Parents' package - help please?

[robbyell]

Hi - parents-in-law are paying a fortune for their package; we've offered to help but can't make sense of what they've got.  Can anyone help?  Particularly Entertainment Picks (x4) - what are they?  Are they genuine addons or part of eg a "Bigger Bundle" which I've seen mentioned?

Thanks - father in law is very ill and seems to have been bounced into renewing a package which might be what they need - not ideal.

[roy247 · Accepted solution]

Hi robbyell,

Personal pick's used to be £7 a month for the first one then £5 a month for any others added, I don't know if this is still the current cost but without knowing the base package and then adding the cost of all the personal pick's you might get a better deal if you upgrade the basic contract.

Your best bet would be to phone Virgin and select the leaving option and speak to retentions and see what they can offer, you will need to do it from your parents in law so they can give permission for you to speak on their behalf.

See what other people say.

The other option would be to wait for one of the forum team to respond which might be 2 to 3 days.

[japitts]

First off - all distance sales in the UK come with statutory 14days cooling-off, so if this applies in your parents case, bear that timeline in mind.

The bundle names in VM-land are referring to the complete suite of services - TV, broadband & landline, each individual service has its own tiers. On the TV side, there are currently two tiers - base (broadly-Freeview-equivalent) Mixit, and top-tier Maxit. If you have the base Mixit, you can add "personal picks" which are essentially all the channels in a particular genre.

There's links to the channel guide which breaks all these down... at https://www.virginmedia.com/virgin-tv-edit/tips-and-tricks/virgin-tv-channel-guide 

[Kain_W]

Hi robbyell,

Thanks for your post and welcome back to the community.

Just regarding this query, were you able to get through to our team at all?
Let us know,

[robbyell]

Thanks all - really helpful.  @Kain - I went on the chat last night, waited around 4/5 hours and gave up.  I'm not with my parents-in-law now, so probably not worth me trying to ring on their behalf, but once I have the info I need, I'll be doing that.  Is anyone able to decipher what they're paying for from a list of services and a monthly price? If so, it's £139 (£140-£1 discount) and it's for:

Sky Sports Collection

TNT Sports

Anytime chatter

Sky Sports HD Pack

Virgin TV V6 Box, Powered By TiVo

Mixit TV

Entertainment Picks (x4)

Gig1 Fibre Broadband

Line Rental

Voicemail Free

Only bit I don't know is which router/Hub they have, but doubt they need gigabit broadband for doing Wordle...

So is this eg "Bigger Bundle" + sports and picks?  Absolutely mystifying, Virgin's pricing, presumably deliberately.  Not happy. If they'd treat their customers with some respect, I'd be less likely to unhook and just bung a Freeview aerial on the roof, or do it even cheaper that that...  Poor guy's really upset, both at having to take pushy cold sales calls he's not fit enough to take, and at having to get me and his daughter involved.  Pride, self-esteem, self-confidence - battered for a few more quid in Virgin's pockets.  Phhhhtffth.

Thanks all again

[japitts]

I'd personally forget trying to decipher the "Bigger Bundle", "Biggest Bundle", "Mega Bundle" etc - and just focus on what individual services are involved. It's far easier!

Familiarise yourself with the TV channel guide & personal picks breakdown, at the bottom of https://www.virginmedia.com/virgin-tv-edit/tips-and-tricks/virgin-tv-channel-guide - Mixit is the base-TV tier (broadly Freeview equivalent), Mega is the current equivalent of top-tier Maxit, the only difference being TNT Sports was inclusive on Maxit but is premium add-on with Mega. The personal picks are itemised on this PDF 

Your parents-in-law have Sky Sports HD & TNT Sports as premium add-ons, and they have a V6 TV box which runs TiVo-software.

Anytime Chatter is the landline package giving inclusive calls to UK landlines & mobiles anytime - https://www.virginmedia.com/help/landline/landline-call-costs 

The only other thing worth adding is that any conversation with VM Retentions is likely to involve a sales pitch for TV360, which is the newest TV box software and totally different to TiVo - in much the same way as Apple phones are totally different to Android. Opinions vary wildly, but just be aware because that's not something you can change your mind on if you "convert".

[newapollo]

Hi @robbyell 

You should check the  /Personal_Picks_September_23.pdf page rather than the pdf  link that japitts posted as that one is from January 2023 and is out of date.

[robbyell]

Great stuff chaps - I boggle at the unhelpfulness of the sales lines compared to the honesty/clarity you get on here - I'm half expecting the 360 pitch japitts as they pitched it to me when I renewed - the (very brief) research suggested it was quite different software to Tivo V6 with quite a few bits missing (the skip back fast-forward thing, reinstate accidental deletes, multi-channel series link, wishlists - I notice now youself and Roy were involved in that thread - it's Dec22 though so may be out of date).

Thanks to you all I've now got a full list of channels in Excel matched to packages, because I roll that way 🙂

So, no way to work out what they're paying for on an itemised basis?  I ask because there are 2/3 things on there they didn't think they'd asked for (or were told were freebies).  eg does "Mixit" have a standard price - £16pm?  £26pm?  As I say, once we've worked out what's what, and what my folks want, I'll get onto retentions and see if they want to retain us 😞

Thanks again - soooo much better to have folk on here trying to actually help find the right package rather than eg sell us gigabit broadband we likely don't need.  I'll "like" or upvote you all if I can work out how to do it...

[robbyell]

User error 🙂 Helpful as roy's first post was I didn't mean to promote him above everyone else, so don't take umbrage 🙂  I've worked out that "like" is "Kudo" now...

[roy247]

When you find out what the personal pick's are it might be cheaper to upgrade to a different bundle which includes them although TNT Sports will be an £18 a month add on to any bundle being offered. This might also need a change to 360 software which the in-laws might not want.

Good luck with retentions they usually give you the best deal. 🤞👍