Virgin Media made me an offer I could barely refuse

[tigercametotea]

I have been paying nearly £50 roundabouts for TV (M+), phone (line rental + 200 TalkAnywhere minutes) and broadband (L) + Caller ID. We decided last month we would just get a freeview box and a sony media player that streams bbc iplayer etc. so we can do away with Virgin Media telly. Cancelled the telly on the phone last week and they said they will send someone to come pick up the set top box in August.

Today their customer retentions team called and made me an offer I found it difficult to refuse. £20 (well it was £20 quid and a few pence but I can't remember the exact figure) per month to keep everything we've been having with them including the telly, plus they will throw in extra by bumping us up onto the L phone package which includes free evening and weekend calls. In fact, £20 a month for all of this comes up even cheaper than if we just had phone and broadband (which was the original plan we wanted to go for) as that one would have came up to just over £24 a month.

So they are happy to take £20 for all of that per month now, yet they were quite happily taking nearly £50 off us every month for similar before! I feel like I should have cut the telly package off sooner..

Why are they so desperate for us to stay with the telly package though? To the point of giving it to us cheaper than if we'd gone without it?? Just wondering.

Interesting .

I am in the same situation as you and have definitely been thinking about giving up the tv package and just keeping the broadband/phone.
Virgin know that freeview will become more watchable when the analogue signal is switched off so want to keep all the viewers(and advertising revenue) for themselves.

I keep meaning to do an audit to make sure there isnt anything vital we will miss.I doubt it as DH watches anything with wheels/fish/police chases on and I will happily just do a catchup for interesting programmes.

Your DH sounds like mine dwpanxt. Anything with police, fishing, cars, sports etc.. he will watch! I don't have a lot of time for telly these days and when I do watch I find myself watching the normal channels, the same ones that are on Freeview, so I decided we won't have much to lose by switching to Freeview. I have to say though, we have come a long way since the days when we couldn't live without a full SKY TV package with movies and sports... that was many years ago when we had only 1 dc. Things have certainly moved on since then, and we are not so bothered about what we watch now..

After today's experience, I would recommend you try cancelling with Virgin and see if they won't make you a bargain you can't refuse!

Just ditched Virgin Media for the phone and broadband, and cut my monthly bill from £60 to £20. Will keep the telly for now at minimal cost until new areial for Freeview is installed.

As with Virgin most of us are on cable - the new company I'm with have a special offer for August only and installed a new phone line for just £24 (BT charges £130), the telephone line rental and broadband combined comes to £20 per month, and they have other servives which I'll take as it will save me more money in the long run.

Have a look at www.savemoremoney.org.uk and all the information is there. Their customer service from their London office is excellent and I did not know they come highly recommeded by Which? magazine until I looked into them.

Hope this helps all of you facing a similar dilema!