Why do virgin send out letters to customers advising of the latest increase in price, don't virgin believe in emails, you are an ISP what does it cost to post letters to every customer, which we have to pay for, the letter isn't even personalised it gives an example of a bill and the increase
What a load of C#@P
Come on virgin get your act together stop wasting our money
Have you turned off receiving communication from VM in the marketing preferences section in /my-virgin-media
Do VM have an up to date contact email address for you? A lot of people don't update contact email addresses with many firms, thus they don't receive notifications.
If you sign into /my-virgin-media you should be able to see your personalised price increase as per screenshots below.
I got an email, a notification in my.virgin media account, and a physical letter.
I can provide a bit of insight, here:
[TL;DR] for the short version.
[Waffle: some of this could be wrong!]
Having previously worked in a mailing room, its actually cheaper than you think. A bog standard A4 80gsm box of paper is about £15. Preprinted costs a bit more. Colour toner is around £150 a tube. An addressed envelope (C5+) (A4 single fold) costs about 10p. 3rd party double sided managed printers and paper folders are where the real costs are, depending on what you want to send. If you're only sending a double sided single sheet, cheaper C5 narrower envelopes (227mm) can be used. 2 sheets of A4 80gsm paper weighs 10g which was under the 60g so that went Royal Mail Cleanmail 1st/2nd class.
At the time they were using the narrow envelopes also (80gsm) which weighed 5g. the bigger envelopes were around 7g (237mm) since multiple sheets weigh more, the costs increase. I'm not sure about Royal Mail's pricing right now, but there is a bulk discount on 1st/2nd class. 3rd party mailers (Whistl etc) can cost less, but they outsource delivery to Royal Mail (why you get "Delivered by Royal Mail" on some envelopes) which takes longer, but can work out cheaper, the problem being undelivered mail takes longer to be returned (could be considered RM 3rd class). Changes in RM's envelope design was also a pain (as were misprints, an address on the back of the envelope has to be provided, by law), leading to the destruction of perfectly usable envelopes (the older versions).
VM uses standard A4 and doesn't really send much out, as the legal stuff and PDF's are on here. Makes it easier to handle the paper, which is what it's all about. Thinner paper was available at the time, (65gsm but that would need to have been imported from India) and wouldn't have been cost effective.
[TL;DR] it's a huge mailmerge; then dump the printed letters into the folding machine. Little squares line it up, along with how many pages in the letter. Press the start button, away it goes. Costs vary. We pay the £1.75 for paper bills.
[edit] I forgot the 'leccy bill as well.
Interesting reply, but an email cost nothing Zero, Zilch,Nothing........
Yes, the cost of sending an email is negligible; but there are other costs and other factors to consider. Supposing the email server goes down or your computer does. You can't send or receive messages. I have real time/world example which occurred over the weekend. I had to call an emergency plumber out the other day, and I asked for a paper receipt. The email still hasn't arrived. No paper receipt, no record of the transaction. VM cover themselves as per contract (i.e. you've already paid for it) on informing you of changes. Instead of relying on what Martin Lewis says on TV that VM prices are going up 8.8%, punters have a bit of paper telling them so.
Section T of the current TOS states: https://prod.ctassets.virginmedia.com/uploads/Terms_and_Conditions_TV_Fibre_Phone_from_4_February_2024_35cc93ecec.pdf
T. Notices
1. Other than where we inform you via our website or via bill communication (e.g.
paragraph N10(2), any other notices notices we give to you must be in
writing and be delivered by hand, post or sent electronically (e.g. email,
electronic message, SMS or via My Virgin Media). It is your responsibility
to ensure that the contact details you supply to us are kept accurate and
up to date.
2. Any notices that you give to us should be given in line with the directions
set out on the My Virgin Media area of the Virgin Media website or in
your welcome pack or in the event that you are notified of a right to
cancel this Agreement in accordance with the instructions set out in our
notification of your right to cancel).
3. Where we send you a notification, or vice versa, the notice period will
start from the day on which the notice is delivered if it is delivered by
hand, 2 working days (i.e. excluding Saturdays, Sundays and public
holidays) after the date it was posted if sent by ordinary post, or or from the
date of successful transmission if it is sent electronically.
Sending the entire customer base emails or post is a huge undertaking, which is why it is done in batches. Section T also states that VM realise that emails may fail, so it sends letters out too. This is known in computing as belt and braces. If one method fails, the other acts as a backup. The third method, (by hand) is something I'd be curious to see being done.
I doubt VM is doing this in-house. They have 6 million customers as far as I'm aware. They are probably paying a third party extortionate amounts to have these pointless letters sent out, so it's costing them more than cost price of some paper and postage.
It's cost price + huge profit margin for the outsourcing company.
VM is a very bizarre company. They are spending money sending these pointless letters out. They are the only company I've recieved these notice from. All other companies have simply sent me a 1 penny text message. I find it bizarre that they don't re-allocate these funds to helping improve their customer service (for which they have recently won an award from Ofcom for worst customer service ever by a mammoth margin).
It's just bizarre, VM has announced 2G symmetric speeds recently, and people are reporting that customer services have absolutely no idea about the packages 😄
Ref: t's just bizarre, VM has announced 2G symmetric speeds recently, and people are reporting that customer services have absolutely no idea about the packages
Did read somewhere slower speed could also have Symetric speeds at a cost of £10 a month.
Just re-negotiated a new contract, but still got the price increase letter which no longer applies to new contracts.
Yep waste of Paper ink & postage.
There's also an element of damned if they do, damned if they don't.
I've heard many tales of customers denying receiving "contract change" type emails & SMS with many other telcos - at least all the bases are being covered here. "Have you checked your spam bucket" issues are eliminated at a stroke.
I would concur with electronic notifications out of preference, but can see both sides of the argument.
