August 21, 2016

Price hike dissatisfaction

If people act this time rather than moan, it looks like many of us have had enough of the constant price hikes from Virgin. I wonder if anyone from Virgin Media is monitoring the online reaction to the latest price rises? Alarm bells ringing yet or will they wait until a couple of quarters’ results come in, showing a higher level of Sky, BT or cord cutting migrations and then start to wonder how they got it so wrong?
Charging existing customers for an expansion of their network that only benefits new customers and not the loyal customers who are now leaving in droves makes no business sense whatsoever.
For the second time this year I’m running a poll - was the third price hike this year enough to make you jump ship to other providers? Vote now, top right.

19 comments:

Unknown said...

Virgin media prices goes up cos bt and sky prices have gone up. Thats why virgin media prices goes up. So virgin media dont lose out.

Matt said...

Phoned VM on Friday threatening to leave VM and switch to Sky Q. I have the Big Kahuna and three 1TB Tivo boxes so bill would have been going up to £150 per month.

I had got a quote from Sky Q site which would give me identical services except for lower broadband speed but obviously would include Sky Atlantic. I went through this with VM operator and explained that BB speed of 30M was OK as both my children are now at Uni so Sky Q was going to save me £24 a month even taking into account £228 one off cost with Sky Q for new kit. I am sure if I had committed to Sky Q I would have been able to negotiate a further discount with them as anew customer.

VM managed to match price to retain my business, only down side was a new contract for 12 months but discount is valid for 18th months.

I think if you are dissatisfied with price hike suggest people ring VM.

Nialli said...

@Matt - did you get the letter or just call them? My loyalty discounts disappear soon so I'll be back up to paying £139 a month (inc. the November hike) for two TiVos, Sky Premiums and a Big Kahuna 100 package.
I've worked out though that I can get that down to £57.50 a month for a year by signing a new Big Kahuna 100 Movie 12 month contract and cancelling the Sky Sports HD (I can buy that per view via NowTV). That makes a lot of sense but I've got 6 months left on my current contract and I'm not sure I can change things until I get the letter.
What really annoys me is VM's appalling business planning. Anyone with any sense will notice three big price rises in a year is just inviting customers to either leave or renegotiate their deals. I was okay with £112 a month for a year, but with my price now increasing by £27 a month I've reviewed things and they risk losing me completely (after 18 years as a customer) or, at best for them, paying half as much. How does that make business sense?? Idiots.

Matt said...

@Nialli - I did not get a letter. I think I may have been on a month to month contract but this was never raised. I totally agree with you on the number of price hikes.

I can understand them passing on the price rise when Sky rise the prices, but the other two increase just seem pure greed, with the normal approach of ripping off loyal customers (been a customer since 1994 whne it was NTL) .

Dannysat said...

I heard of the price rise from this site. I entirely agree with the sentiments around the continual raising of prices.

I rang VM and expressed my dissatisfaction and asked if I could save money on my top end package. The good news is I got an £8 a month saving on top of no price rise, bad news is I am tied in for 12 months but I imagine the price will go up before that and I will get an option to leave when it does.

Cheers @Nialli

Unknown said...

I have emailed the CEO tom Mockeridge and will let you know how I get on

MegaMason777 said...

I renegotiated my contract after it was up. You ring the thinking of leaving us option. I get all sky in HD plus XL TV, 200 meg BB and calls unlimited with two 1tb Tivo's and a 3rd HD box for my dad, all for £107. They basically gave me 25% off on a new contract. After 9 months the offer ends, but I can renegotiate again. You gotta be shrewd! It's your hard earned money!!!

Paul O'Hare said...

At about christmas time i threathened to leave VM and actually gave my notice to them and booked a BT install date. One day before the BT cooling off period (coincidence?) VM called back and offered me the Big Kahuna bundle (what i was on anyway) and line rental for £35 for 18 months. Took the offer and cancelled the BT install with no penalty. The cherry on the top was BT had already entered me into their competition to win a 49" 4k TV, which i won!

Paul O'Hare said...

Just to clarify thats £35 per month.

Jon said...

After 28 years of cable TV, just ordered Sky Q 2TB for install next week. Will be getting rid of TiVo, but keeping 200Mb Virgin Broadband.

overyourhead said...

I'm doing exactly the same as you Jon. Sky Q 2TB installation going in this Saturday and hanging on to the 200MB Virgin Broadband (without the telephone line!)

juicestop said...

@Jonathann Green - I'm looking to do the same and was wondering how you managed to get to keep the broadband without the line rental

Jon said...

Broadband without line rental is an option now from Virgin. Only saves you about £5 per month though. Broadband is more expensive without line rental!!

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
overyourhead said...

Ok - so I've now jumped ship from VM to Sky.

First impressions?

1. Sky has more channels and (when you take advantage of their new-user deal) is way cheaper (half the price in my case for all movies and all sports).
2. To watch archive or on demand programming on Sky you need to stream/download the shows so need fast broadband (I still have 200MB VM so that's a no-brainer for me)
3. Tivo software is way better that Sky at the moment (I already miss Tivo's better searching, more sophisticated series links and wish list features).

But that said - hard to argue with "more channels and way cheaper"

When I called VM to tell them I was leaving the "escalation team" lady said to me that she thought that VM would have to rethink their pricing as she has seen a flood of people leaving in the past week. So if you are staying with VM I hope my defection has some positive benefit for you.

overyourhead said...

@juicestop Just say "I don't want line rental" They will say "it's cheaper if you take line rental" but what they fail to tell you is that although the *broadband* price is cheaper the overall price when you add the two together is not!

Ninjalondon said...

First Virgin went from 108 to 98 then to 92 (3 tivos, xl tv, anytime mobile calls and theoretical 200mb bb)

Went to Sky, got offered Sky q, 76mb bb, line rental, anytime calls inc mobile 57 month with 10 activation/installation. Dropped to one mini and put indoor aerial on the other tv.

Sky sent porting number request to virgin.....VM call and offer 45 if I drop to 100mb. I think yes then promptly have at least 2 bb outages over the wknd.....so I'm off to Sky. Maybe in a year's time the utilisation issue which has been unresolved in this area for nearly 10 months will be fixed!!

Unknown said...

i have been having problems with Virgin for over a year, with various visits from the tech guys,just before the end of my contract it was resolved,i waited a while to see if all was well, it was, so i renewed my contract....you guessed it...the problem is back, tv picture goes mad and shuts off altogether, loss of internet during peak (i have 100mb) i can say with all honesty that with the new rise i am off to......well anyone...!!!

Conners said...

Been with virgin media and telewest (who virgin media,bought out ,years ago) for almost 40 years,between the two..
Had enough of virgins price rises,the percentage of the rise is more than I have had in my employment ,for years.
So cancelled on principle.Just had sky installed Q TV & broadband (when all I had with VM was broadband)
Cost a lot less for both ,than the deal VM offered me just for broadband.
Up to now it's brilliant,broadband faster ,though the package from VM bragged a highest speed.
Tv & Sky Qbox also great ,plus customer service.
12 month contract so ,able to cancel ,after that time.
From my experience that's the way to do business,as sky have done.all installed free
The less you charge ,the more you sell