Virgin media, what do you think?

[Andeh13]

Just wanted to ask you guys what you thought of this;

The mother of my girlfriend (not sure what that classes as her) has been with virgin media for 9 years (since they existed), NTL before that and cable & wireless before that still. For the majority of that she was on their top package until a few months ago when she dropped it down to their medium package (their lowest). She has had a dodgy NTL box for several years now and never got round to getting it replaced.

I gave them a call and asked for them to replace the box, they agreed and are sending an engineer out tomorrow to do so. Whilst on the phone i asked them about a possible good will gesture, upgrading her TV package to medium+ (5ish extra channels, for £7.50 extra) for free. My opinion that having been with them from the beginning she might be entitled to a slightly better deal then someone who has been with them for a year or two. Mobile phone providers do this, banks/car insurance like to keep customers loyal so i presumed they might be able to aswell.

Spoke to a guy who came across very defensive, borderline rude at times when i asked him the above who assured me she was by no means an exceptional/special/etc customer and therefore isnt entitled to anything more then the average joe, despite her being with virgin media for over 9 years.

Now i know im asking quite a bit, granted, but 9+ (15 on total with NTL and cable&wireless) years with a company, on their top package for the majority of that, im i really hoping for too much when i ask them to upgrade her to the next package as a good will gesture? Is it worth going to their had office with it do you think?

If not, the way the guy talked to me im fairly unhappy with virgin media and would love nothing more then to find a company who can offer TV, phone & broadband cheaper then the £23.00 she is paying atm. Can anyone think of anything better? iv tried uswitch which didn't really come up with much, but was wondering if anyone had any suggestions?

cheers guys

[kalniel]

I was with them for years and they were equally arrogant. They just suck these days - used to get great support a few years back - but if anything I felt they were treating me worse because I was a long time customer. So I switched.

[dave87]

If you are in a Sky area, then they can do minimum package of £16.50/month, £5/month for 2mb broadband, and £10 a month for a phone line. 'bout the cheapest I know of unfortunately

[BUFF]

If not, the way the guy talked to me im fairly unhappy with virgin media and would love nothing more then to find a company who can offer TV, phone & broadband cheaper then the £23.00 she is paying atm. Can anyone think of anything better? iv tried uswitch which didn't really come up with much, but was wondering if anyone had any suggestions?

I too had been a loyal & happy NTL/VM customer for something like 15 years but over the last year the billing dept. had been doing my head in & I've moved BB to O2 leaving just the TV with them atm but I'm considering going Sky or possibly even just Freeview.
If she's getting all that for £23.50 I doubt that you'll better it.

[jackobyte]

best solution is to leave and phone up as a new customer if she wants to stay with virgin. when they were ntl they were excellent but virgin is rubbish now.
bt option 2 is best other than 02 or sky deals sky are normally happy to do deals as bt are if you ask nicely

quote:The mother of my girlfriend (not sure what that classes as her)
answer: she is a female goddess until the day you get married ,they she can be treated like a evil demon with rabies as you won't need to impress her anymore. if that's any help lol

[pipTheGeek]

VM customer services can't do that sort of discount, they just aren't allowed. If you want to deal then say you are leaving, get through to the retention team, then ask for whatever it is you want. They can give it to you, and from what I've heard, normally do.
We wanted (okay, I wanted) 50Mb broadband, ages ago we had gone for their VIP package because it was the cheapest way of getting 20Mb and a V+ box and and a normal box upstairs. They have since changed the pricing on V+ and extra boxes and I now wanted 50Mb so this wasn't the case. Customer services wouldn't let us have the current advertised pricing of the V+ (free on XL) because we hadn't paid £150 installation, we would have to pay £10 a month to keep the V+ After customer services told us this I was ready to switch to Sky! Although they can't do 50Mb and their Sky+ has only 2 tuners. Anyway, we phoned back after some discussion and asked to talk to the retention dept. They sorted it in about 20 mins!

quote:The mother of my girlfriend (not sure what that classes as her)
answer: she is a female goddess until the day you get married ,they she can be treated like a evil demon with rabies as you won't need to impress her anymore. if that's any help lol

Are we talking about the future wife or the future mother-in-law here?

[GoNz0]

if your 12 months from the package change ring up and go to cancell, they will dangle a carrott to keep you, if your in contracr then i guess they dont give a toss as you found out.

i got tv upped and a fiver off after ringing up to winge that they were charging me more for a package i could get on the website for less as a new customer, now its about a tenne rless than the website price so i signed up for another 12 months (its automatic if you change the package)

[Rave]

I agree that VMs attitude seems self defeating given that they are (apparently) really struggling to retain customers and are losing them hand over fist to Sky. I was going to say that I only stay with them for two reasons, but I suppose there are 4, 3 of which are wife related.

