Virgin Media – new contract shocker!

We have been with Virgin for ages, 18 months ago we were paying £60-ish a month for TV (nothing fancy, just basic channels – Mega TV and 360 I think its called), 250mbps fibre broadband and weekend calls (I don’t even know if our house phone works but that bit was free) but it was due to go up to about £80 a month. I wanted to save money so told them I was leaving and almost went to Zen Broadband, but they offered a great deal at the very last minute via email (after I’d been through all the cancellation calls pain) of just £29 a month. Bargain.

So, fast forward 18 months and here I am, fully expecting to have to go through the whole rigmarole again but I have just received a renewal offer out of the blue (subject to an 18 month contract) of just £32 a month (fixed until April 2025 when it goes up by RPI + 3.9%).

What the hell – have they suddenly realised they have to be competitive or have I somehow glitched their system – it seems crackers that I have got this offer handed to me and it’s all sorted in less time than it took me to write this post.

Must be a glitch, normally they just hike it every 6 months!

We left for Plusnet….

Put your glasses on and check it’s not an extra £32 per month 😉

Nope, I have read it all carefully (about three times before pressing submit and the resulting contract is the same), it definitely says fixed at £32 until April 2025 and an 18 month contract. Have I won?

My recent contract renewal negotiation with them resulted in a massive increase of…£1 per month!

I cancelled, and a guy rang up from his mobile (#sketchy) and offered 1 gig (so 10 x what we originally signed up for – they did bump up to 256mbs during the course of the contract) for a quid less than we were paying. That is Broadband only tho.

Maybe they have changed their system to recognise users with previous negotiations. I left them about 4 years ago when thry refused to budge on £75 a month for basic Tv internet and phone. I had been with them for about 20 years. Perhaps the computer thought I would never go.

Currently with Vodaphone. Under £35  month and while theoretically slower it is actually more stable and we don’t notice the slower speeds in use. I would want under £20 a month to be bothered changing.

ill be phoning for mine tomorrow. gone from 35 quid to 89 for the most basic of everything.

We are broadband only and paying around twice what we were paying when we signed up! Must look into that….

That is a shocker indeed! I had to fight tooth and nail to get my virgin fibre broadband (no telly or phone bundle) down to £30, and had to downgrade to 100mb to get it too. They know that they’re the only true fibre in my street though so assume that factors in. If I don’t get virgin its 10mb (at best) phone line job or 4G, so I’m stuck with them.

Only true fibre provider for our area too. It’s a royal PITA

We’ve had the road dug up twice recently by 2 different fibre providers so I just checked and we can now get Vodafone “full fibre” with 950Mbps (guaranteed 500Mbps) download for half what we are paying for Virgin 350Mb. Presume “full fibre” will still use copper to the house, or they will need to dig the garden up?

Just signed with sky for fttp 100mb £24 a month. I noticed that the 67mb fttc contracts were more expensive, at £27 – lower running costs of fibre only, or maybe introductory offers to get people onto it? Either way, perhaps now that competition exists for virgin fibre (assuming your street has openreach available) they can’t demand such a premium.

I am paying €80 PM for 1GB broadband with Virgin Media (Southern Ireland).  One of the many offers from another provider that I am considering is 1GB for €34.99 per month for 12 months, then €75.99 PM.  Virgin Media just don’t want to compete, they seem to think they have it all wrapped up.

^ Yes we have an alternative fibre in the street (which is ‘proper full fibre’ to the house) but I have never had many issues with connection speeds even with a house full of people on devices so I see no reason to upgrade to anything else.

@tonyd

and we can now get Vodafone “full fibre” with 950Mbps (guaranteed 500Mbps) download for half what we are paying for Virgin 350Mb. Presume “full fibre” will still use copper to the house, or they will need to dig the garden up?

Very unlikely to get those speeds with any copper involved. Will likely use your existing overhead cables (bearer wire + old copper line wrapped around it) to run the new fibre cable along to your house and in through a new hole in the wall.

