Are Virgin media allowed to do this?

[tigercametotea]

I noticed an increase in about £8 since June - my Virgin media tv, broadband and line rental contract started last July roundabouts. When I called up to ask, they told me there was a price hike. I said I was not notified of it and if I was, I would not be happy with it and would have cancelled my account with them. They said I'm sorry, we have the right to increase prices as we deem reasonable. I said I wanted to cancel my account then. And they said I would have to pay a £16 roundabouts termination charge if I do it now as the T & Cs state I have to be on the contract for a minimum of 18 mths in order to cancel. They were totally inflexible on this, and very take it or leave it.

Surely they can't insist on the cancellation charge though? They just decided to do a price hike in the 18 mths of my contract term and now they want to charge me for cancelling because of it?
Hmmm.... am not sure what I should do now at the mo'. They told me if I wait till December to cancel I won't pay termination charges.

They can if it's in the contract (on both counts), read your original contract and did you get any emails or letters since you got it stating changes where no contact = silent consent?

If you wait until December, you'll have paid an extra 3/4 months of the increase = £32 extra.

If you cancel now, you pay £16.

I suspect if you phone up and point out what Lougle said then you might find they'll cut you a deal.

sunwukong, I am not sure about that. I don't remember seeing anything telling me there was going to be an increase in my bill. Though I do remember seeing letters saying they are upgrading their cables so that our broadband speeds are increased. I will have to try and find their T&Cs somewhere now...

I intend to just call them up and cancel everything with them. Looking for new ISPs and phone contract provider now. I hardly watch the special channels on Cable anyway so I don't mind if it's just Freeview.

Oh yes saw this on the T&Cs so I guess I am stuffed and will have to pay the cancellation charge if I want to disconnect now.

Paragraph J3
If we and/or Virgin Media Payments:
a) increase our charges under this agreement
b) make significant changes to the services so the services you are entitled to receive in return for the charges you pay are significantly altered or reduced; or
c) make significant changes to the terms and conditions of this agreement (including the other legal stuff),

you may cancel those services affected without penalty by giving us and/or Virgin Media Payments (as applicable) at least 30 days' notice. Such notice must be given within 30 days of the increase in charges or changes to the services or this agreement being notified to you. If you were not notified of these changes in advance, you must give notice of cancellation of the services affected to us and/or Virgin Media Payments (as applicable) within 30 days of receipt of your first bill following such increase in charges. If you do not give notice of cancellation within the specified period, you will be deemed to have accepted the increase in charges and/or the changes to the services and this agreement. You will no longer be able to cancel your services under this paragraph. If you cancel any services in these circumstances, the increased charges will not apply to those services during the 30-day notice period and paragraph J2 will not apply if you cancel before the end of the minimum period.

Had a smaller, but equally unwanted, monthly price increase (Three mobile, around 50p), which was also queried (saw a piece online or in a newspaper by someone) and response from journalist was that yes, they do havee the right, same as Sky (my contract started 01/02/12).

You see they all ways cover their arses in the contracts, all ways, contracts are never in favour of the user.

It's totally crap.

As written earlier "an extra 3/4 months of the increase = £32 extra." if you cancel at end of 18 months.

If you are only charged 16 quid to cancel now, I'd say that's worth it, as long as you can find an alternative deal.

After all, it's not just the 32 pounds but the rest of the VM charges too.

Get yourself a Manhattan HD FreeSat box from Tesco for 90 quid and they install a sat dish too, for free (or pay 40 quid for a Manhattan SD box at Asda if you already have a dish)

Then a phone and broadband deal - choice depends on how much you use your phone, but I'd check the Which? customer satisfaction report, and ThinkBroadband.com and ISPreview.co.uk

Personally I'd suggest steering clear of TalkTalk and Sky (though as a new customer Sky might offer a good deal - price rise in September though and no guarantee they won't change again in March/ April as they use similar small print, and held prices for 2 years until now.

I'm with Virgin and was fully aware there was going to be a price increase.

I'm pretty sure it was a letter rather than email.

I got a letter from Virgin too... I will MOST definitely be staying with them for broadband - our exchange has not been upgraded - so multi megabit Virgin fibre or 70k (measured) landline (by ANYONE else) as we are at the end of a long exchange line..... I will be staying! TV we go for sky, but broadband have no real choice...

As you have seen they cover themselves in the small print but there is a growing movement to put pressure on them to be more upfront about it.

I foolishly thought that because I was was signing up to a contract the cost would be fixed and budgeted accordingly, I've learnt an expensive lesson and will be much more wary in future.

Yup I signed up thinking the cost will be fixed for the duration of the min. contract term at least. But no, learnt a big lesson there. And no letter I've received from them ever told me the exact amount of increase. So I noticed an increase of £8 in June but thought it could be just we went overboard a bit with phonecalls abroad perhaps... then when I noticed the same increase the month after that, then I suspected that was actually a bundle price increase.

I will need enough broadband data allowance to cover for about 2 hours a day each day of iplayer/youtube streaming as we never watch any television but watch streaming programmes online almost daily. I am thinking of going with O2 because I have a mobile plan with them. But today no network connection again so not sure why but it's dead annoying. It happened a few months ago as well and now they are giving me 10%.discount for the service disruption... but still...

