New customers may get fantastic prices, but they'll also get to enjoy the customer service that Virgin Media are world famous for. Not to mention the new VM T&Cs that'll stitch them with a 20% pay rise in April 2024 that they won't be able to reject or renegotiate. That's now par for the course amongst large ISPs and if anything VM were late to exploit that opportunity to rob customers. It's a tribute to the sheep-like nature of British consumers that the companies can get away with it. If the regulator wasn't useless such practices would be illegal, but Ofcom seem to pride themselves on being the chocolate teapot amongst regulators.
Chances are that VM's outbound retentions will ring you several times during your notice period, and during the last few days they'll be wiling to offer you new customer pricing. Your choice on whether to take that, if you do make sure you fully understand how the April 2024 price rise will apply to any deal you agree - if you have a discount then your price rise will be well above the RPI+3.9% that VM mendaciously claim will apply.
If your mind is made up and you're off because you have had enough of VM's approach to customer service, have you checked the customer service credentials of your next ISP? There's Ofcom complaints data. Or for smaller suppliers, take a look at ISPReview's top ten and their accompanying article. Smaller ISPs often offer 12 month minimum terms, and offer prices fixed for their fixed terms, whereas most of the large ISPs regard a fixed term as the perfect opportunity to mandate non-negotiable price rises - particularly despicable are BT who will manage two of these inflation busting price rises during their 24 month contracts.
I left VM a couple of months back after more than a quarter of a century as a customer and I'm now with Aquiss. 12 month fixed price contract (well, after six months at half price), and then when the 12 months is up there's no massive price rise against the price I'm then paying, probably comething like a CPI increase, and in that case no need to switch ISP, no need for the hideous pantomime of negotiating with retentions staff that you have with VM. And Aquisis customer service is sooooo much better than VM's offshored, outsourced, badly automated efforts. But if you want an ISP with TV packages then you'll have a much smaller choice of the large players, and if you want to the massively discounted deals you'll be looking at the same outfits.
