install would be for broadband not TV , but because you chose to take broadband and TV then the TV became dependent on the broadband installation, you could have as an alternative reduced  the Virgin service to broadband only , so basically stopped paying Virgin for TV and took a basic Virgin broadband package , and then got Sky to install satellite TV ( Sky Q ) , presumably you didn’t consider that arrangement, Sky Q works on anyone’s broadband it doesn’t need to be Sky broadband, but if you take Sky broadband it needs an Openreach line