WHY DOES VIRGIN MEDIA CONTINE TO FLEECE LOYAL CUSTOMERS

Virgin continues in the way you have described because many people choose not switch, either through inertia or the fact that VM may be their only high speed provider or the fact that trying to escape VM can be such a miserable and difficult experience.

You are doing the correct thing by leaving. If more people did that, VM may adopt a different approach to renewals.

Because they can without breaking any regulations, and continue to profit over consumers who'd rather not change supplier.

Can you imagine owning a business where you can entice new customers into a service at a cheap rate, initially, then charge whatever you want after the initial contract is over and make it virtually impossible to speak to someone to cancel?

VM must have been devastated when OTS was introduced.

Don't forget you also have a monopoly in certain areas as there are no other providers that can offer the same service, with the only other option being no longer fit for the modern consumer.

Fortunately Openreach are working at pace to prevent this monopoly, but for some that's still several years away.

Good move and a good bargain. There is tremendous inertia in the UK with millions sticking with the safety and simplicity of sticking with single big brand providers (BT for the phone line, Barclays for the current account, British Gas for the gas, etc, etc) even though they are all worse in pretty much every way than their competitors. As Carl points out VM will have been mortified by the advent of One Touch Switching.