Renewal dance approaching help me with a target price

[giamemi]

Contract up end of September. Currently have the ultimate volt bundle - all channels and m500 with phone line for £90 a month (was around £70 when I initially renewed 18 months ago). What should I be targeting for renewal based on what people have managed to get lately?

[unisoft]

All depends on agent and how serious you sound wanting to cancel all services. Use weak terms like "thinking of leaving" and you've had it. The crap offers will spew, like £5 off. Realistically you should be able to get 500mbps + Landline for around £36, but you may have to cancel and wait a call back. You have 30 days to undo a cancel if required. If you haven't done the dance before, a ring back within 72 hours is usual, else it could be up to 3 days before disconnection looms. You must have had marketing enabled in My Virgin Media for outbound retentions call backs and must have been set 3 weeks in advance as takes time for systems to realise.

[Cawsie]

Don't negotiate, just cancel. As you're on a large package they should ring you with a reasonable offer.

When you ring to cancel, remember...don't negotiate.

[bhaskarsamani]

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@unisoft wrote:

All depends on agent and how serious you sound wanting to cancel all services. Use weak terms like "thinking of leaving" and you've had it. The crap offers will spew, like £5 off. Realistically you should be able to get 500mbps + Landline for around £36, but you may have to cancel and wait a call back. You have 30 days to undo a cancel if required. If you haven't done the dance before, a ring back within 72 hours is usual, else it could be up to 3 days before disconnection looms. You must have had marketing enabled in My Virgin Media for outbound retentions call backs and must have been set 3 weeks in advance as takes time for systems to realise.

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Use weak terms like "thinking of leaving" and you've had it

also depends on the competition in the area , for example in my area cityfibre have installed fibre 

i have told virgin media i am leaving, not that i am thinking of leaving, 2 call backs from virgin media retentions department did not help at all 

i have made my mind up, there is a 0% chance of me staying with virgin media, virgin media gig 1 is way over priced, cityfibre has symmetrical speeds, 900mb upload and 900mb download

moving to Vodafone, 900mb for £31 a month 

[bhaskarsamani]

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@Cawsie wrote:

Don't negotiate, just cancel. As you're on a large package they should ring you with a reasonable offer.

When you ring to cancel, remember...don't negotiate.

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good advice

also look at what the competition can offer in your area 

[unisoft]

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@bhaskarsamani wrote:

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@unisoft wrote:

All depends on agent and how serious you sound wanting to cancel all services. Use weak terms like "thinking of leaving" and you've had it. The crap offers will spew, like £5 off. Realistically you should be able to get 500mbps + Landline for around £36, but you may have to cancel and wait a call back. You have 30 days to undo a cancel if required. If you haven't done the dance before, a ring back within 72 hours is usual, else it could be up to 3 days before disconnection looms. You must have had marketing enabled in My Virgin Media for outbound retentions call backs and must have been set 3 weeks in advance as takes time for systems to realise.

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Use weak terms like "thinking of leaving" and you've had it

also depends on the competition in the area , for example in my area cityfibre have installed fibre 

i have told virgin media i am leaving, not that i am thinking of leaving, 2 call backs from virgin media retentions department did not help at all 

i have made my mind up, there is a 0% chance of me staying with virgin media, virgin media gig 1 is way over priced, cityfibre has symmetrical speeds, 900mb upload and 900mb download

moving to Vodafone, 900mb for £31 a month 

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If you have other providers like ALTNETS that are cheaper, and you tell them on the phone, they generally just give up bothering. If you don't mention them, then VM will mostly overlook them and try to give an offer (usually), but it's still normally more than the ALTNET. I have found with mentioning Netomnia, that they don't like you mentioning them and their prices and the fact that my local ALTNET was symmetric. Basically, when confronted, they realise they would have to go even cheaper than them and I think that's why they give up.

[bhaskarsamani]

Is cityfibre a altnet? They don't sell broadband themselves but through other companies like vodafone

[Derwentmailman]

When I recently renewed I found it very helpful to have 4 figures available to me:

1. The price the current package would cost when my contract ran out.
2. The price available via the 'upgrade package' on the account
3. The price for the same package for a new customer. (put in your postcode and a different house number)
4.  The cost of getting something similar through other providers.  This was tricky as I am not in a FTTP area yet so my alternates were FTTC (slower speeds) and Cellular Internet (only 4G available so slower than FTTC).

 Using all thes numbers I decided that when I called to cancel I was prepared to listen to what was offered (if they gave an offer which they did) but I had 'lines in the sand' drawn as to what would make me accept a renewal from VM.  I never mentioned what those lines in the sand were and I was prepared that VM would leave me no choice but to cancel.  The offer to re-contract was under my line in the sand so I accepted and was happy to accept.

As it turns out I am now essentially back to what I was paying VM 18 months ago when I recontracted (only 18p difference).  I also ignored the emails I received some months ago enticing me to recontract earlier (at a higher monthly cost) than I was paying at that time.   

[unisoft]

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@bhaskarsamani wrote:

Is cityfibre a altnet? They don't sell broadband themselves but through other companies like vodafone

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Yes, AFAIK, they get classed as an ALTNET as not the usual BT/Openreach/VM networks. They just wholesale it out, like Netomnia intend to do at some point (though they have their own ISP YouFibre as well).

[bhaskarsamani]

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@unisoft wrote:

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@bhaskarsamani wrote:

Is cityfibre a altnet? They don't sell broadband themselves but through other companies like vodafone

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Yes, AFAIK, they get classed as an ALTNET as not the usual BT/Openreach/VM networks. They just wholesale it out, like Netomnia intend to do at some point (though they have their own ISP YouFibre as well).

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20 days left with virgin media now