Forum Discussion

martins92's avatar
martins92
Tuning in
5 months ago

Virgin media 1gig deal - legit or scam?

Our 1gig broadband promo offer has come to an end and going up from £26 to £75.

I spoke to virgin and the best they were able to offer was £46/month. I told them to terminate the service.

I searched virgin media deals on Facebook and came across a post of a private individual advertising VM broadband packages.

I reached out and the deal is £36.99 + extra £90 credit for the same 1gig broadband-only package, 18 month contract.

It would have to be set up as a new customer which shouldn’t be a problem as I can just put it on my partner’s name.

The person claims they work for Virgin Media. To verify this, I asked him to send me a written confirmation of this offer via email, from his VM domain. I figured if it’s a scammer, they would make some excuse as to why they cannot do this.

But within minutes I received the email exactly as requested. The email outlined all the specifics of the deal, the name matches that on his Facebook account and the email address it came from is <hisname>@virginmediao2.co.uk. Screenshot of the email below.

The email signature is his name, position (Account Field Executive) and mobile number.

He said the contract is with Virgin Media and everything goes through them including direct debit etc.

So I am wondering..

Can this be legit or does it seem too good to be true? What other checks can I carry out to confirm it’s authentic? Are there ways to spoof a domain? If it’s a scam, how does it work?

Would appreciate any relevant insights on this 🙂 many thanks in advance!

 

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  • martins92's avatar
    martins92
    Tuning in
    5 months ago

    Update:

    After doing some more research, it turns out some domains can be spoofed if certain security features are not put in place by the domain owner. I found this website (https://smartfense.com/en/resources/tools/spoof-check/) which checks whether a particular domain is 'spoofable'. 

    When I search the 'virginmediao2.co.uk' domain, the result is "the domain is protected and CANNOT be used maliciously by cyber criminals"

    • Ashleigh_C's avatar
      Ashleigh_C
      Forum Team
      5 months ago

      Hi there martins92 

      Thank you so much for your post and welcome to the community forums, it's great to have you here. 

      Thank you for bringing this to our attention and I would be happy to check on our side and make sure this is a safe and legitimate email via a private message. 

      I will pop you a PM across now, please keep an eye out for the envelope at the top of your screen alerting you to a new message.
       

      • martins92's avatar
        martins92
        Tuning in
        5 months ago

         

        Ashleigh_C wrote:

        Hi there martins92 

        Thank you so much for your post and welcome to the community forums, it's great to have you here. 

        Thank you for bringing this to our attention and I would be happy to check on our side and make sure this is a safe and legitimate email via a private message. 

        I will pop you a PM across now, please keep an eye out for the envelope at the top of your screen alerting you to a new message.
         

        I appreciate it but I’d rather not dox the person in case they’re not supposed to do that, I wouldn’t want to put their job at risk or anything.

        I’m fairly confident with the domain of his email address, I’ve also looked at the email header and it seems to check out.

        Thanks 🙂

    • Cardiffman282's avatar
      Cardiffman282
      Trouble shooter
      5 months ago

      Do please keep the thread updated. I reckon it's genuine but see what the VM forum team say before doing anything. It's probably just an over zealous field sales rep not doing proper due diligence on an existing customer. Was there any discussion with the rep about sticking the deal in your partner's name? Lastly I would say the original/legit offer of £46 for Gig1 is pretty good. Also, now that you have cancelled you should get some legit outbound retention offers coming your way without having to bother Zuckerberg. 

      • martins92's avatar
        martins92
        Tuning in
        5 months ago

        Thanks for the reply!

         

        Cardiffman282 wrote:

        now that you have cancelled you should get some legit outbound retention offers coming your way without having to bother Zuckerberg. 

        Yes that’s what I had imagined as that’s exactly how it played out last time around (18 months ago). Retention team wouldn’t budge so I cancelled. Then, a week before the line was due to disconnect, I got a call from a “regional manager” or something, who said they “wouldn’t want to lose a customer of 20 years” and gave us a way better deal than we had hoped for (£26 for 1gig). He also said to keep his mobile number and call him once we’re due to renew and he promised we can have this price indefinitely on account of being one of their oldest customers. When I tried calling him, the number no longer exists so my guess is he got sacked for giving out deals that were far too cheap haha

        But this time around, no one called. When I called them, they did not seem interested at all in keeping me as a customer. They wouldn’t even match the price that they offer to new customers (£43) which I probably would’ve accepted. It’s been 2 days now since the line was disconnected and no contact from anyone.

        I’ll probably wait another couple of days and if no one calls, I’ll give this guy a try. With the £90 credit he’s offering, the effective monthly price comes to £31.99 which is not bad at all.

         

        Was there any discussion with the rep about sticking the deal in your partner's name? 

        I did ask him if he could apply this deal to the existing account but he said no, it would have to be a different account holder but same address is fine.

         

         

        Do please keep the thread updated.

        Will do 🙂