Forum Discussion

craigstokes1981's avatar
craigstokes1981
Tuning in
21 days ago

Moving house

Hi,

just looking for some help / advice.

I have a VM account (phone and broadband) and have had for probably 20 years. I no longer live at the property, but it was my parents property and my Mum still owns the property.

However, my Dad passed away last year and Mum has moved in with me at my address. Therefore the address where I have the VM account is currently vacant.

I did want to retain broadband and phone at the house for the time being, the main reason being we need to retain the Virgin and NTL e-mail accounts and these would be lost if we cancel.

However, i have now reached the end of my contract, and my monthly cost has gone up to £55 pm for M50 and weekend chatter, which is frankly ridiculous.

They have offered me the opportunity to re-contract for 18months @ £35.50 pm - still ridiculous, given the property is vacant and a new customer could get M125 plus weekend chatter for £29.99 pm.

What on earth happened to customer loyalty. 

In the circumstances, with my Dad passing away and Mum moving out (whether that be temporary or permanent) they have given no flexibility or compassion. Mum will likely sell the property within the next 6-9 months, so an 18 month contract really doesn’t work for us.

Does anyone suggest a route I could take without having to cancel and without having to pay over £55 per month (out of contract) or £35.50 (with an 18 month contract)

I just feel my hands are tied as I have to retain those e-mail addresses for the time being?

Thanks

Craig

 

  • Molly_T's avatar
    Molly_T
    Forum Team
    20 days ago

    Hi Craig 👋

    Thanks for getting in touch to ask for some advice about this. 

    We do offer some no contract deals - they are for broadband only. You can find information about these here 👉 https://www.virginmedia.com/broadband/rolling-contract along with some FAQ's at the bottom of the page. This may be an option for you! If you want to speak to the team about this as an option for you, there's a 'Message us' / Chat bar on the right-hand side of that page. Alternatively, you can give the team a call on 📞0345 454 1111 or 150 from a VM landline. 
    If you don't want to enter a new 18 month fixed term and avoid any Early Disconnection Fees, you are best off not agreeing a new fixed contract - but this does mean that we wouldn't be able to apply any fixed term discounts to lower the total cost of your service. As a result you would stay at your out of contract price (the £55 a month you've advised.)

    You can find a bit more information about EDF's here 👉 virg.in/EDF 
    Hope this helps! Let us know if you have any further questions or concerns. 🌞

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    20 days ago

    Bit hard to follow all the requirements here but, if the main driver is to keep some VM email addresses running for a few extra months, then your best bet would be to move the VM email addresses to a third party provider ASAP and pay the out-of-contract price for a short time while doing that. Then close down the account.

    It is regularly speculated on here that the is no long-term future for VM email.

    • newapollo's avatar
      newapollo
      Very Insightful Person
      20 days ago

      Hi Craig,

      As per your original post, since you are out of contract I would suggest cancelling the account by giving 30 days notice. The VM email addresses remain active for 90 days which should give you ample time to transfer all the VM emails to another third party email provider, and updating / informing all contacts of the new email address. 

      If you need to save any emails, you can forward these from your Virgin Media mailbox to your new email address or client such as outlook or thunderbird, or save the emails and attachments to your desktop or a hard drive. 

  • goslow's avatar
    goslow
    Alessandro Volta
    20 days ago

    Giving 30 days notice, and dealing with the email address issues in the 30+90 day period, does have the advantage to save some money.

    If anything goes wrong with the account closure or the email mailboxes during the transfer period, I am guessing that VM will offer little/no useful help to a customer who has cancelled or is in the process of cancelling but VM may, perhaps, be slightly more useful if the customer is still paying.

    Depending on the importance/value of the mailboxes, it may be worth moving them while still having the right to expect some support from VM as a paying customer.

    Something for the OP to weigh up when deciding what to do next.