Virgin Media - what a bloody Palaver

[WhatABloodyPalaver]

Every 18 months I go through this painful phone call with Virgin to 'renegotiate' my contract to get a better price. 50 mins on the phone with customer service

Me: My price is £29 but going up to £41 as out of contract so can I take on another contract and get the cheaper price again

Agent - No you can't it will be £45 per month to keep the same broadband (M125 one). You still have a discount which is why it is only going up to £41 this month.

Me: Ok I don't want to pay £44 for broadband.

Agent: Well if you upgrade to the faster broadband the M250 it will be cheaper at £41

Me: So to take on a faster broadband package will be cheaper than keeping the slower package? Why?

Agent : I can't explain it but that is how it works. So £44 for the M125 slower broadband and £41 for the M250 faster broadband

(Actually I think the M250 would be a new product to me so I would be getting a discount on it....could be wrong though)

Me: Okay I don't want to pay forty something a month for broadband. I'm a one person household and the current broadband works fine.

Agent: Okay well if you take a phone line as well I can get the price down to £31 per month

Me: I don't want a house phone line - I won't use it. Why is that cheaper ?

Agent: I don't know it just is. And that is a phone line plus the upgraded M250 faster broadband.

Me: Completely bonkers. I won't use the phone line but okay if you want to pretend I will and it's cheaper lets do that. I understand I'm tied in for another 18 months

Agent - Okay great I'll send you out the adaptors for the phone line

Me - No I don't need them. I won't use them.

Agent - I have to send you them anyway or you can't get this contract. Delivery Tuesday 8am - 8pm

Me - seriously don't send them. I don't want to have to wait in to get adaptors that I won't be using anyway.

Agent - I have to. Oh and there is a £35 connection fee for the phone line

Me - what - no I'm not paying that.

Agent - Don't worry my manager is going to credit it off your account so you don't pay it

Me - exhausted been on phone for 50 mins (agent keeps putting me on hold for various things). Fine lets do that then.

Agent - Oh and your price will increase with inflation in April as usual

we say goodbye etc

What a Fucking Palaver.

Anyone else with virgin want to shout about it and get their virgin media rage out (the agent was perfectly nice so not his fault)

In 18 months I get to do it all again as when my discount ends the price goes from £31 per month to £62 for broadband and the phone line not used.

Please Virgin Media - can you just have a bloody price list and stick to it. I'll accept your inflation increases though they annoy me but please end this torture for your customers.

I feel your pain. We couldn't have Sky when we moved in 20 years ago because trees blocked satellite signal. Now you can go dish free but oh the upheaval of changing...

Yes. I despise them. I have to go through the renegotiation process soon. Sadly they are the only supplier near me. Their customer service is appalling.

I got our virgin media contract renewed and got the price down from £81 to £41. (broadband, phone & tv)

You just have to say you're cancelling, better deal with BT/Sky/whoever.

The agent will offer you a deal, just say no thanks. They will put you through to retentions team who save you a fortune. April increase are just a ROI increase.

Yep, I left them 2 years ago next week because they refused to let us go broadband only( we didn't want the tv package or bloody land line that they had insisted on years before) Evntually retentions offered us a better deal but by then I was so livid I cancelled...went with BT.
Now BT has gone up and up.... and I have to renegotiate all over again. GRRRRRR!

So if anyone is still following this.
I got my next bill through from virgin which showed that they were going to charge me an installation fee of £35 which the agent told me yesterday he would credit off the account.

Utterly raging I had to phone them again - after 20 minutes on hold to the cancelling a service line, I hung up and redialed and went with the add a service option and go through within a few minutes (strange that!)

The new agent said the installation fee was not just because of the phone line which I didn't want/need but also because of the upgrade to broadband which I didn't want/need. I told him to cancel the contract as within the 14 day cooling period. He tried to offer me a credit of £20 against the installation fee but I said no - I am not paying anything for a service I don't want or need.

So he cancelled it and then offered me an upgrade to an even faster broadband which would be only a £1 more than my new out of contract price for basic broadband. Again I repeated my current broadband was absolutely fine and I did not want an upgrade to an even higher level. He desperately tried to tell me all the benefits of extra routers to stop any blackspots. For about the millionth time I told him I lived alone, in a small house and my current broadband worked just fine.

In the end I said repeatedly no, just leave it on the current contract about to expire as I am now thinking about leaving virgin because this has been such a bloody nightmare (spent over 2 hours on the phone now between yesterday and today).

I wasn't joking with them - I was so angry I really was thinking I would leave. I didn't really want the hassle but it had become a point of principle.

I managed to log into my virgin media account (which I couldn't yesterday for some reason) and lo and behold - it says oh your contract is about to expire so here is your offer

Renew your current broadband with no changes at the same price. Tick here.

Tick, check, done!

WTF. Do NOT phone them when you want to renegotiate. Do it through your online account. I don't know if they put this offer in because I said I might leave and so they though okay we will offer her what she asked for yesterday or if that offer was in my online account all along. According to the agents on the phone though I could not renew my current broadband at the same price. Bloody liars.

If you do it the phone - they are clearly getting commission and so trying to flog you stuff. Do it through your online account. Sorry If I am stating the obvious but I thought I should spread the word.

I did some work for VM very briefly. They do this on purpose to make money. You should see what some people are getting charged out of contract! Like, hundreds and hundreds of pounds a month. It's sickening. I highly recommend you change to another provider.

I don't care about saying so after how badly they treated me. I could have sued them, it was that bad.

The staff I know who are still there are utterly miserable with this crap. They're literally not allowed to have a sensible/short/productive conversation with you.

I’m thinking of moving to Vodafone from Virgin / I may do the dance and try to get a cheaper offer but it’s frustrating. I moved from Virgin to Sky at one point and back again. Surely they’d do better to keep their existing customers happy?

I'm in the same boat but utterly sick of having to negotiate. I'm ready to leave. Contract ends at end of the month.

Does anyone know if I have to give my 30 days notice in writing first or email to let them know my intentions. I DO NOT want to phone/text them and get pulled into a discussion or have them offering discounts and another contract.

We have open reach in the area now so I want to move to someone new. There's also apparently the option to do one touch transfer of services to another provider and they will sort the cancellation side of things. But I'm not sure if I also have to do the 30 days notice when my contract is due to end, I'm confused. Can anyone clarify please?

Thanks

Didn't work for us. The customer service guy just said "that's a shame then, oh well goodbye"!