MSE News: Virgin Media customers face 6.7% price hike

Personally I am getting a bit sick of Virgin Media now. The problem is that their broadband absolutely destroys any of the competition which makes it difficult to switch.

Currently I pay £16 for 30 meg broadband and basic TV package as well as £10 for line rental. This is such a good price that nobody can come close to matching it, even taking the price rise into account.

And now we are being promised another speed upgrade. Although I am pretty sure I haven't actually seen the last speed upgrade yet.

BT customers get free Premier League football. VM customers get a price rise.

I got a goodwill u/g to the new Superhub 2 with no imposed lock-in, and I have to say their BB service has no compare. Currently I get a 120Mb service, and the proposed increase will give me 150Mb, a pretty good trade off.

Match that, BT - that's Infinity 2 and beyond!

I now get Netflix on TiVo, and have the base package on phone and TV. My old BT bill (where I used ISDN 2) gave me a 128Kb connection and I paid £40pm plus calls. I'd expect to pay £120pm for what I have now - but I'm half that

Unhappy? Slightly. Dissatisfied? Definitely not.

kwikbreaks wrote: »

VM's habit of announcing upgrades which take a year or maybe two to come to fruition for existing customers become wearisome after a while.

Yes, especially since they tend to throw in a couple of price rises before you see a speed increase.

ryan92 wrote: »

OK, so at the moment I pay £97 for ;

100 meg Broadband
TV XL with 4 boxes ( 2 additional boxes as per the Premiere pack providing 2 boxes)
Talk Weekends
Caller Display

I've been offered as an incentive to keep my services with them ;

Deal 1
60 meg Broadband
L TV with 4 TiVo boxes
Talk Weekends
Caller Display

£88.49

Deal 2

60 meg Broadband
M+ TV with 4 TiVo boxes
Talk Weekends
Caller Display

£80.20


I'm not too sure about Virgin's pricing ; kinda confuses me. Would you say these sounded good?

I have your same deal 2 + talk unlimited and cost is only £47 including line rental !

Just got this on email

The price of your Virgin Media
services is going up.

But you'll keep on getting great value technology.

Account Number: **************
Area Reference: ***************

Dear Mr H,
We wanted to let you know that from 1st February 2014, the price of your Virgin Media services will go up by £3.25 a month. Plus, any calls you make to UK landlines outside of your talk plan will increase by less than 1p per minute. It's never nice when your bill goes up, but it means we can keep making all the things you enjoy about Virgin Media even better.

And because you've opted for eBilling and Direct Debit, the good news is you already save over £80 a year.

We want to make your Virgin Media experience the best it can be.
We're committed to bringing you great value technology, so we're always adding to the things you already get as standard. We've just introduced our exclusive, free SmartCall app. It helps you save money by letting you use the minutes included in your home phone talk plan on your smartphone, when connected to WiFi – at home, out and about or even abroad.

Find out more

Even faster broadband speeds coming your way.
We're dedicated to keeping our fibre optic network supercharged, and that's why we'll be increasing our broadband speeds again in the future. Our customers have always enjoyed the fastest widely available broadband in the UK, and this is our way of making sure you'll continue to have all the power you need to stay one step ahead. To find out more, click here.

And don't forget all the great things that come as standard for no extra cost:
• Superfast fibre optic broadband – we have the UK's fastest widely available broadband¹, as rated by Ofcom for the fifth year running
• Unlimited downloads² – no extra charge, no matter how much you download
• Service, repairs and technical support at no extra cost while you're with us – Sky has a £65 call-out charge once you're out of warranty
• Inclusive calls to 0870 numbers and Virgin Mobile phones – plus we're the only provider to give you calls to Directory Enquiries on 118 180 at no extra cost, whereas four one-minute calls to 118 118 would cost you £14.32

Find out more

Kind regards,

Mark Davidson
Executive Director, Customer Care