Dumping home phone/landline

[badoit]

The chat seems to be down today.

I have a package of 500 Mbit cable broadband, and Weekend Chatter landline. Total cost £60 per month but with £11 discount until 17 November 2025 so I'm paying £49.

We only kept the landline for my wife's mother to ring on Sunday evenings, but she passed a couple of years ago. For some time the only other incoming calls have been from 'Kevin' at 'Bank Security Department' in India. Or double glazing sales people who don't bother checking TPS. Everybody we know or deal with uses emails, texts, mobile calling, or Whatsapp to keep in touch now. When my Virgin Mobile got moved over to O2 the signal at my house got so much better that I unplugged the landline handset and chucked it in the cupboard. 

I just wondered, now I'm paying for something I don't use any more, would I be able to delete the landline service from my package and save money? Or would that mean that my contract was terminated and a new one started, losing my discount? 

[Adduxi · Accepted solution]

I would suggest any changes to your package will result in another 18 month contract.  As for dropping the landline, this will increase you costs as VM give bigger discounts for multi packages.  However, why not just leave the landline unplugged?  When I had a VM landline a long time ago, I never used it, but it came with the package and made the broadband cheaper.

[Megan_L]

Hi Badoit,

Thanks for posting this on our Community Forums, we can certainly see why you're asking this question as landlines are most certainly becoming less prevalent. 

In all honesty though, it will save you more by keeping the landline on your package to bump up the multi-discount. If you remove the landline, you'll go onto a different package, resulting in a new 18 month contract. The discounts you have at the moment with your current package will be removed and it's not guaranteed that we'd be able to offer equal discounts on your existing customer package. Here's a link to Existing Customer Offers that might be worth perusing.

So although you're not using the landline, it's still worth keeping it on your package for the discount it adds. 

If you have any further questions please let us know 🙂

Thanks,

Meg

[goslow]

The 'benefit' of keeping the landline in order to retain a discount on the package only holds true as long as you keep reliably renewing with VM every 18 months.

For those who fail to do this, they then move to 'standard' pricing for a particular bundle/package which includes a service they make no use of at a much higher standard price than the single service.

VM's bundling strategy means that all customers pay a contribution towards some parts of VM business that would otherwise be in a natural decline (such as landline and linear TV).

When you are reviewing options for broadband only, check out all options alongside VM and its bundle offers.

[badoit]

Well, I think you're right, that if multi packages get bigger discounts I'm saving money. Thanks for that insight. It clarifies things for me. I'll just forget about the landline altogether.