Change in contract and price rise

[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. 

[impy1]

What I am interested in knowing is,if I take out a new contract today will the price increase in April?

[John_GS]

Hi impy1

Thanks for posting and welcome back to the community. 

As we don't do package changes from here, it would only be a guess and that would be no, it wouldn't. It would be inclusive of the increase. 

However, for 100% confirmation when you call the team or Whatsapp Message, they will confirm for you.

Best wishes.

[unisoft]

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@impy1 wrote:

What I am interested in knowing is,if I take out a new contract today will the price increase in April?

---

You get the new pricing formula of RPI plus an additional 3.9% per year starting April 2024. The RPI is based on the February published figure. You will also lose the right to cancel without penalty any minimum term contract as the T&Cs change and nobody can opt out of that.

If you negotiate a package now with retentions or take one from the web site - you shouldn't get an additional price rise. The area that is grey is Stream subscriptions as in my email VM said it would apply to those from April - and they are like an optional add-on that lasts 30 days (if you cancel same day as taking it). You can check by ringing in or when you negotiate a retentions deal. I'm assuming you are an existing customer here.

[ntlcableuser]

and dont forget that VM operators despite seeming to negotiate a price, always seem to apply it as a discount ... without saying such IME
- * and the discount stays the same despite increases being calculated on the full price *

So just like I'm currently seeing, the increases they claim are far higher than RPI + 3.9% or whatever - and all those who agree discounted packages will likely see the same next year.

Im seeing around 28% increase on my fixed term fixed price agreement .. thats not going to happen.

[Cawsie]

This lark about Virgin charging the contract price increase on the full price package irritates me.

Example.

I go to a clothes shop and i see a jumper i like. Look at the label and see it's £20 but reduced from £80. Happy i go to the till but notice a blemish on the jumper and the supervisor offers me an extra 10% off . I agree but i want the 10% off based on the full price of the jumper not on the reduced price. She laughs at me and tells me to sling my hook. 

This is what Virgin are doing but in reverse. Surely what you pay is what you pay. If I was to complain to Virgin about something and the customer rep said ok we'll give you 10% off your next month's bill, would they give me 10% off the full package price per month or 10% off the price i actually pay? Pretty sure i know the answer.

[Ernie_C]

That example is completely irrelevant. It is a one off purchase, not a monthly repeating cost for a service.

[Cawsie]

It's the principle i'm arguing against and not a forensic examination of trading law.

Ultimately it's up to me to take my business elsewhere if needs be.

[ollietup]

When I was offered my current contract, the way the offer was given to me was simply a monthly price of £28, not £44 with a discount of £16, although the latter is how it appears on my bill. The difference that makes is that the increase of inflation+3.9% on £44, with no corresponding adjustment of the £16 discount, amounts to an increase of a full 25% on the price I actually pay.

I'm not happy with the policy of automatically making the price 3.9% less affordable every year in any case, but the way it's being implemented means that for many customers the real year-on-year automatic drop in affordability will be considerably more than that.

[ntlcableuser]

and lets not forget that for people be in a similar position to myself, if inflation is just around 2% next April (seems unlikely), I would be looking at a 35% increase in price over just the next 13 months

- and if inflation remains at 8% (+ VMs 3.9%) or more the *increase* in my charges would be 28% immediately and could easily be over 45% over just the next 13 months - less than the 18 month agreement periods

.. and I'm not on the best discount with higher speeds new customers have been offered over the last 6 months or so by any means - they will be in an even worse position.

- and mine was a fixed price over the fixed term agreement

[Nialli]

I can’t think of a better strategy for trashing a business and ensuring customers never, ever return than the one Virgin Media are currently pursuing