Leaving Virgin Media

[Dos_Box]

I don't know how it happened, but the price of our subscription has crept up and up over the past year, even after I tried to keep costs down by slashing some 'features' last year. I am on the XL package with a Tivo box, but our latest bill came in at £72! And that was with an £8 loyalty discount each month, and we had only made £10 of calls! The iternet is supposed to be 60Mbps, but tbh, we only get between 20-40Mbps, which can be had from any half decent provider these days.

This is getting to be stupid money and unless I can get them to reduce our package I now think it's time to move on. What makes it worse I think is that if you reduce your package you get less freeview HD channels! You know, the FREE ones of which there are now more than 40. Well Virgin let you have 6 on their lowest package. Nice.

So, what I think is best is that we ditch Virgin all together and go for a freeview HD PVR (circa £200 for a 1TB twin tuner version) and a decent phone/adsl package (please feel free to recommend).

If anyone here has downgraded their Virgin package or struck a deal please let me know how you got on because I've just had about enough of it now.

What get's me though is that the price seems to be creeping ever upwards regardless of how much we used the phone and I've been with them for almost 10 years now but have never seen the price rise like this. In the space of 18 months I've gone from paying £45-£50 per month to the current level. Not happy at all really.

[Zoom7000]

I very much doubt that Virgin Media are charging those prices for new customers. Unfortunately, I can't check what prices they are charging because their website seems to be down (and that's on a Virgin Media connection!)

 

Anyway... The best thing to do is definitely call them up, tell them you've had enough and say you are leaving. They will put you through to Customer Retentions and offer you some lowered prices. The thing to do is NOT TO ACCEPT ANYTHING THEY OFFER! Be adamant that you want to cancel because you are sick and tired of being disrespected as a loyal customer in favour of new customers who get much better deals and that you will be signing up to Sky instead. They will eventually give in and tell you they will cancel your subscription in 30 days. It is during this time that you will receive a phone call from the "special" customer retentions team that offer the really good details. My brother managed to get 120Mbps Broadband and Unlimited Home Phone for £20/Month, but if you haggle harder, you'll get even better deals. Keep threatening them that you are about to go to Sky.

 

The important thing to remember is don't worry about them cutting you off. You have 30 days notice and even if they don't call you, call them back on the 22nd day and say you've changed your mind and that you want to cancel your disconnection. After a week or so, call them back and say you want to cancel again and repeat until they give you a decent offer, but in all honesty, they will probably call to offer you a deal within the first few days after you give notice.

[sparkeh]

Yep, I did exactly as above and got a call from the special team a few days before disconnection and bartered a much better deal.

Also worth noting that if you are a VM customer they can throw some decent mobile deals at you as well if you are willing to barter.

[tmcd35]

Slightly off on a tangent...

 

I'm stuck with Virgin Media here (would like to change as their peek time throttling policies on an unlimited 60mpbs connection is a joke!). I had ADSL back when it was first launched - 256kbps connection, engineer had to visit to fit the filter - Anyway, shortly after switching to NTL as it was then I was rearranging the layout of the living room and thought I'd get rid of some messy wires. Thought I was pulling out a telephone extension socket; cut the main BT cable coming into the property at a point were it's now impossible to fit a new junction box without running new cable from the nearby poll, whoops! Don't fancy explaining that one to BT or paying out for a new cable run.

 

Back on topic: Yep, VM are quiet good at over charging and then offering discounts when you threaten to leave. Service is stilly sh*ty no matter how much you pay for it!

[rich_tech]

I dont think that they have ever been the cheap option in the time I have had services with them be it NTL or VM as they now are.

 

I can remember getting it installed now almost 10 years ago in my first house when I was living alone and you had to buy their TV and phone services to get the cable broadband which ended up costing me a whopping £91 a month at the time for the first 6 months of that contract, at present I only have their 100meg broadband (I was on 50 before the "Free" upgrade at christmas) and I am paying £41 a month for that privilege at the moment.

 

I wont get TV with them after the whole "sky argument" debacle, which saw me and my wife unable to watch any of the programming that we enjoyed when they had an argument that time as all sky channels got pulled.

[Guest salan]

We are with BT infinity2

We have just got rid of the Sky box for a similar reason.

We were going to buy the YouView box from Argos, but noticed that BT did an 'unlimited' deal of free box and unlimited of there subscriber channels )(movies,sports, etc) for £12.50 pm.

