Really bad contract renewal experience

[SiDC]

I’ve been out of contract for a while, the latest price increase has put me on an eye watering monthly package of £129 😱 that’s for 350Mbps and standard TV package (no extras).

I took a look at offers for new customers and saw a package 250mbps plus tv plus sky movies for just £68 a month 😳

Online renewal doesn’t work, the retention link texted to me takes me to a dead end:

So I called up Virgin Media contact centre asking for what deal they could offer me and the person in the call centre said they’d definitely not be able to match what is on the website but they’d use their “personal special discount” and said they’d go ahead and create a new contract - no details of what the price, duration, content would be!!! I refused point blank at this point and made it clear I wasn’t consenting to a new contract with no details and so said I wanted to cancel my contract, they then said they’d look for offers and would put me on hold. They’d come back every two minutes or so and put me back on hold. Eventually after 18 mins of this game they hung up. 

Genuinely shocked at the Virgin Media sales technique, they’re worse than a double glazed salesmen of the ‘90s!! Considering just getting a 4g router to use for a month, cancelling our contract, and letting my other half sign up for the new customer deal.

It’s ridiculous that Virgin won’t even attempt to keep business and will try low tactics like their contact centre team tried.

[Cardiffman282]

No need even to wait a month on 4g if your partner is signing up. 

[Vikki_M]

Hi SiDC

Thank you for your post and welcome to our community.

We are sorry to hear the online renewal hasn't worked.

We can't do package changes here on the forums, however the team via one of the below channels will be able to discuss the best existing customer deals available with you.

Call: 150 from a Virgin Media Landline or 03454541111 from any other phone. 
WhatsApp: 07305 327 112 
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/virginmedia/ 
Twitter: https://twitter.com/virginmedia
 

[unisoft]

Raise a formal complaint at this link:

https://my.virginmedia.com/my-cases/make-a-complaint

I also had a bad experience with offshore retentions. Constantly on hold, transferred randomly and then an attitude when I gave up and said to cancel everything. Signed up with someone else now after being a customer since 2007. About 11 days of notice period to go and then offski. The trouble for VM is delusion that they are better than they really are, and most areas are getting competition with better services like symmetric and cheaper and even UK support centres. And TV changes this year with FREELY televisions (the best of Freesat and Freeview basically over your broadband connection without aerials or dishes for free).  Initially just HiSense and Vestel rebranded televisions for other brands, but soon to be expanded to other makes. If you have even FTTC and its a stable connection, and over 20mbps, it will be good enough for it.

[SiDC]

I tried again, this time through the webchat, and it was a better experience, although still problematic. 

First offer was same as I currently have for £79 a month, which was better but nowhere near the £68 a month VM are offering new customers with the 250mb and Sky cinema.

I declined the offer as I can get Sky Stream plus broadband not as fast but fast enough for our needs at half the cost.

They then jumped straight to 1000mb with Sky Cinema, Sky Sports, and Netflix all for £69 a month. Said yes to this straight away, but the contract paperwork came through with only 500mb on, tbh this is still more than we need but I highlighted the discrepancy, the response from the agent was “it was an error in our system, 500mb is what would be included”. So, annoyed that there was a difference between what they said and what the offer actually was, but at almost half the price for more than we currently have is a good outcome.

re your point about competition, absolutely! Community Fibre is rolling out across our city, by the time our next renewal is due Virgin will have to do something pretty spectacular to keep us as a customer!

[Zach_R]

Hi @SiDC,

Thank you for the update on this. I'm sorry to hear it wasn't an entirely smooth experience.

To clarify, did you accept the offer that had been emailed to you, or have you declined it?

Thanks,
 

[SiDC]

I accepted the offer, it was good enough to keep me for another 18 months.

[Zach_R]

Hi @SiDC,

Thanks for confirming. I'm glad that we were able to sort you out with a bundle that you're happy with.

Please do let us know if there's anything more that we can help you with.

Thanks,

[SiDC]

Thanks Zach, I'm happy with the package, but the experience I had to get there was poor, particularly with the contact centre call. It was unnecessarily difficult. 

[Beth_G]

We are sorry to hear that SiDC.

I'll pop you over a PM so I can raise a complaint for you and work through to offer a resolution.