How long after leaving until I'm a new customer again?

[Jab_Cross_Hook]

Currently on a rolling 30 day contract. Trying to negotiate a better long term deal is proving stressful and fruitless and I'd rather leave Virgin and then return as a new customer - both for a better price and the fact that everything can be done on the website rather than on the phone.

How long until I can sign up again? I know this is a common question but I've seen varying answers to this, ranging from 3 months to a whole year.

Many thanks

[Andrew-G · Accepted solution]

I recall we've had semi-official replies indicating it is 3 months, bear in mind that there's no legal requirement that says they need to treat you as a new customer at any point, so don't plan a strategy that is entirely reliant upon that.   

Are you playing along with the retentions game?  VM don't want to hand out discounts too readily to existing customers, so they are not going to make it easy, but your chances are improved if you've done your research.  Key thing in addition to the linked notes is not to get "floored" by VM's speed advantage.  The agent will hammer away that that because it's the key selling point, you need to go, "yeah, understand that, but it's a value thing...".  

If you do choose to cancel, you may well get an outbound retentions call that offers you the sort of deal you want, but again, you can't be certain that such a call will come.