We were paying £67 for either 250mb or 350mb before I got it down. Haven’t noticed any difference for our use since downgrading.

New fibre providers do appear to be disruptive. Here a lot of that is dependant on the grants they get from the council to provide rural broadband, even so. 900 meg sync fibre to the house is £32 a month (first 3 months half that), BT ADSL – phone line rental + (maybe on a good day) 4 meg/1 meg interent= £42.

Cost of maintaining legacy infrastructure/running a massive business/having greedy shareholders?

Actually, for those pondering if openreach provided fttp is in your hood, have a look at the local telegraph (how quaint) poles and see if there is a large egg box looking thing at the top. If there is, it’s a fibre distribution patch box, so if you haven’t already got fibre to the premises options, you should have soon.

If there aren’t any poles near by then your provision runs underground and only the worms know.

(There will be clues but harder to spot)

If there aren’t any poles near by then your provision runs underground and only the worms know.

City Fibre either use a fibre hanging on the copper wire to the house, or if you don’t have that, they normally pre-dig to each front gate and then install a little port in the ground with a purple duct in it, which they then blow a fibre down if you sign up.

They’ve got their junction box on top of our local Telegraph pole, but the price (via Vodafone) wasn’t very competetive, so just stayed with Plusnet and ADSL over copper.

Just checked again and it does seem to be cheaper now, much closer to DSL pricing…..

I’m going full fibre with Plusnet over openreach in a couple of weeks, install is booked. To others, either use the openreach fibre checker, or eyeball your poles for egg-box like CBT that gives plug in connection for your final drop. Old copper drops can/should be removed when fibre installed. Or look for neighbours with with the 5″x6″ grey openreach splice boxes on their wall. If you’re on ducting underground, the CBT lives down in the chambers (aka manholes). City fibre have been through our village, where unable to serve a property directly from a pole, they dug underground ducts and little access ports at the boundary. CF seem to use rectangular splice boxes up on the poles. I think I’ve witnessed openreach use these new ducts for an install. Part of the shared infrastructure agreements I imagine.

It also seems OR are allowed to hang their stuff on electricity distribution poles, whereas new boys in town are not, hence digging in new ducts.

Interesting my Plusnet FTTC service contact was due to end like this week, but I didn’t take early offers and sign up before the march 31 price hike. Small risk, but I think I won….offers for 300Mb were

February 32.99

March 33.99

April 31.99.

We ditched virgin last year (£80/month) when Community Fibre (£29/m, no tv) came to the neighbourhood.

300mbps-> 950 makes a big difference when you have alien scum to blast 🤣🤣

Sounds about as bonkers as my email from NowTV for BB and free landline calls that are under 60mins, for the second year running. Essentially…

Renew your contract and pay ~£35pcm, or do nothing and continue to pay £26.50 (was £23 when signed up in ’20).

Hmm, let me think about that one for one nanosecond! 😆

We pay Virgin £32 for 350mb. Just before my last offer came to an end I received a letter saying my 250mb package would be going up to 60 or 70 quid. Spent 5 mins on their website and I’d renewed at the new rate. Was painless.

I ended my contract a few weeks ago and it got cut off last Wednesday then I rang them a day later said I’d like to come back what could you do and got it down from 68 to 17 quid a month for 250gb.

I have however had three or four emails with different prices in them which are all pre contract information, then an actual contract with £0 a month on it?

So god knows what I’ll actually be charged.

I had a new fibre provider set up ready when my Virgin contract ended last year. Still on Virgin though as they price-matched do I’m getting 500mbps for £27 fixed for 18 months. It’s eye-watering once the contract ends though, so I’ll have to do it all again.

When I originally took out the Virgin contract they were the only FTTH available but Openreach have now installed fibre lines to every house in our street.

I went through the process of reducing my renewal from £90 to £30 a few months ago.

This article was great….

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/broadband-and-tv/haggle-with-virgin-existing-customer-tips/

^ But I didn’t even need to haggle – they just emailed me a great offer!

