Virgin Media Community

[BBwill]

Hi,

Need some help please. I'll come to the price rise in a moment. 

Firstly, I would like to know if I can leave my virgin contract not because of the increase but due to the change Virgin are making to the contracts. From 2024 they are adopting the RPI model to raise prices which means you will not be able to leave any longer, this is now going to be baked into the contracts. Surely, such a change to the terms allows us to hand in our notice?

I joined VM 14 months ago on the ultimate volt bundle, this package includes an O2 SIM, the price was £79 for the package, £25 was billed by O2 and £54 by Virgin. 

In the interim, VM put the price up last March, then in April, O2 put the price up separately, I'm now paying closer to £90 for the package.

Back to this year, we've been informed VM are putting the price up by nearly 14%, on top of that O2 will shortly announce an RPI increase of around 20% 😱.

End result will mean I'll be paying over £100 come April. Only been with the company for 14 months!

Fed up with all this and the fact the Virgin Broadband has been flaky, I decided to sign up with Community Fibre since I live in London, joined last month and got the first three months free and then £25 a month for 1 Gig symmetrical speeds, the BB is way better compared to Virgin, lower latency and 20 times faster uploads compared to my VM gig service. 

The problem is I have yet to receive the price increase notification yet from VM, I can't wait to ditch them! At the moment I'm not paying for community Fibre, but that will change in March. 

Does anyone know when the price increase notifications are being sent? Or can I just give my notice to leave simply because Virgin are changing the terms of their contracts. 

Any advice would be much appreciated. 

[japitts]

You've not posted about your broadband problems but you might have been able to get some help with those.

Price rise notifications are being sent out in batches, but those will give you a 30day period to cancel everything on the VM fixed line side. Not sure how the O2 bit works.

[M1llwallsky]

I’ve not received my notification yet, but I’ll cancel when I do. I can’t afford a double digit price increase. Sadly I don’t have Community Fibre in my road. 

[BBwill]

Issues with the Virgin Broadband were due to the poor latency at times and slow uploads, my area is oversubscribed causing occasional drop outs on top!

Upload speed matters to me as I upload 4k video content to the cloud as part of my job. Community Fibre offer 3Gbps uploads. Their latency is significantly better I typically get around 2-5ms in comparison to VM, kids constantly moaned about this! I'm on the 1gig package  (up and down)

The Linksys Mesh Wifi6 router is significantly better than the Super Hub4 I was provided by Virgin even though they promised me a super Hub 5 when I signed up, but that's another story!

Additionally it's relatively easy to connect your own router directly to Community Fibre's ONT modem, no need for "Modem Mode" as is the case with VM.

On top of that the customer service is miles better than anything I've experienced with VM, just contacting VM and getting any sense out of anyone is nigh on impossible, believe you me, I've had so much hassle with them in the past 14 months

Overall, so far I'm happy with my new provider. It's chalk and cheese compared to VM.

I just feel it's extremely unfair Virgin won't allow customers to leave just based on the change in contract rather than price increase only.

Any indication of when I will get the price increase would be helpful, rather just being told "it's being done in batches"

[BBwill]

Community Fibre are a London only provider. 

There are plenty of other Altnet full fibre providers, depending on where you live. Would be worth doing some research into it. 

Waiting for Virgin Media to contact customers about the price increase so that we can cancel is beyond annoying, particularly since they've publicly announced that price change is coming and if that wasn't bad enough, customer contracts are being changed so customers will be unable to leave from next year when RPI price increases take effect.

A big contractual change like that should let everyone cancel IMO.

Why isn't OFCOM intervening, it's disgusting what ISP's are able to get away with. Mid contract changes and price hikes ought to be abolished. 

[Matthew_ML]

Hey BBwill, thank you for reaching out and a warm welcome to the community I am sorry to hear about the recent price rise.

We always balance our prices with the need to continue investing in our network, products and services.
 Like many businesses, we’re experiencing rising costs due to inflation. We are not immune to rising costs, primarily due to wider economic changes from rising inflation.
We’re seeing growing demand for data – with usage growing by more than 10% each year. Last year, we invested more than £2bn in our networks, which contributed to average broadband speeds increasing more than 40%, while helping to make sure our customers stayed connected and were able to keep using our services more and more.

There will be a Right To Cancel for all impacted customers, who can choose to cancel their contract within 30 days from receipt of their communication. Customers will not incur early disconnection fees if requesting their cancellation within this 30 day period. Thanks 

[BBwill]

Matt,

Your scripted answer which you repeated verbatim fails to answer my key questions. Are Virgin customers able to leave due to the significant change in terms,  the adoption of RPI from 2024 which will prevent customers from leaving when VM hyke prices next year?

Also, since this year's price increase has been announced, do we really need to wait for the notification, before we can cancel? When are you going to let everyone know?

Two simple questions. I hope you will answer them without giving a patronising reply. 

[Kain_W]

Thanks for the response BBwill,

Your individual price rise will be advised prior and be specific to you where communication would be sent. Some price rises are lower, and some customers will be excluded completely.

If you wish to discuss your increase further, you can reach us online (virg.in/contactvm), by calling 150 from your Virgin Media landline, or 0345 454 1111 from any other phone.

Regards,

[Andrew-G · Accepted solution]

Forum staff, there was a simple "closed question" there, and it had only a yes or no answer.  Let's have a look 'n' learn session together, shall we:

"Are Virgin customers able to leave due to the significant change in terms,  the adoption of RPI from 2024 which will prevent customers from leaving when VM hyke prices next year?"

There's no way the answer can be "phone up our useless customer service line", or "your individual price rise will be notified to you" or "some customers will be excluded" it is either yes or no. However, luckily for VM and BBWill, Ofcom have already answered this question.  And it's yes. 

Customers should be aware that VM aren't always terribly good at notifying customers, or pointing to important T&C changes when a contract is renegotiated.  Anybody who remains a customer by next April will be subject to the RPI + 4% increase, ie much higher, up to 30% for any discounted contract, because they should (!) get notification of the T&Cs changing if they don't renegotiate their package, and if they do renegotiate their package that'll be against the new T&Cs.  Whilst it would be open to challenge if VM didn't make material changes clear, by the time it becomes important there's a good chance that any relevant telephone recordings will have been conveniently erased.

[Shroko]

Andrew-G, 

You are 100% correct. 

I too would like a simple "yes" or "no" to the question BBwill has asked. 

A major change to terms mid contract should allow customers to leave, regardless of the separate price increase. 

I await a sensible (non scripted) reply from one of the Forum staff. 

Thank you for sharing the OFCOM  link Andrew.