What even is the customer service?

[Sean93]

So my grandma passed away recently and i have been sorting through some bills for my grandad.

he paid £130 per month for 125mb internet, phone line and some random tv packages that had been discontinued without virgin media even telling him.

He has been with virgin for over 30 YEARS! in the last 6 years he has paid £9.360 for what he had i mean 9k that would cover a normal package for 12 years +.

After finding this out we have spoken with virgin on 8 different occasions and been through hours of phone calls with them telling us constantly we are loyal valued customers and they can offer deals ... you want to know what that deal was ? £80 just for 250mb internet. yeah 30 year loyal customer who has paid nearly 10 grand over the last 6 years gets to pay 2x the rate for new customers. e.g a new customer can get 1gig fiber internet for £47 but a 30 year loyal customer has to pay £80 for 250 mb.

virgin has no clue what the word loyal means, they charged a pensioner £130 a month even with a discontented tv package without even telling him and to say sorry to a LOYAL customer and give him a great DEAL they want to charge him double for 4x less.

This is probably the worst case of customer service i have ever seen and the person in charge / the head of the retention department should be ashamed of themselves. 

9.3k for 6 years which should have technically paid for 12+ for anyone else then trying to charge double anew customer rates after i just have no more words.

[japitts]

How recently did your grandparents last renegotiate their package? VM's bundles do change quite frequently, and if they've just rolled over an old package without checking at least every couple of years, I'm not surprised they've been paying over the odds - I'm sorry to say.

Also if they have broadband-only, they won't be benefitting from VM's multibundle discounting setup. The more services a customer takes, the greater discounting and thus lower per-service price. Only take one service? An element of "take it or leave it" pricing - sooner or later - is the result.

[Sean93]

Yeah I they didn't renew the contact for 6y which is on them and even if we kept the packages it would have been £90+. my point was that they had paid a stupid amount of money for a service and kept getting told loyal customer of 30 years for them to be offered a DEAL which was 3x the amount of a new customers and double the price for new customers getting the 1gig package but theirs would be double for only 250 .

I use virgin at my house and get 500mb phone and tv package for £42 and have only been with them 10 years but someone who has paid probably over 20k over 30 years the best so called deal for a loyal customer was £80 for 250mb.

Just imagine any other business doing this, ohh you are a loyal customer lets charge you 3/4x more and call it a deal for you. I would have been less mad if they said yes we are going to screw you because we don't care then give me the price. why i was so mad is 8+ phone calls probably 10 + hours waiting/  talking on the phone they must have said the words loyal customer and deal 50+ times. Its like me saying i won't hit you while constantly hitting you in the face. who wouldn't be mad about that 

[Cardiffman282]

I agree that there is something pretty sleazy and unfair about the pricing model VM adopts. It lacks simplicity, certainly, transparency, but most of all it lacks fairness in my view as it would seem to most likely catch out and penalise the older and more vulnerable. This thread is a textbook example of this.

VM is not alone in doing this. I let my AA breakdown cover just run for a few years without monitoring it (we all have busy lives and responsibilities) and eventually discovered that we were paying a multiple of competitors' prices. I now use Gem and have had no price rise for five years. There are ISPs out there too that still offer honest pricing, great service, and treat you like an adult https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/the-best-uk-broadband-isps-ispreview-editors-pick/2