Min 12 month contract. But if you cancel after that, the box has cost you a lot less then buying it from Argos etc.

Alan

[Sunnyknight]

We left VM after 2 and a half year battle trying to get our ping and dl speed correct (was all on their side). Was on a 20mb conn and only getting 700kb/s :/

 

In the end, we got 6 months refunded and left VM in the middle of the contract.

 

With BT for about 2 years now, and what a difference! even if it is on ADSL lol

[Danp]

I pay £55 a month to Sky for HD tv (no sports or movies), telephone line and 18mb broadband, suits me.

[Dos_Box]

We are with BT infinity2

We have just got rid of the Sky box for a similar reason.

We were going to buy the YouView box from Argos, but noticed that BT did an 'unlimited' deal of free box and unlimited of there subscriber channels )(movies,sports, etc) for £12.50 pm.

Min 12 month contract. But if you cancel after that, the box has cost you a lot less then buying it from Argos etc.

Alan

 

That sounds interesting. I can't find a link for that package though. I can find the broadband offers, but can't find the ones that combine with media packages. Any help?

[Guest salan]

We have BB infinity2, free uk calls (all day) and unlimited tv

Here is the link to the tv bit, but basically add the packages together.

YouView packages | Get great TV packages from BT | BT YouView

[Dos_Box]

I pay £55 a month to Sky for HD tv (no sports or movies), telephone line and 18mb broadband, suits me.

 

I don't have sports or movies either, however it seems that with Virgin 'price-creep' has set in with the bill simply getting higher and higher for no obvious reason. TBH Dan, you seem to be paying rather a lot for your services too!

[Homer]

Bin them! Sky ADSL is excellent, in fairness I can see the exchange from my living room window so I get a 19-21Mbps sync speed, but if you can get Infinity/Sky Fiber do so! It's not that expensive, there's no usage limits (if you pay for that) and in my experience the customer service is brilliant. If you aren't in a FTTC area though, you may be best sticking with VM for internet as ADSL can be quite poor at a distance from the exchange.

 

See if Freesat will offer what you are after, iirc you get more HD content through Freesat. Defo bin VM TV though it sucks. If you are going to pay for anything, go for Sky. The picture quality is better, the customer service (in my experience) is FAR superior and you get way more for your money than you do with Virgin.

 

[SpuffMonkey]

I spose it depends on what you want to watch - my VM package is £45/month and includes 60Meg BB, TV M+ (ie Freeview plus a few other bits and pieces) and unlimited phone calls - I do have to pay extras if calling mobile numbers - so try to avoid that - I do get a solid 60M though...which is nice...

[Danp]

I don't have sports or movies either, however it seems that with Virgin 'price-creep' has set in with the bill simply getting higher and higher for no obvious reason. TBH Dan, you seem to be paying rather a lot for your services too!

 

You think? It's about £14 cheaper per month than when I was with BT for phone line, Plusnet for internetz and Sky for tv. HD pack on Sky is an extra £10 and I have all other channels, Docs, Music, Kids packages etc,

[Dos_Box]

I've been having a look around and the combination of a service such as Plusnet Unlimited - Phone line + unlimited broadband (up to 76 Mbps) for about £25 per month and a Freeview/Freesat HD recorder may be the way ahead for us I think. We simply don't use the 'paid for' TV services enough to justify paying for it anymore.

Incidentally, what gives the best picture/signal quality; Freeview HD or Freesat HD?

[SteveBentley]

What makes it worse I think is that if you reduce your package you get less freeview HD channels! You know, the FREE ones of which there are now more than 40. Well Virgin let you have 6 on their lowest package. Nice.

So, what I think is best is that we ditch Virgin all together and go for a freeview HD PVR (circa £200 for a 1TB twin tuner version) and a decent phone/adsl package (please feel free to recommend).

I'm not sure where you get the figure of 40 HD channels on Freeview from, there are actually only 4 HD channels on Freeview (BBC1,2 ITV and C4) with the potential to launch a fifth once some politics is sorted, so those are all you would get with such a PVR.

 

Freesat only offers six free HD channels (the usual suspects plus two little watched international news channels). If having lots of HD channels is important to you, you're looking at Virgin or Sky, realistically.

[Dos_Box]

I'm not sure where you get the figure of 40 HD channels on Freeview from, there are actually only 4 HD channels on Freeview (BBC1,2 ITV and C4) with the potential to launch a fifth once some politics is sorted, so those are all you would get with such a PVR.

