Well, we've been with VM since the day dot too, we were with Telewest/BlueYonder before that as well (pre 000's), rarely missed a payment, generally we were paying something around the £50-£60 mark for what we considered a good service, even phoning previously was normally a good experience, however over the past few years (before the pandemic that is) we noticed a lot of movement on the pricing. Slowly but surely it crept up, little by little, the "loyalty discounts" would change, and on and on it went.
Eventually, we were paying £82 which included (I think) the essential TV, 200Mb BB and phone line which we've never plugged in (forced to have it), along with a spare TV box, on this went for some time and just at the point where I thought it's time to reduce our services to get the price back down again we were lettered and told there would be an £8.50 per month increase and this coincides with the end of our "loyalty discounts" which would take our bill to well over £100 now.
Tried phoning, tried web chatting, just impossible to get through, posted here on the forums and one of the mods very efficiently managed to take my request to cancel and action it.
Having now looked over the pricing for new customers, if we went back down to a 100Mb service (which we could no problem), got rid of the spare box (again, not a problem) and removed Sky Cinema (which we were duped into taking and have never used) we could have those services for something like £45 per month and get a £75 credit on our new bill. That's nearly 3 times LESS than what I, as a customer since the beginning, was paying. How can that be possible?. I understand the discounting to attract new customers, but where is the incentive to keep existing and long standing customers?.
As I say, tried phoning and web chatting, but impossible to get through, so reluctantly, we are leaving VM at the end of this month and we'll either just come back as a new customer or we'll look into other deals available from other providers. All in all, it's a great shame because although there were a lot of teething problems with VM in the beginning, they did get through them and most of us "loyal" customers stuck with them whilst they did, but to allow such loyal and long standing customers to get to the point of cancelling is testament to how bad the services have become. Any time previously I've threatened to cancel VM had always jumped all over it, but now it's as if they either don't have the staff available, or just can't cope with the demand, either way it's a sign that something isn't working within VM and if they can lose long term customers it says a great deal about how they would potentially manage new customers.
Tis a shame, but if it to be, then it is to be.
