Virgin Media Cancellation regret

[Macaroni1924]

Sorry not sure where to post this. Virgin up next month, we pay a ridiculous amount for a whole lot of stuff we don’t use. Only thing we 100% need is the broadband as we stream Netflix/prime and I bring home work at night on laptop. Told them I wanted to save money, cut right back and was offered a £10 higher tariff. I explained again that we don’t use the mobile, landline, movies, sports etc and want to cut back and cut down costs so came back at £5 less. Back and forth for a bit, looked online at sky/bt great offers whilst waiting and much more reasonable. Very final offer I got was reduction of £40 with massively slower internet, change from top to bottom tier. I said no and cancelled. Then went to process a sky order and they don’t do fast broadband in my area nor do bt. Yes I should have confirmed this before hand, I’m an idiot. Didn’t realise you can’t just get sky anywhere, mad!
Wwyd? Figure my options are:
1- crawl back with tail between my legs and cancel the cancellation which really pisses me off. Not sure if you can actually do this?
2- go ahead cancel then rejoin but would be without for some time, not sure how long, differing views online.
3- go with a different internet eg sky essential and risk the fact that it’s just not going to be good enough for our needs.
I just feel it’s so wasteful to pay for things you don’t use it’s like buying food and binning it. Moneys going to be tight for everyone so it really grates me to pay them for services I don’t need. Any advice appreciated.

You only use it to stream Netflix and use your laptop?

I do all his on basic fibre.

Talk talk broadband is absolutely fine for what you need - £25.00.

Do you live alone? If not, can't you do number 2 straight away, but have your partner / housemate sign up instead?

Thanks so much for the replies, feeling really stupid and hasty now.
Yeah so at night I will mostly watch Netflix whilst working on my laptop. I have one child who plays Minecraft and watches YouTube on her iPad. We do connect our mobiles but we have unlimited internet on those so not something we need to do.
I will have a look at TalkTalk thanks.
Is basic fibre a virgin media one?
We just discussed this but as we are married would be same surname and address so not sure if that would mean it wouldn’t work 🤷🏻‍♀️

stand firm, they might come back with a better deal when your in the cancellation period

You really don't need a mega bucks internet package for about 6 devices and online streaming.

I stream the TV all evening from the ps4, we have one work laptop going on the day, a phone and a iPad oh and the Gameboy thing, Nintendo that's it.

I have a 5g wireless home hub that costs me £12 a month and I have unlimited data. Works fine.

We're in a slightly dodgy area for Internet..... Despite being in a town! I have just cancelled everything on virgin except the Internet and gone to sky for everything else (full package with sports.) sky includes Netflix and paramount. For the first month the virgin Internet is expensive BUT this is because we will be on a rolling contract, after a few weeks we'll be offered a new contract. At the current costs, without the discount on virgin) we're saving £60p/m

Thanks this is all good to know. The numbers mean nothing to me which then made me feel that was a major drop in what we were currently getting. This is the options on bt and sky can also get a now tv one. I’m now thinking @CaptainBarbosa i should check with my mobile provider too thank you.

Tbh I wouldn't go with those speeds. Those are pretty slow nowadays and if you get the lower end of the scale and have multiple people trying to do things, you might run into problems.

What speed did you have with Virgin?

Hold fast! We did this with virgin then when they got notice that we’d proper cancelled and moved to new provider they rang us and said they’d match it. We now get virgin tv and broadband for £30 . Cancelled new provider as it was within two week window.

Do you live rurally, OP? Wondering why your speeds are so low. I definitely wouldn't be paying £47 a month for that 4g/5g setup.

Personally I wouldn't go below 30mb/s speed nowadays (which isn't even that high now with the new superfast broadband packages) but we are quite heavy users.

Do nothing for a few days. Virgin will soon start with the begging you back.

We “leave” Sky all the time. Haven’t ever actually been disconnected. It’s worth risking it as we usually get huge discounts. I’m sure Virgin is the same.

On virgin you can just sign up as another adult at the same address, and get the install booked the same day as you disconnect, outage period is a matter of hours at most - as the install pack is now a home start thing where you just plug in. Then you can get the new customer deals and just order online.

You do need to say the original person has moved out though so can cite marital problems or something

@Hugasauras i thought they looked really low coz right now we are like originally we had the gig one not sure what speed and last time we renewed we went down to the M500 they offered us M100 this time which is around the same speeds as those other 2. The M500 was something like 516 for downloads.
@Aberration hope you are right!

We live in a medium sized town but moved here a few years ago from a city where you could chop and change providers without any issue. Who would have thought being 20 mins up the road from our old place could be so different!

I cancelled all mine and went with bt broadband. I can't remember the speed or anything but with one person wfh it had to be good. I think I pay £29.99 a month. Never had a problem with it, unlike virgin which was constantly buffering and throwing ds 19 out of work zoom meetings

Sorry just read you can't have been either

I've heard talk talk are really good

*bt

If you were on 500mbit fibre with virgin, you are going to notice severe degradation of performance on adsl or 4g/5g.

If noone else can provide fibre in your area I wouldn't consider leaving vm - but just cancel and sign up again for the new customer deal

It's all a complicated nightmare. I need to come back to this with coffee!

I don't know how it works but in my area, the only company that can provide me with fibre is virgin. I moved with Talktalk where I'd had basic fibre but got told they couldn't support it at my new address and downgrade me to 'super fast' broadband which was anything but. I had to go onto my mobile network to send pictures over WhatsApp, that's how bad it was.

I suffered for a year before I realised the box on the other side of the flag was virgin fibre and joined them. I'm at leave once again. But if their prices shoot up once the contract is over, I'll have no choice but to fork over

Tried Talk Talk and comes up with we can’t find what your looking for message and to call them so probably same issues as bt/sky.

I think I will wait a few days see if they call me and if not see if I can cancel the cancellation. I don’t think I have the balls to order with DH name and hope they don’t notice!

What normally happens is virgin ring you up and match the deal you've signed with.
Hugely frustrating they don't offer good deals when you threaten to leave so you actually have to sign-up to move away.

Those are ridiculously low speeds you've been quoted 😑 I'd be raging!

I'd have a look at uSwitch to compare what is available.

That’s the problem when they have the monopoly on an area! They don’t need to offer you a decent price as there is no competition. My parents are 5 mins away but in a newer area and they have sky and bt. They recently changed from sky broadband to bt when contract was up. We are obviously not going to get it anytime soon as that’s at least been a couple of years they have had it.