 

Freesat only offers six free HD channels (the usual suspects plus two little watched international news channels). If having lots of HD channels is important to you, you're looking at Virgin or Sky, realistically.

 

My apologies, I've just checked and the Freeview HD page here: Freeview Channels | Freeview has lumped ALL freeview channels on their page. Crafty.

[Guest salan]

Personally I don't think that freesat gives you many channels (not as many as freeview if you exclude the asian channels etc).

Alan

[Edu-IT]

I've been having a look around and the combination of a service such as Plusnet Unlimited - Phone line + unlimited broadband (up to 76 Mbps) for about £25 per month and a Freeview/Freesat HD recorder may be the way ahead for us I think. We simply don't use the 'paid for' TV services enough to justify paying for it anymore.

Incidentally, what gives the best picture/signal quality; Freeview HD or Freesat HD?

As a side note @Dos_Box, if you do go down this route, let me refer you? You get no benefit I don't think, but I get a £1 a month or something stupid like that, off of my bill. ;-) Just have to give my Plusnet username when you sign up.

[Dos_Box]

*UPDATE*

There is an ISP in the EduGeek office block that does home directional wireless internet connectivity, and for £22 per month (I get a £5 pm discount) +£150 install I can have a small directional wireless receiver fitted and get 20 Mbps down and 10 Mbps up. Whilst the install may sound expensive, it is offset by the fact that as we will no longer have to pay line rental it will pay for itself as when we ditch Virgin we don't want another land line (why when we have mobiles?).

The next decision is FreesatHD or FreeviewHD? Needless to say we shall be buying a recorder, so any recommendations would be much appreciated.

Hopefully this will all be done by August if I can get a good box recommended. If it has all of the various catchup TV's etc. onboard that will put the cherry on the cake

[featured_spectre]

I am with sky, I have the family discount, and I have everything but sports (as I get sports on my laptop with my various free german subscriptions courtesy of my mum paying for german satellite tv). I pay £40. I get 20mb broadband, (real speed is around 14mb), and unlimited uk landline and mobile calls.

 

I have no reason to change unless my relative leaves sky, however I agree the full price for the complete package is crazy! A good box is the humax HDR-1000S. 500GB, ilpayer, itvplayer, 4od and 5 on demand. 2 year warranty

[TronXP]

I don't think you get Dave or yesterday on freesat, but you do with freeview I think its something to do with a exclusive satellite deal with sky

[m25man]

Well, I have been with VM for around 5yrs it went up in January and I have been paying £29pm for Virgin 10m Cable Broadband and purely on the strength of this thread I decided it was time to wise up and to cancel and switch to BT Infinity.

My only real complaint about VM apart from the creeping price increases has been that I couldn't acutally watch an HD movie in full online as within 10-15 mins of the end the stupid throttling would kick in as I would have gone over quota!

 

If I went onto the MS Partner site and downloaded an ISO I would have to wait several hours before I can download another.

Apart from this I have always been happy with VM especially as I run several SIP lines across it!

 

However, having eventually worked out the IVR system at the end of the VM 0845 number and reached cancellations I was promptly transferred onto the customer retention dept where a nice lady immediately offered me a 60Mb "Unlimited, Unrestricted" broadband service including a free "SuperHub" .... For £17.50 pm ! (60Mb XL should be £27.50)

 

So thanks for the inspiration to pick the phone up, its just what I needed to do and had been putting it off for months but it just goes to show how these ISPs will happily rip you off if you become complacent and stop chasing the best deal!

Edited May 25, 2013 by m25man

[jinnantonnixx]

I've noticed price creep, too. I think I'll try my luck as you did.

 

Are they only available on an 0845 number? I don't have a landline and these numbers cost a fortune from a mobile.

 

Just checked, and 0845 from my SIP provider is 4.7p/min, which isn't too bad.

Edited May 26, 2013 by jinnantonnixx

[AMLinington]

ARGH don't get me started on the Virgin Media bills - we rarely use the phone and have a 30MB line package and the bills are rarely below £50 a month!! I don't even have TiVo - it's horrible! I want to change our supplier but Virgin are the only cable provider in our area until BT get around to installing infinity. When they do, we're swapping out faster than you can say 'Out of the frying pan into the fire'. Still better the devil you know and all that - Virgin are taking the P-155.