Virgin Media Community

[peele87]

Depending on your situation I thought I pass on how I got a discount.

I am currently paying £60 to Virgin Media for TV, Landline and Broadband.

Virgin wanted to increase my bill by £12 a month which is frankly insane.

After calling the 1st line retentions yesterday which frankly was a waste of time. The person I spoke to was reading off a script and despite the fact, I said it was too expensive a number of times and quoted prices by BT and Vodafone I was still asked are you sure you want to leave.

Anyway, I pulled the cancellation trigger and the process started rolling. Though a pain I was willing to jump to another provider.

This morning at 10 am I got a call from [removed] which is the 2nd line retentions number. Even before I could explain why I was leaving the person I spoke to said I assume you leaving because of the price increase and asked me how much others had quoted.

After a short chat about prices, they dropped the price without dropping a beat to £34 for 18 months.

As this makes my bill £414 cheaper over the life of the contract, saves me the hassle of a new installation and all other Broadband companies are going to have yearly price hikes.

So I guess if you want to do the dance or not it may be worth trying.

Hope this helps someone.

[MOD EDIT: Personal and private information has been removed from this post.]

[unisoft]

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@peele87 wrote:

Depending on your situation I thought I pass on how I got a discount.

I am currently paying £60 to Virgin Media for TV, Landline and Broadband.

Virgin wanted to increase my bill by £12 a month which is frankly insane.

After calling the 1st line retentions yesterday which frankly was a waste of time. The person I spoke to was reading off a script and despite the fact, I said it was too expensive a number of times and quoted prices by BT and Vodafone I was still asked are you sure you want to leave.

Anyway, I pulled the cancellation trigger and the process started rolling. Though a pain I was willing to jump to another provider.

This morning at 10 am I got a call from ************ which is the 2nd line retentions number. Even before I could explain why I was leaving the person I spoke to said I assume you leaving because of the price increase and asked me how much others had quoted.

After a short chat about prices, they dropped the price without dropping a beat to £34 for 18 months.

As this makes my bill £414 cheaper over the life of the contract, saves me the hassle of a new installation and all other Broadband companies are going to have yearly price hikes.

So I guess if you want to do the dance or not it may be worth trying.

Hope this helps someone.

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Yes most people who been with VM know it as "The Hokey-Cokey" dance 🙂

If you have the option for marketing unticked in My Virgin Media then you won't get a call.

1. Be aware, that your negotiated contract will state "DISCOUNT" somewhere on it - this means no exemption from next year's increase despite any oral indication.

2. You'll lose the right to exit penalty free in 2024 and beyond if in a contract minimum period as T&C's changed as of now

3. The price increase is calculated on FULL package prices not a discounted rate and from April 2024 will be calculated the RPI figure published in February each year plus an additional 3.9% on top. This can lead to hefty increases year on year with no exit clause until you see out your contract term.

4. If you just renegotiated because of price increase 2023, you still have up to 14 days cooling off period to cancel or change package services again.

5. Other ISP's do NOT necessarily have a yearly increase, in particular a number of ALTNETS.

6. Be careful of random calls to you claiming to be retentions or VM - they could be criminals phishing for personal information. Be sure NOT to give your full account password and expect to answer only 2-3 characters and don't fall for them saying they couldn't hear the answer and they then ask for different characters. See if they can tell you what package you are currently on as that helps to ascertain if genuine. There are many other things that could be done, all I am saying is, don't immediately think its genuine VM.

[Andrew-G]

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@unisoft wrote:

If you have the option for marketing unticked in My Virgin Media then you won't get a call.

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Do we know for a fact that's true for VM? 

Some companies have argued (apparently successfully) that under GDPR, retention calls that offer customers a better deal whilst still in contract are allowable under the "legitimate interest" processing basis.  Legitimate interest is not clearly defined, it is a grey area although UK GDPR mentions marketing as a potential area that this may apply, and given VM's rather permissive approach to all other areas of regulation, I'd be very surprised if they didn't milk legitimate interest for all it's worth.

Obviously if you specifically tell a retentions caller that you object, then any subsequent calls would be a breach of GDPR, but up to that point it would seem to me that as (a) VM have your data by necessity for servicing your contract, (b) you already have a contractual arrangement with VM until the notice period ends, and (c) a retention call could produce a preferable outcome for the customer, that is almost certain to pass the test of legitimate interest even if the customer has ticked an opt out of marketing box.    

[unisoft]

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@Andrew-G wrote:

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@unisoft wrote:

If you have the option for marketing unticked in My Virgin Media then you won't get a call.

---

Do we know for a fact that's true for VM? 

Some companies have argued (apparently successfully) that under GDPR, retention calls that offer customers a better deal whilst still in contract are allowable under the "legitimate interest" processing basis.  Legitimate interest is not clearly defined, it is a grey area although UK GDPR mentions marketing as a potential area that this may apply, and given VM's rather permissive approach to all other areas of regulation, I'd be very surprised if they didn't milk legitimate interest for all it's worth.

Obviously if you specifically tell a retentions caller that you object, then any subsequent calls would be a breach of GDPR, but up to that point it would seem to me that as (a) VM have your data by necessity for servicing your contract, (b) you already have a contractual arrangement with VM until the notice period ends, and (c) a retention call could produce a preferable outcome for the customer, that is almost certain to pass the test of legitimate interest even if the customer has ticked an opt out of marketing box.    

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It's what retentions have said to me on a couple of occasions from different people over the years. One year I didn't have that enabled and they didn't ring.

I agree though, this is VM where behaviour can be "undocumented" - I just leave it ticked in case (well in the past that is...) and not been bothered by postal mail from them fortunately.