I had the same thing this year too, renewal I think was actually cheaper than the previous deal by a tiny amount.

Virgin is my only high speed option till cityfibre get their finger out so happily accepted it

Ours is due for renewal but no offers of a decent deal, just your price is about to double email.  Guess I need to get on the phone.

Maybe someone has told them that people know their secrets process and they have make a decision to just not mess folk around.

Virgin is my only high speed option till cityfibre get their finger out so happily accepted it

Last time I read about them in the FT, they were struggling. Raised £500m to roll out, but take up was below target and they weren’t getting the revenue they needed.

Same old story with anything requiring digging lots of trenches to provide a service.

We tried to get CityFibre but they kept promising to come out and fit the cable but kept hitting blockages then just straight up not turning up. My current contract ended and they were messing me around with changing dates so just told them to forget it and went back to virgin.

If they can come put a cable in for me without me needing to sign up first so it’s ready for when my current contract does end then I’ll entertain it again.

Same old story with anything requiring digging lots of trenches to provide a service.

Hence FullFibre putting up loads of poles to provision our little ‘media poverty’ enclave 🙂 The speed they can put a pole up is impressive and it’ never going to get blocked of ‘lost’ in some documentation. Where they did need to use existing ducts, almost everyone was a problem – either finding it or unblocking it. A few people whinged about the poles but it does seem a strange thing to get annoyed by (as we have electricity and other poles already!)

Prob not possible in London I guess.

Hence FullFibre putting up loads of poles to provision our little ‘media poverty’ enclave

I suspect they need Planning which is why CityFibre hasn’t installed any in Cambridge and has trenched to the property boundary for those houses which don’t have copper wire via an existing pole. Which turns out to be quite a few once you start looking…

Actually, for those pondering if openreach provided fttp is in your hood, have a look at the local telegraph (how quaint) poles and see if there is a large egg box looking thing at the top. If there is, it’s a fibre distribution patch box, so if you haven’t already got fibre to the premises options, you should have soon.

Also look for yellow square warning labels of fibre above.

Got latest bill through today’l.

For reasons I can’t begin to imagine the bill is £2.50 or so less this month. It’s normally £35.

We are only with them for BB so no idea why it’s gone down?

Ive just had a similar thing with Sky.

Been paying £52 for a while for just basic TV, just not got round to complaining. Looked at the bill and noted they had started charging for netflix.

Rang them up, they apologised, gave 3 months netflix cost back. Put me straight through to retentions and now paying £28. Could argue its still a lot, but it is the best TV interface etc.

maybe these companies are beginning to realise they are loosing loads of customers.

Had a similar experience with Virgin. Had received a letter stating a price rise of about £40 on my existing bill of £80 per month (500 mbps, TV with Sky Sports, TNT Sports and Netflix, home phone etc.) and was intending to phone them to have the ‘I’m leaving what are you going to offer me to stay’ conversation, when I received a call from Virgin offering me a slightly better package for £2 more per month, so didn’t need to have the I’m leaving conversation.

Interesting to see the price variations of VM for the basic no frills packages.

I’m on the basic stuff M250 Mixit TV and talk weekends phone line. Just gone up to £72, 18 months ago it was £55.

I’ve not been on a contract for years just keeps rolling and going up (more frequently)

If you could ever get through to call centres I would ring and try my luck with haggling, this week I’ve had car bodyshop 45mins, car insurance 2hrs and pension provider 35 mins time I should have spent pedalling.

EDIT: so no need for call centre, a couple of checks on the account and I can get the next TV package (that means nowt to me to be honest) and more landline calls during the week (again no value its never used) and the same broadband for £58 for 18months.

or increase BB speed to M350 for £58 for 18 months.

Either way its £14 back in my pocket.

EDIT EDIT: and another thing with VM, Bolt from 02 another company I’ve been with for years and pay for 3 phones, no benefit whatsoever as neither 02 or VM say I have an account with the other.