Virginmedia!!

[Upsidedownfrown]

AIBU to ask virginmedia to pay for this?

Moved into my house a year ago, took virgin media with me, easy self installation as everything already in place from previous occupants. Price keeps going up and I don't use half the channels so was going to change broadband provider and just have Freeview and Netflix. Would be happy to stay with virgin if they would just lower the price a bit but they won't and so changing could save me £30 a month min.

Have just discovered though that whenever virgin was originally installed in this house, they put their phone cable in through the bt openreach master socket. The phone line outside that comes down from the overhead phone cables has also been cut, I assume to make space for virgins line.

So they've hijacked my bt master socket!!! A few providers I was looking into quoted no install fees unless a new phone line was needed but as bt and virgin are completely separate cabling, that shouldn't be needed as virgin would have no reason to be fiddling about with by sockets.

But it is needed. Because virginmedia stuck their phone cables in my bt openreach socket rather than spending 10mins installing a new socket of their own on the wall.

Is there any way I can get virgin to pay the install fees for new provider? Surely they're not allowed to hijack bt sockets as it's not their property! Feeling really annoyed that something that should be relatively cheap and straightforward is probably going to turn into a complete farce.

Going to bed soon and I bet I have dreams about arguing with virgin.

Have you called them? We got £40 a month off ours in a 5 minute call,

Yeah, got a woman who could barely understand what changes I wanted to make to my package, she came out with a price more expensive than what I pay now, asked to be put through to retention team, waited over 30mins listening to crappy music, the line picked up and I got hung up on. I don't think they like me

I’d email the ceo.

Probably the worst customer service I have ever encountered was with VM, I wouldn't touch them with a barge pole now, no matter how cheap it was.

I had a few small issues and just could not get them resolved, they either didn’t understand what the problem was, directed me to the wrong team, cut me off and failed to call me back multiple times after promising. They are just awful.

What you need to do is just ask to be put straight through to cancellations, when they ask why, outright tell them it's too expensive and you've worked out you're better off with other subscriptions, ....give them your account number let them look at what your paying, they will almost certainly lower the price for you

@TiredOldTable

£40 a month off? That's more than we pay for plusnet, for high speed broadband and landline with an 'unlimited call' plan on it!!!

Not much help @Upsidedownfrown but I would not touch virgin media with a barge pole. They are utterly shite. Had them for about 10 years, and they were OK to start with (took over Telewest I think,) but for the last 3-4 years they were awful, and they got expensive too.

Sacked them off around 7 years ago and got plusnet. Never looked back; they're brilliant.

Don't have sky tv - don't need it. We have freesat, amazon, and netflix, and that is all the tv we need.

They're awful aren't they? Tbf my actual service has been fine! Broadband reliable, good speeds, all good! But they won't downgrade my package to a reasonable price. I've always been able to haggle them down before but they won't budge this time round. My brother left them a couple of months ago as they wouldn't budge with him either. Apparently the cancellation team said to him if you're just saying you'll cancel to get a better deal, that won't work as we don't do call backs with better deals anymore. Once you leave that's it!!

I asked them how much I'd be for just 100mb broadband and their lowest phone line and they quoted 47 quid!! Bloody ridiculous. And now it's gonna be a 'mare to get someone else connected ffs

We have this issue.
When we moved here, BT said there was no line to the house. It is a very old house, and BT (well, 'The Post Office' as they used to be) used to be the only providers, so I struggle to see how that was the case - I can see the line coming to our roof from the telegraph pole.....

Telewest were fine, and then Virgin were from when they took over, but the last 3 years or so both the service (broadband / TV) and especially the customer service has really gone downhill.

Like you say though, it is the hassle and expense of sorting out who else can actually connect.

Not helpful to your question but yes we've had a nightmare with them too (twice). Wouldn't touch them with a bargepole.

We responded to a letter saying they would install VM into our house. Long story but absolute nightmare resulting in them admitting there were actually no cables in our street after they had arranged for our BT to be cut off. Two weeks with no internet. Dreadful company.

I've made progress! Managed to get through to a lovely lady in Scottish call centre. I explained that I wanted to leave but due to their lazy ass installation it was going to be expensive to fix a new broadband connection. She was really baffled by what they've done and said she could arrange an engineer to put things right so we could leave or she could have a look at our package.

Chose the latter and we now have a hefty discount and a small refund coming.

We'll battle the cabling issue in another 12 months when they stick the price up again.

You're not going to get any joy on the cabling issue because it will have been done with the consent of the owner at the time. In fact they may have requested the engineer do that to save them having two sockets. It's annoying but one of those things when you move into a house, you never quite know what the previous owner has done.

And a VM engineer wouldn't be able to rewire the socket back up to BT. I'm ex VM tech support (before it all got outsourced!) and there's no way an engineer would be permitted to do that, they'd be on a disciplinary if they did.

Glad you got a better deal though. The whole disconnections thing is far harder than it needs to be, but worthwhile if it saves you money in the long run.