Price increase and trying to change package

[Malkyffc]

Hi.  I was on the phone to retentions for over an hour last night trying to sort out our package. We are now starting to struggle with paying what we have so when we got the letter telling us our price would increase by £21 I was straight on the phone to try get a different package or take services off. I am on an older package that doesn’t exist anymore, confirmed by the person I was talking to, I am paying £103 for everything including sky sports and movies. We also have only M350 broadband. Was told I can’t change to another package as they are for new customers only. So I tried to take sky movies off , was told my bill would decrease to £100.  So I said keep movies but take off the sports , again was told £100. So you’re telling me sky sports package and sky movies package each costs £3 extra???  When we took out the sky movies and sports package it cost us an extra £35 so this has now confused me. What I want to know is 1. Why are we stuck on a package that doesn’t exist anymore? 2. Why have I been paying way over the odds for an inferior package when m500 and even the 1gig internet is a lot cheaper? 3. Why are they not allowing us to change package even tho it says clearly on the letter to phone up to change or cancel? I am at my wits end cause we cannot afford this and and feel virgin media are not being very helpful at all

[Andrew-G]

I'm not saying that 20% will be the average, I'm saying that anybody on the sort of pricing offered to new customers (or existing customers though hard nosed dealing with retentions) will see something around that.

The maths and assumptions, they're here.  Obviously if RPI is lower than my 6.1% assumed then the 20% will be wrong, but the method will remain the same so it will still be an approximate doubling of whatever VM announce.  In regard of that 6.1%, obviously chosen for easy maths on my part, and the current range of RPI forecasts for Feb 24 is 3.5-5.5% according to ONS.  Unfortunately, if you look at the chart below you'll see that ONS/OBR forecasts have been successively and dramatically wrong:

For clarity that chart is CPI (government have effectively deprecated RPI because it's higher and less representative, but great for thieving telecoms companies), and the source is the Office of Budget Responsibility's Forecast Evaluation Report published 31 Jan 2023.

I have sent a note directly to Ofcom's investigation's team to ask that they look at how VM calculate and apply price increases as part of the current investigation into transparency and compliance of "in contract" price increases.  I'm not terribly hopeful, but you never know.

[unisoft]

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@Malkyffc wrote:

Thank you for your help after 2 phone calls lasting an hour each I eventually got put on the ultimate volt package for 18 months and won’t be affected by the price rise in April.  Alls good 👍 

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check your new contract. If it says discount on it, you WILL be affected by next year's price rise which is calculated based on FULL package price not a discounted package price and can mean heftier price increases.

Also the T&C's would have changed from April 2024 which you would have agreed to by renewing. This means RPI calculated on the February's RPI figure AND an additional 3.9% added per year with NO penalty free exit of a contracted term until expiry of that contract term.

You've got 14 days cooling off period on your new renegotiated contract to re-consider.

[MrGiles22]

Impossible to get through to customer services what with a 45 minute wait. I got my price increase of £15 a month and it is too much for me being a pensioner. I need a smaller package since I have a few streaming services so don't need all these channels anyway. Hopeless customer services, the worst in the UK!

[Adri_G]

Hey MrGiles22, thank you for reaching out n our help forum and this thread. 

We're sorry to hear of this experience and the issue with your package change.
We'd love to best assist with this, although our team does not support package changes we're eager to have a look into things for you in this case.

In order to enable me to help further with this, I will shortly send you a private message here to share more details as needed.

Please, check the top right-hand side of our page to find a purple envelope.
Click on this and you'll see my message.

[Gary250]

The price increase for me is £21.50 a month which is around 32% from £66.25 if I renegotiate a new 18-month contract I know I will be hit with a significant price increase in April next year with no right to cancel with six months left in the contract.I don't want to go to Sky but my pride will not allow me to pay a 32% increase.

[TALON1973]

I managed to get a manager to do this deal for me after a major mess on a previous deal I was trying to take out.

125 mb speed

anytime calls 

max it tv with sky sports HD 

£54 a month until July 2024 with no price increase 

[JonSwift]

You mention an average 20% increase, I wouldn't know about that, but I've just been told they are putting my contract up by .... 20% !

I negotiated that 18-month contract on 20th Feb 2022, and although I can't find my contract on https://www.virginmedia.com/legal I can see from the Jul 2022 one that it is the Feb RPI figure (8.8% this year, the actual Feb 2023 figure isn't released until later in March) + 3.9%. So the increase should be 12.7% - not the 20% I've just been sent in a letter. That's breech of contract. If they have miscalculated mine there's a good chance they have miscalculated a large number of increases.

I am looking to dump TV and phone, move the phone to VoIP (AA.net.uk), and perhaps go back to Freeview or Freesat (both are easy to switch to), and I already have a few streaming packages - let's face it movies on VM aren't new but ones which have been re-run to death. There is also Sky Stream as an option, never used Sky before, I've been with VM for about 15 years. I WFH so although I could move the BB to another provider I will probably keep that.

Your increase has to be in line with the contract you signed at the time, so everybody should go back to that original contract - raise a complaint to them if you can't find it on their web site - and only the exact increase in that contract can be applied, otherwise you could take them to court for any material losses arising from their breech of contract.

[HobGoblyn]

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@Andrew-G wrote:

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@Malkyffc wrote:

Next April, VM will likely state "Ooh look, RPI to February was 6.1%, you agreed to our terms that we can put prices up by RPI + 3.9%, so that's a 10% increase.  But that's to our undiscounted prices, you've got a fixed discount, not a fixed price, and that means that as a customer taking out a Big Bundle package with a 50% discount** you're going to see an increase of 20% in your monthly charge.  And because it's in our T&Cs, you can't renegotiate or cancel.  Hahhahahahahahaaa!  Hahahhaaahaaa!"

* The maths here is that next April each customer's raised price will be the result of their current discounted price multiplied by (1 + (RPI+3.9%)) divided by (100-XX), where XX is the percentage discount of the customer's package to original full price.  Hope I've got my brackets right. 

I just joined Virgin, my package is £37.99 for 18 months then £77

51% of £77 is £37.73, close enough for this.

Let’s say Virgin raises prices by 10%

“each customer's raised price will be the result of their current discounted price multiplied by (1 + (RPI+3.9%))”

That would be £37.99 * (1 + (10))

“divided by (100-XX), where XX is the percentage discount of the customer's package to original full price”

divided by 49

So I have:

37.99 * (1 + ( 10)) / 49

That equals £45.74  

Yep that’s close enough to 20% but I’ll still only be paying £45.74 instead of £84.70 and £45.74 is much cheaper than I was paying Sky for same channels and only one fifth of the broadband speed