1: (my reason) my cable broadband, which regularly gave me trouble at my old address, has been almost flawlessly reliable since I moved here nearly three years ago- and since they upgraded everyone to 10Mb (and, curiously, since I got a new and fast computer) I'm regularly seeing downloads of 1.1MB/S, which frankly rocks my socks. I can't see any justification to upgrade to 20 or 50Mb since the 10Mb works so well. Just gotta watch it between 5-10pm.

Now, I almost never watch TV- literally 3-10 hours a month max, I'd estimate. However:

2. The wife likes some of the channels that you can't get on Freeview, like UKTV Food. I absolutely despise Rupert Murdoch and I'm prepared to pay a bit over the odds just so I don't have to pay a penny to any of his ccompanies, like Sky.

3. The V+ box is excellent, a bit slow in operation maybe but in nearly every other respect better than Sky+- apart from HD content, see below.

4. On Demand is great if you make use of it, which the wife does and I don't. Sky don't offer anything comparable; the iPlayer and whatever ITV's effort is called are far more effort and probably more faff than my wife can be bothered with.

Quite recently Virgin chopped a few channels and restricted our On Demand access. I phoned them up and apparently it was part of the deal we'd got when they installed our V+ box. I went online and checked, and it should have been a simple matter of paying an extra £3 a month to get it all back, but they made me jump through a number of hoops. Eventually I got them to agree to the extra £3, and I insisted that they not sign me up for 12 more months, as my one objection to Virgin TV is that I have a 42" Full HD screen and yet all they offer is BBC HD and a few On Demand shows in HD. I wanted to keep my options open in case my desire for a decent HD offering overcame my hatred of Murdoch. They agreedd. The letter came through from them and- signed up for another 12 months. After I phoned up and bitched they agreed to append a note to my account.

TBH, if you don't hate Murdoch (you should, but whatever), and you're close enough to a TE that copper ADSL does the business, there aren't many reasons to recoommend VM.

[Andeh13]

To make matters worse, the V box they delivered to replace the 10+ year old NTL box we had originally is faulty. The soonest they can come out and replace it is Saturday, so we're without internet until then. Im just gratefull one of the neighbours has an unsecure connection. Despite it being god awfull slow at least i can get some sort of connection! Not only that they also informed us of a £2.00 price increase per month aswell which came into effect May 1st, its the first we're heard of it and all they can say is 'must have been lost in the mail'. Talk about a kick in the teeth, broken service, price increase & a customer service team that sounds like they rule the world.

Time to shop around & give their retentions team a call methinks, any tips on what i could say to them? Will have a gander at BT and another look at sky, just a shame sky require a BT phone line (why is this?).

edit; looking around im going to struggle to beat Virgin (damned BT line rental). Do you think its worse trying their retention's team anyway and bluffing? I still think its disgraceful the way things have turned out, especially with someone who has been with them since the very beginning (and 6 years before that).

[Stringent]

The mother of my girlfriend (not sure what that classes as her)

Mother out law?

[pipTheGeek]

edit; looking around im going to struggle to beat Virgin (damned BT line rental). Do you think its worse trying their retention's team anyway and bluffing? I still think its disgraceful the way things have turned out, especially with someone who has been with them since the very beginning (and 6 years before that).

I suggest yes. It is only their retention staff that can offer you any sort of a deal.

[Barrichello]

edit; looking around im going to struggle to beat Virgin (damned BT line rental)

This is why i cant envisage leaving VM. The BT line rental is the show stopper

[Andeh13]

yep, my problem aswell! With that bt phone line included im stumped & stuck!

Retentions team were as useful as a square wheel. Because she is on the lowest package they weren't interested which didnt suprise me. As soon as he asked where else i was thinking of moving to i knew what he was getting at. Unless your a heavy user with them or a valued customer (in terms of how much you spend as opposed to how long you've been with them) they dont care.

Its only when you get to the £30+ that VM seem to start entering the reals of BT options, BskyB etc and thats when they need to try and fight, below that your nothing but a customer number.

[goku127]

I'm currently with virgin and wished they didnt take over telewest which was the best. I've been having many problems recently which includes being temporarily disconnected. They only look after new customers and don't automatically adjust the price for existing customers when they lower the prices for new customers.

[Clunk]

Mother out law?

The Sheriff of Nottingham.