Evening and weekend calls

[Normie99]

We called Virgin Media on 14th January to set up to have free evenings & weekend calls. We were told it would take 24 hours to activate.

We have since accumulated charges of £20 for evening calls. One of these calls (28p) is to a mobile number and another (35p) is to an NG1 number but the remainder is all for qualifying calls.

We have also noiced that "evenings" now starts at 7pm. When we signed up, only 3 weeks ago, evenings started at 6pm. We have not been notified of that change of terms.

We've only been with Virgin for a month and the extortionate charges and shark practices have done nothing to make us feel welcome. We consider changing the period covered by evening calls without notification to be a breach of contract.

To show that Virgin Media really doesn't give a **bleep** about their customers, they have even gone so far as to charge £1.20 for the call which we made to Virgin Media to change the plan.Because the only published number for Virgin Media is an 0845 (NG1) number, to complain about the excessive charges and to complain about the breach of contract, it appears that the only option is to hand over yet more money and call their customer (dis)service line again.

If only their abilities to act on customer requests were 1% as good as their abilities to squeeze money out of their customers.

Sadly, the cable TV and internet has proved a significant improvement over what we had before. We are considering cancelling the whole lot after suffering their treatment on the phone service, though.

[slated]

dial 150 from your virgin landline to contact Virgin, it is free (I think?).

The 0845 number is there for when you call from other than a VM landline, although it does work from those also.

It would be better and not beyond the wit of VM to configure their systems so that their own 0845 number defaulted over to 150 when dialled from one of their own landlines, I would have thought.

The change to 7pm evenings does not start until April Fools day:

https://my.virginmedia.com/customer-news/articles/price-changes.html?buspart=DMail_3

Check what package you are on by logging into My Virgin Media - it sounds like you are on Free Weekend calls package by mistake?

[Normie99]

Excellent, slated, thanks for the information.

It's a shame that their own website says:

We’re sorry, but we’re unable to change your package online.

We’ll be happy to do it for you over the phone, and it’ll only take a few minutes.

Please call us on 0845 045 1310 to speak to someone who can help. (their emphasis)

It's strange how something as insignificant as a £1.20 charge for sitting on hold for over 10 minutes can make you (or me, at least) frustrated enough to consider blowing out the whole package that we've taken.

It's also a shame that Virgin (and they are not alone in this) don't realise this when they come up with their "clever" little plans for helping themselves to their customers wallets. I will never trust them again and will be moving as soon as an alternative ISP is available.

I'd rather be giving money to Sky than Virgin at the moment.

[slated]

that is a shocker! They should list the 150 number up front, with the 0845 as a secondary number only for those sans VM landline.

I also think it is madness that what started out in life as a cheap 'local rate' prefix has become one of the most expensive codes that most people ever phone. Perverting the course of justice!

[minksymoo]

We too are new customers, taking up our contract in December, with one of the main draws being that evening calls started at 6pm and not 7pm as our previous supplier.  Surely VM are in breach of contract in changing the contract we had originally agreed to (not so long ago)??

[nodrogd]

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Normie99 wrote:

Excellent, slated, thanks for the information.

It's a shame that their own website says:

We’re sorry, but we’re unable to change your package online.

We’ll be happy to do it for you over the phone, and it’ll only take a few minutes.

Please call us on 0845 045 1310 to speak to someone who can help. (their emphasis)

It's strange how something as insignificant as a £1.20 charge for sitting on hold for over 10 minutes can make you (or me, at least) frustrated enough to consider blowing out the whole package that we've taken.

It's also a shame that Virgin (and they are not alone in this) don't realise this when they come up with their "clever" little plans for helping themselves to their customers wallets. I will never trust them again and will be moving as soon as an alternative ISP is available.

I'd rather be giving money to Sky than Virgin at the moment.

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Your basic package details should have been on the page before the one you linked to.

Talk Weekends is the M package, Talk Evening & Weekends is L.