Getting Ripped Off When Renewing Contract

[jameskilkenny]

I'm an existing customer (have been for years) & I currently pay £44 per month for my TV and broadband package. My contract is coming to an end. I logged into the VM website hoping to renew on the same/similar terms, however the website is offering me a renewal of exactly the same package at £100/mth. I then phoned up VM hoping that I'd be offered a better renewal price /mth over the phone. I was offered exactly the same package for £87/mth i.e. pretty much double what I'm currently paying!!

I told the VM person on the phone that if that was their best offer I'd like to terminate my contract. She put me on hold & after 5mins on hold I was cut off.

Has anyone had a similar experience? How do existing VM customer get reasonable deals?

[goslow]

Any offer VM makes to an individual customer will be based on a whole range of things, including how likely VM thinks it is that you will leave. VM aims to carve out an individual package/price with each csutomer with the aim of extracting as much money as possible from each person. The process has been likened on here in the past to haggling at the market!

As a result, past topics on here have shown different customers paying wildly different prices for exactly the same package/services. Some useful advice is provided by Andrew-G at the link below on the business of renewing

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Managing-Your-Account-Cable/Why-oh-why-does-loyalty-get-punishe...

The whole business of any haggling only works though if you are actually prepared to cancel and leave VM.

[Cardiffman282]

Although it's not central to your post or real end goal it's still unacceptable to hang up on you the second you mention cancellation - see https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Community-Natter/Breaking-OFCOM-investigating-VM-over-difficult...

[Paul_DN]

Hi James,

Thank you for reaching out to us in our community and welcome, sorry to hear the call dropped while you were speaking to our Customer Relations team earlier, I was able to locate you on our system with the details we have for you and can see you have spoken to us since, were you able to negotiate a new package suited to you?

Regards

Paul.