Virgin broadband increase again so fed up

[catskittens]

hi all,im so fed up with fixed Virgin broadband (1yr to go) for £33 a month just broadband and said could not go up in that time ,no they said but it seems yes it could as just got a email saying it's going up £7 a month so £40 a month,my fault i should of checked for myself i know

That's ridiculous i have been with them years as we are heavy users and never have a problem with it and every year i phone up and get a deal on it,i think this one im on i had it cheap for 6 mths then the £33 pound contract for 18mths

so regardless of provider is your just broadband going up at such a large rate?

also my 02 is going up by 20% a month good job my dd is for £14 those with high amounts will really feel it

seems like there are still going to be increases on lots of things it seem,all seems to be about April so more belt tightening it seems

Yes, all the broadband and mobile providers have clauses which say they can do an inflation-linked increase once a year, even if you are in contract.

When they introduced it, inflation was about 3%. Very prescient of them! Ofcom is looking into it now, but I don't know if their powers extend to being able to stop them doing it. Although consumer contracts have to be fair, the rules don't stop price increases as long as you can cancel easily.

Phoned BT yesterday to go on to fibre. We are mid contract with the Halo 3 + phone package which is really expensive (£66) and pretty shit. We had max speed of 49mbps and supposed to be on EE continual connectivity but it's done nothing but cut out since we had it.
Anyway we can have fibre so we can get 500 mbps (425 guaranteed) for the same price and because we have renewed now, it won't be subject to the price increase on 31 March. - it would have gone up by £8.
So anyone else on BT get upgraded to fibre now if you can to avoid the price hike.

I used to be with Plusnet, but I had problems with the crappy Hub One router they provide. It kept cutting out at around 4pm most days and I had to faff around trying to get back online. I also couldn’t link appliances that needed 5GHz WiFi band (E.g. robot vac and air purifier apps). It was a common problem with Plusnet at the time, which was about 18 months ago. Not sure if they now offer better routers.

when i phoned also got the automated offerring half £3,50 of but decided to speak to someone took 2 mins and got the £7 off so was worth talking to them

Firstly, log on to your account and read what's there. I absolutely hate dealing with phone and bb people, so steel yourself with a glass of wine like I do if you feel the same.

You should find all the info about the increases. I'm with VM and my message said I could change my service or leave (before whatever date) without penalty. That bit is important and I suspect it's because the increase is higher than it's 'allowed' to be, so they have to let you bail out.

Anyway, when I phoned said 'no way am I paying an extra £9 pm' the agent immediately applied a £9 'discount' so I'll be paying the same still.

I'll probably leave the bastards at the end of the contract though. I hate all of them 😒

Isn't it odd, @lieselotte, that your initial offer was 50% of what you actually got and mine was too.

After I'd done all the security stuff, so they knew exactly who I was and what I was paying, and I was still on the automated system, I was offered a £4.50 reduction. I ignored it, spoke to a human and got offered £9. Which was, entirely coincidentally I am sure, exactly the amount they had wanted to increase my bill by.

Virgin Media tried to put mine up £15 a month, when I phoned, the automated line automatically offered to reduce by £7.50, I wasn't happy with this so phoned the retention team, told them I couldn't afford it, and I would be leaving and they told me there would be no increase if I stayed with them, so my bill remains the same.

I called and got same price too. Worth the hassle to get through. They don't make it easy.

I have Virgin for broadband, home phone and a basic tv package, currently costing £63 a month, due to go up to £72 from April.

I phoned them yesterday, choosing the auto option for cancelling the service and was amazed at getting through to someone straight away. I was really polite and cheerful to the guy for the the whole conversation as I know that it is not their fault that my bill is going up.

I told him that I was unhappy with the price increase and was considering dropping the tv option as I only use the box for recording programmes, tending to watch just BBC, ITV, CH4 or Ch5. I said I thought it was unfair that new customer get a better deal than existing ones, only £53 after an initial special offer for six months. So off he went to see if he could get me a better deal and after a bit of haggling when I rejected his first couple of offers, we struck a deal.

I am now getting an improved tv package ( not that I want particularly want it but it comes as standard for new customers), broadband and phone for £55 a month, that’s £8 less than I currently pay and £18 less than the April price. I’m happy with that! I am now on a new contract for 18 months with fees to leave but the price is fixed. I am limited in broadband providers as I can’t have a satellite dish on my low lying bungalow and lots of people locally seem to have issues with BT and Talk Talk so really wanted to stick with Virgin.

The call ended with the guy thanking me for being so pleasant and he’s sending me a gift in recognition, apparently he’s a team leader and has a small budget to spend on gifts to thank people. I’m to expect a delivery of flowers later this week!

If ever a broadband provider cottoned on to the fact that if they offered a good service at a reasonable price and didn't make their users waste their valuable time to haggle the cost down they would have a customer for life wouldn't it be amazing?

I've just received a letter from Virgin saying my broadband will be going up from £54.00 a month to £61.00 in May this year. Broadband only ☹️

I went through the annoying disconnect system and eventually ended up staying but cutting down to just broadband without virgin tv and landline both of which we barely used. In that was got down from what would have been £84pm in April to £33pm which gives us plenty of saving to spend on buying content from others. Plus hopefully fewer marketing calls which was all the landline was ever used for. I could have got a bit of a cheaper price with vodafone but I was a bit worried about loss of service during the switch, which would be a problem with two of us working from home.