I am considering BT because they actually seem cheaper than our VM deal at the mo which the cs rep on the phone told me if I only had broadband alone (which is the lowest package) it would still cost me £21 roundabouts a month plus I have to pay cancellation charges for the phoneline .. and he said that now we are paying just over £28 a month which is actually us getting the cable tv for free so we are only being charged for broadband (smallest package) and phoneline (most basic package) really.

Really?

I went to BT and saw that we could get 40MB data allowance and a phoneline for £18 a month. I am thinking 40mb should be enough for streaming 2 hrs a day right?? If not then even the higher BT package of unlimited data usage and basic phoneline will still cost less than what we pay now for VM... because it's £26 a month. And they are now offering free connection so I won't have to pay the £130 connection fee.

Only thing is we used to have BT for phoneline and internet 10 years ago and found them expensive. So some bad memories... not sure if we want to get hooked in with BT again but it seems like they are the only other ADSL provider for our area.

Oh yes, and a VM rep told me that I can only get cancellation charges waived if I can somehow prove that VM has "significantly changed" my services to the point where services I am entitled to receive in return for what II am paying are "significantly altered". (See para j3) Well I can't make a case about that can I?

Depends what they will charge you for cancellation - 16 quid is far from unreasonable (in the past, BT would want the line rental in full for remaining months, but OFCOM ruled that firms could only charge a modest amount per month [since the usage from customer was nil, bulk of cost also becomes nil]).

Getting charges waived seems like a waste of your time, if you are ready for change but if VM is charging only for phone line and broadband, then that's what you need to look for - would you use FreeSat or do you have Freeview ready to use?

Okay I just used the samknows broadband checker and got the following results for my area :

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
BT Wholesale WBC (21CN)
BT FTTC
AOL LLU
O2 / Be LLU
Bulldog LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU
Tiscali LLU
Tiscali TV (via Tiscali LLU)
Virgin Media (Cable)

Does "LLU" mean it's as fast as ADSL?? If so then I actually have a lot more providers to choose from than just VM and BT?

LLU means 'local loop unbundled' which generally means the company has their own kit at the BT exchange and most if not all operate with ADSL 2+ (up to 24 Mbps). BT didn't install ADSL 2+ kit in all exchanges (left the rural exchanges until last) but OFCOM imposed some penalty for not upgrading and BT got their finger out after that.

By the look of things you have far more choice than most (if BT FTTC is ACTIVE it allows 40 or 80 Mbps download speeds for those closest to the BT cabinets on the streets in your area). The rest are likely to give figures of 6, 12, 18 and up to 22/24 Mbps depending on your distance from the exchange.

But main consideration for a phone line package will be how much you spend on calls / use the phone for calls. The rest (broadband) may depend on your choice for phone line rental.

You cannot have a phone line for ADSL without getting voice service, sorry.

It is something which annoys many (and has done for 10+ years) but VM is the only firm which supplies broadband and phone calls optional (but then BB rental fee goes up to a very similar price anyway).

The Primus line rental is probably the lowest around, and given your choices, you might find PlusNet worth looking at (they could offer you 60 GB of data a month [unlimited from midnight to 08:00 so if you use iPlayer to download whole series it doesn't come out of your 60 GB - there's an option in the iPlayer desktop settings to tell it to download between 00:00 and 07:00] for 11.49/month plus some setup fee). NB They have a 6 months half price deal on at present but that would tie you into their line rental too. If you did stick with them for a year, you could then change the line rental to Primus for lower cost, and taking the 6 months half price line rental and broadband would save you on setup fees, where taking only the broadband from them would cost you a one-off fee...

You could do a spreadsheet to show the possible costs, or try a comparison site :)

Virgin are unlikely to offer you anything in terms of compromise. I had to cancel with them because they couldn't provide connection to my new house when I moved after telling me they could. I won't go through the whole thing, but basically I ended up with 5 weeks without TV, phone and Internet whilst I waited for them to work out they couldn't connect me and for me to arrange Sky instead and they threatened to charge me the line rental for the remainder of my contract (10 months) If I pursued them for any compensation for their incompetence, poor customer service, rude and threatening staff, useless engineers and general inability to understand where they can and cannot provide a service. I still get flyers through the post from now saying my property is "already connected". I will NEVER use Virgin again.

Whatever you do, don't change to Tiscali or talk talk

(Tiscali is part of TalkTalk, and TalkTalk took over AOL UK a while back, along with Pipex, Freedom2Surf and others!)

PPLC - we get flyers about "already connected" - I rang to ask for one of the deals but they leaflet the whole of the postcode area (in my case it is L20) because at least 70% of that postcode area does get service.

Blasted annoying, I know, when I might have wanted landline, broadband, TV and mobile from them, but then again, I do already have a few ways to connect to the internet and make calls so I will (hopefully) be able to use fibre in a few months, and anytime after that when VM glossy arrives it will go straight in the bin with no hesitation of what 'might have been' possible...

Speaking of contracts and TalkTalk, I have had them on the phone twice to.me this week, trying to get me to sign up for another contract, yet strangely unwilling to tell me how I might benefit from locking myself to them... Yes, twice: I think I was just distracted enough during the first call for them to think they might catch me (or someone else) off guard a second time!

If you are considering FTTC then consider plus.net as ISP. My phone/FTTC deal went down in price this month (19.99 + Line rental) and line speed increasing from 40 to est.70.