Virgin WAS the only full fibre service provider in the area for me and I (well the household) needed a decent speed (3 working from home, gaming etc) so I have had to stick with Virgin.
Come my contract renewal next february I know what is coming. Based on the last contract renewal experience i will get an official email from Virgin stating my revised price. In my case it was very competitive and I contacted them to renew only to be told the email was incorrect and the actual renewal quote was 70% higher than what had been quoted. After several escalations (one where it went to 80% higher) I got a fair price where it was £5 more. I was on the WhatsApp chat and asked if this was a like for like replacement (it had a different name). They said yes.
Within 2 hours of accepting the new quote I had had one of my two boxes disconnected (took a month to put right, an engineer had to visit and replace it!) and the remaining box had most the sports and films channels removed. I document every contact with the Virgin and totaled up 22 hours on WhatsApp, phone etc before it was resolved.
To be honest I have had very few issues overall with Virgins service and have learnt to live with the 360 box menu. But there are now some new kids on the block regards true fibre and unless the revised quote is an exact like for like, and reasonable, I will gladly endure moving to another broadband supplier probably coupled with Sky Stream.
Don't get me wrong, when I have priced it up and compared it to my current Virgin contract, it comes out at the same monthly price but I go from my current 1GB to 500mb (not an issue as i am retiring so won't be working from home any more) and I lose TNT sports.
Yes I know the likes of Sky are no better for their CS skills but at some stage you have to say enough is enough. The issue with Virgin is that the first port of call CS wise is a foreign call centre. These poor folk have no 'power' to assist you and it isn't until you circumnavigate them and get it escalated to a UK based person that you find they have more authority.
I have already paid my, and my wifes, O2 mobile contracts off early and reckon i will soon be saving around £50pm.
I fully appreciate that there are new customer offers and have, over the 9 years or so I have been with Virgin, lived with a small (5-10%) increase at contract renewal which i feel is reasonable and understandable, plus more recently the introduction of annual 'inflation' increases but it gets very silly when the renewal becomes 50% plus. Why wouldn't you shop around.