Customer retention useless

[toenee]

Well after being with Virgin broadband for over 20 years I was surprised to find that when trying to go from 1gig £59 pm to a reduced bandwidth (due to kids moving out etc) they offered me the M250 (yes 75% less speed) for £45! More than the online offer of £35 or £17 for 6 month deal! 

after explaining that, she just said that’s for new customers only! Wow, loyalty no good then. When I said that I just wanted disconnected then, she said yes, and did it. Every other time I’ve wanted to leave, the retention team (UK based, unlike the CS team) bend over backwards and always keep me. 

your loss Virgin! 

[Cameron121]

I have had similar experiences of virgin media when I was previously with them. I always found that once I had served notice and taken a contract out elsewhere, the retentions team would start calling me off the hook when they had received the request to port my landline number over to the new provider.

They would then offer me crazy deals to retain me. This is going back four or five years ago now but I did manage to get the 50mb package for £13 a month two years in a row! 

Failing that, you could just let the termination run it's course and sign up as a new customer or take your buisness elsewhere of course, assuming there are other fttc/fttp providers in your area. 

[nodrogd]

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@toenee wrote:

Well after being with Virgin broadband for over 20 years I was surprised to find that when trying to go from 1gig £59 pm to a reduced bandwidth (due to kids moving out etc) they offered me the M250 (yes 75% less speed) for £45! More than the online offer of £35 or £17 for 6 month deal! 

after explaining that, she just said that’s for new customers only! Wow, loyalty no good then. When I said that I just wanted disconnected then, she said yes, and did it. Every other time I’ve wanted to leave, the retention team (UK based, unlike the CS team) bend over backwards and always keep me. 

your loss Virgin! 

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What makes you think it is a bad deal?

VMs New customer pricing is pitched at attracting new customers & is a loss leader. In other words VM actually loses money by offering the introductory price. So if they offered it to to many existing customers they would quickly go out of business. Hence existing customers only get the price with the initial discount removed. Yes, there are other providers that do offer new customer pricing across the board, but usually results in those new customer prices not getting the previous initial discounts they had.

[Cardiffman282]

In addition to the above a quick and painless cancellation over the phone is something of an achievement in itself judging by forum posts on the subject. It could even be perceived as VM pulling their socks up here.