Haggle with Virgin - our new guide

Also had a failed call.

Paying £143 a month. Nothing to offer me, said to try phoning again in a couple of weeks time. Just as annoyingly they won't renew the (annual pay up front) line rental saver. No longer offered apparently.

victor2 wrote: »

Seriously? You're paying £143 a month plus line rental paid in advance?
You must have everything and then some for that. Multiple lines? Business contract?
If you are a domestic customer, tell them you're leaving, and do so.

Just checked it is £136.50- VIP bundle @ £117.50 and line rental @ £19.

Last month's bill was £87.50. I'd paid LRS up front and had a £26 discount each month. Both now disappeared.

VIP bundle
Full house TV (includes 2 x V6 box and 1 x Tivo)
Sky Sports & cinema collection
200MB broadband
Talk More anytime
line rental.

Not willing to compromise on broadband speed or packages really.

3 boxes is a killer - they will always use that against you...

Doubly annoying because when I transferred to Virgin that 3rd box was a freebie given at the time of installation to make the whole set up work. The engineer installing phoned back to Virgin and arranged for it to be added to the account for free.

Then virgin said the box was too old to support the channels we had and so upgraded it from a basic V box to a V6, again for free as it was them that couldn't support my package on the box they had supplied.

Then one of the other boxes was upgraded to a V6 from a Virgin Red offer.

So all these box upgrades were free, but consequently I can't get package discounts.

Dear MSEs

I've benefitted from peoples advice on here so wanted to let people know how I got on today with my Virgin haggle.

Background
We've been with VM for years and seen our monthly bill creep up. For the past year we have been paying £51pm for phone (inc weekend calls), broadband (100Mb/s) and player TV (freeview basically) with a Tivo box which we used for recording things and which also allowed easy access to some things like BBC iPlayer. No Sky, BTSport or anything else added.

We do not have a landline phone line so switching would have needed this to be included in the cost. Our TV aerial was also broken so I would have needed a new aerial to get freeview channels via the TV.

I had previously asked VM about getting one of the new V6 boxes (updated version from the TIVO) but they were unwilling to do this unless I paid a one off £90. Although they did say that there is plan to update all VM customers to the V6 box for free in the next 6months.

Preparation
Thanks to the advice on mSE I did my homework about switching and found deals with NOWTV and BT

Now TV offered: Fab Fibre @ £25pm with Broadband at 30Mb/s and anytime phone calls. On this 12m package a new landline would have been installed for free and there were no other setup, one off or delivery fees. I would have needed to sort the TV aerial and get Freeview working plus maybe get a PVR to record TV (I reckoned about £100 for the aerial and a similar amount for the PVR). At £25pm this was the cheapest I could find but it did reduce our services and the NowTV router only had 2 ethernet ports and looked a bit dodgy in some reviews.

BT offer: BT would give me Broadband at ~40Mb/s (they would send a Smart Hub Router), the TV would include BT sport and their Youview+ Tv box (acts as a PVR for 300hrs of TV and a phone line with incweekend calls. There was a one off fee of £29 for delivery and activation but installing a new phone line was again free. BT would also install a new TV aerial for £80 and this would be needed for the You view+ box to get the freeview channels. So this was similar to our current package but added BtSport and came to £40pm plus a total of £109 in setup and aerial fees.

Speaking to VM
With all this in my head I went to VM and asked to get through to the Retentions (options 1,1, 4, 5 after you ring the main number.) I said I wanted to cancel my package and they automatically started asking what they could offer to help me to stay. I mentioned the two offers above and that I wanted to reduce my bill and/or have better services included. I think knowing that I could get the above two options made my negotiating much stronger. I was calm and polite throughout and used some of the silences techniques that Martin includes in the 'How to Haggle tips'. Without too much effort I was offered my current package at £36pm (12m contract). When I asked about BT Sport they said that was difficult to discount in any offer. I said that in that case I would cancel after all (and I would have gone through with this cancellation). They then offered me my current package plus SkySports at £51pm or SkySports HD for £57pm (again 12m). I asked to think about it and on ringing them back I went for the £57pcm with SkySports HD but managed to get a £30credit to my account. So the bottom line is that I am now paying VM £6 more than I was but have managed to get SkySports HD and have a Sky Sports App which works on my iPad. From my perspective this new deal felt like a successful negotiation and, to be fair to the VM people I spoke to in retentions, they did seem to be reasonable and improved their offer without too much huffing and puffing.

I just wanted to share my experience with people on MSE so you have something to compare with when you try and haggle with VM. I think doing some careful reading around beforehand and having a genuine, costed, alternative to switch to helped me.

kind regards