Virgin Media

hilaryjp

A few months ago I 'phoned Virgin because I was finding it hard to pay for their 3 for 1 i.e. £30 for TV, BB and phone because I am on benefits and in debt. After a long discussion where I said that I would be cancelling my TV and phone they offered me a 12 month contract for £30.95 which includes BB, TV and telephone for £30.95. They are charging me £5 because the only way I can pay is by debit card ... is that legal that they charge me £5?

Anyway, this includes free phone calls to 01 and 02 numbers and, I was told, that mobile numbers are half price.

I did find that a lot of 0870 numbers were appearing so I have kept a list of who I have called since 2 January and will check my bill as I have asked them to show details of any over 1p. That should be interesting.

Regards

Hilary

Vic83_2

We've had loads of misc items added to our Virgin Media bill since optng for VIP package - we apparently order same PPV film 3 times in one month!!?

Keep calling to correct them - they do eventually get tired of taking your same call every month and suddenly your bill will be correct!!

continualdiamond

I've had the problem with the £5 non direct debit charge. They say thats the cost for sending your bill and processing your payment over the phone by debit card...I remember something being on tv awhile back about people looking into these kind of charges.

I as well did find i wasn't benefiting from the top phone package, like you said free phone calls to 01 and 02 numbers. I've changed to the lowest now, just to compare.

Id switch if i could, but cannot afford to do so. They make so many mistakes, charged for 3 broadband connections 3 mths in a row, dispite ringing up everytime and they telling me it had been corrected. Then last mth, got billed for broadband XL, when im only on M, they had the cheek to tell me we'd requested it to be changed.

When i said we hadn't and asked for the time of the phone call i apparently made to change it, they had no record.....what a surprise....

nomoneytoday

I don't get this. You couldn't afford to pay £30, so instead you agreed to pay £30.95 ??

GavB79

£30.95 as a one-off payment for the whole year?
I got them to reduce my broadband when I threatened to leave but am still paying £17 per month. On the plus side, they are rolling out an upgrade from 4MB to 10MB free of charge!

chuckley

nomoneytoday - i agree... OP makes no sense... 3 for £30 which OP couldnt pay? so is on a new 12 mnth contract for just the internet and is paying an extra 95p and is quibbling the £5 charge??

but back to OP: yes the t&c's state the non d/d charge. altho when i was with them as blueyonder it was £3.

shazrobo

i have virgin media too, and was on the three for £30 package. when i phoned them up to cancel it as i couldn't afford it, they offered all three for £20 including landline calls

NEH

I have Virgin Media too and have just opted to buy out my contract. Currently i am in rented accomodation about to move and i may have to move again in 6 months due to finances. Virgin offered a new deal for me but it would have meant signing up for a brand new 12 month contract unfortunately i couldnt keep my old one which had 6 months left on it. Anyway i opted to cancel as i didnt want to keep getting a new 12 month contract everytime i moved so i am paying £141 to end with them. It was a little more but because of the amount of problems i have had with Virgin they took some off. The new contact they offered me was less services for the same money so i wouldnt have wanted to take it anyway. I wouldnt go to Virgin again though they may have a supposed better broadband service but i have had no end of problems with them, i'm dreading getting the final bill incase thats wrong too.

ihate0871numbers

I couldn't afford to keep paying the costs of my Virgin Media bill - M broadband £18pm, and a bundle of telephone anytime, XL TV package, line rental which was an additional £40 plus. So I tried phoning them to see how I could get the costs down but reducing or cutting out any of the services didn't help as the discounts that came with the bundle were then cancelled out making it even more expensive!!! Lol!!! So I got BT to install a line and had almost signed up with Tiscali for a new package that was gonna effectively halve the monthly bill (bringing it down from £65 pm to £40 pm for the first yr and £35 from then on when I could switch line rental to Tiscali). Hooray, I thought! But then I found that the cancellation of Virgin's services triggered a series of calls from Virgin to better the BT/Tiscali package. Not only have they offered us a free V+ box (worth £150) which we were gonna pay £50 to Tiscali for their equivalent, they will pay the £70 cancellation fee that BT will charge us for early cancellation of a 12 month contract. They will also reduce our monthly bill as of now to £33.50 for the exact same package we have now which includes broadband, telephone anytime, and XL TV package!!!!! I am so pleased!!! Also they have recommended that in a year's time we call them back and ask them to "refresh" the package because we can probably get it cheaper by then. So now we have saved ourselves the £30 set up fee with Tiscali and the £50 fee for the Tiscali PVR! Way to go Virgin! I never thought I'd ever hear myself saying that! Try cancelling your services and you can make some savings!:T Hope this post helps someone.

bobdauilda

ihate0871numbers wrote: »

I couldn't afford to keep paying the costs of my Virgin Media bill - M broadband £18pm, and a bundle of telephone anytime, XL TV package, line rental which was an additional £40 plus. So I tried phoning them to see how I could get the costs down but reducing or cutting out any of the services didn't help as the discounts that came with the bundle were then cancelled out making it even more expensive!!! Lol!!! So I got BT to install a line and had almost signed up with Tiscali for a new package that was gonna effectively halve the monthly bill (bringing it down from £65 pm to £40 pm for the first yr and £35 from then on when I could switch line rental to Tiscali). Hooray, I thought! But then I found that the cancellation of Virgin's services triggered a series of calls from Virgin to better the BT/Tiscali package. Not only have they offered us a free V+ box (worth £150) which we were gonna pay £50 to Tiscali for their equivalent, they will pay the £70 cancellation fee that BT will charge us for early cancellation of a 12 month contract. They will also reduce our monthly bill as of now to £33.50 for the exact same package we have now which includes broadband, telephone anytime, and XL TV package!!!!! I am so pleased!!! Also they have recommended that in a year's time we call them back and ask them to "refresh" the package because we can probably get it cheaper by then. So now we have saved ourselves the £30 set up fee with Tiscali and the £50 fee for the Tiscali PVR! Way to go Virgin! I never thought I'd ever hear myself saying that! Try cancelling your services and you can make some savings!:T Hope this post helps someone.

Thanks for this- can you tell me what number you called please? Was it a UK callcentre? So you have a Vplus box HD TV, 4GB broadband and the full TV package and phone for £33.50? Wowza:beer:

mistyarthur

Virgins problem seems to be only caring after they have caused you a problem, we have had trouble with them that has lasted for over 3 months, when it got sorted they then decided to start phoning us apologising offering free upgrades. They could have saved some money and time by just doing the job in the first place!