Call me cynical, but it looks like Virgin Media continues it’s plan to charge customers a lot more for a lot less in 2016 with the following announcement:
As more of our customers are choosing to use alternative apps and services, we’ve decided to stop offering Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall from 28th April.
If you’ve used Virgin Media Cloud, Webspace and SmartCall in the past, you should receive a letter in the post but here’s what’s happening when.
Webspace
Webspace closes on 28th April, but there’s something even better in store for you. We’ve teamed up with GoDaddy® – a world-leader in Domain Names, Websites and Web Hosting – to bring you 12 months’ free hosting services, plus a free website builder, domain name and professional email.
That’s a tidy saving of £59.88 over the year, with extras including:
A free domain name (.co.uk or .uk, saving you £4)
A free email account connected to your domain name
A clever website builder that makes it easy to upload text and images (bye-bye, HTML!)
1GB of storage (that’s more room and flexibility than Webspace)
150GB bandwidth (so if your site goes viral, it’ll stay online)
To get started you’ll need to enter your unique code (which you’ll receive in your letter) atvirginmedia.com/webspace (terms and conditions apply).
Remember – you’ll need to save the content from your website before 28th April to avoid losing anything.
Virgin Media Cloud
It’s reassuring to have somewhere safe for all your digital valuables. So before we close Virgin Media Cloud on 28th April, we recommend downloading your family photos, videos and documents to a local device to make sure you don’t lose anything. This might take a few steps if you’ve got a lot of stuff. You won’t be able to upload anything to Virgin Media Cloud after this date.
If you’d like to back up your stuff again, why not try Dropbox? With 2GB of storage, Dropbox lets you back up all the stuff you currently have on Virgin Media Cloud, and even share big files.
Better still, it works on all your devices – seamlessly syncing your files between them. Plus, you’ll bag an extra 3GB of storage if you link the Dropbox app to your phone camera. And when you recommend Dropbox to your nearest and dearest, you’ll get a bonus 500MB for each referral.
For help downloading your stuff and setting up your Dropbox account, visit virginmedia.com/cloud (terms and conditions apply).
And don’t worry – if you’re currently paying for extra storage, we won’t charge you a penny in March and April.
SmartCall
We’re planning to close SmartCall on 28th April when the contract with our technology partner ends.
But don’t forget all those minutes you’ll still enjoy with your Virgin Media home phone – including unlimited landline calls and free calls to Virgin Mobile phones, 0870 numbers and our Directory Enquiries service.
For more details about SmartCall closing, head to virginmedia.com/smartcall.
The closure of SmartCall, which was great if you were making calls from abroad, is a major disappointment. The other two I’ve never used but pointing out alternative services such as DropBox and a sweetened deal with GoDaddy is probably a reasonable compromise, even if it does put the emphasis on the customer to do the heavy lifting.
3 comments:
Shame they went with GoDaddy for the Webspace replacement. Once the free year is over, customers will quickly learn that they're one of the spammiest and most expensive hosting companies around.
For personal use of Photos and Home videos, I would recommend Google Photos as a way to store media. Its unlimited storage and free, as long as your happy with Facebook style photos. If you want high resolution you are limited but still better limits than Dropbox.
To be honest I think its much better they save money getting rid of unused and second rate services, and focus on doing what they do best and improving them even more. I would rather have faster broadband, more TiVo options and better content than paying for free webspace or cloud options when there are much better options out there.
I tend to agree that the retreat from these bolt on services is probably the way to go but the timing is bizarre. Shrinking your service at a time the airways are awash with SKY Q adverts isn't great. Guess it is down to contracts ending but even as a loyal Virgin customer who didn't really use the extra services I feel the poor relation.
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