Just did this yesterday, bill went from £123.50 to £93.50 for 18 months. Needed to get to retentions first, initial offer was £112.
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What do you get for that?
All the main TV channels, sport, films, 350Mb internet and any time land line phone.
I get the 500meg internet and an unlimited SIM card that has gone to a teenager who seems happy about it! Pretty similar deal then really. I was only paying a fiver a month for his previous SIM card, so it’s not much of a difference.
Right, the 18 monthly phone call took 45 minutes.
I was on a £99 deal that was 500MB, landline, Sky Cinema and Sports, all channels. The price went up to £147 out of contact.
The regular call handler could offer £129 for what I have. If I wanted to reduce price, it was basic TV, 1gb broadband and two boxes for £79.
Threatening to leave took me to retentions person. I now have 1 GB, landline, Sky cinema and sports, all TV, 2 boxes, full Netflix and an unlimited SIM for £99.
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These shites are annoying me at the moment, but for fast broadband they are the only gig in town until Openreach fibre us up.
Been reading the font of all knowledge™ Reddit which seems to suggest it is possible to cancel a virgin contract and sign up as a new customer with another family member with little to no lag beyond the 30 day cancellation. The ‘new’ customer can even order the new kit in the interim and take advantage of new customer deals.
Have any of you done this?
I’m pretty sure it’s a thing, it’s mentioned so much on Reddit etc. Can even be the same bank account, from what I read, although I pay by credit card just to cost them money, I’m that petty!
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Well I done it for science. Will sign up as a new customer on in a week or so. Preparing egg for face.
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Daft sods have called me back now and offered me a better than new customer deal.
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Bit of a fail in that I had forgotten that the Virgin connection is upstairs, and partly obscured by a wardrobe. But smaller hands than mine were sufficient to screw in the connector. We have internet!
The decision to have my own router and WiFi means that everything just works*
*Apart from the Sky boxes:
“no WiFi connection” - go to network settings - “you’re connected already, press home” - “no WiFi connection” - go to network settings - “you’re connected already, press home” - “no WiFi connection” - go to network settings - “you’re connected already, press home” - works. They’re so shit.
have you tried turning off the 3D printer
I still have the network thing that came with the Ender that completely fucked up my network. When I gave away the printer I scared my friend senseless when I described what it did!
I finally got back on contract with VM last week. Prior to that they’d cranked my price for broadband + landline + basic TV up to >£100/mnth !! I pointed out to the agent on the phone that they were offering what I was getting for a little over £40 to new customers and since I’d been loyal and had also been gouged for more than a year surely I was entitled to that. I didn’t want to have more. I wanted to pay less.
She came back with ‘an improved package’ which gave me twice the broadband speed, anytime chat on the phone, more channels on the telly including some cinema, and free Netflix. She assured me I’d still be able to record programmes for watching (and ad skipping) later. A 2-year contract would cost a fiver a month more than I was paying out-of-contract.
I tried, politely but firmly, to explain the difference between ‘More’ and ‘Less’ in the context of ‘paying’ and pointed out that I wasn’t watching all the telly they were offering me now. She said that was the best the system was coming up with and if I wasn’t happy I’d need to chat online with someone more senior. I opted to chat. Mr Moresenior offered me a similar deal to phone lady. I said “too expensive - how do we go about reducing the price ?”. By some miracle he then found another deal which cut the cinema but kept everything else and came in at 45% of the price they’d previously been quoting. Surprise, surprise.
A few days in and I let them know that my ancient TiVo box couldn’t handle the Netflix and that they’d switched iPlayer off on it too a few months ago. So I’d like their TV 360 box please. They agreed and sent me one FOC. There are fewer buttons on its remote, so between them they have to multitask more, making operation less clear. Also the new box can’t do frame-by-frame stepping on paused video (semiconductors get cheaper and faster with time but VM compensate for that progress by simply not being bothered to implement pre-existing useful functionality 
).
Today they’ve told me they want to upgrade my hub, again FOC. I fear this ‘upgrade’ will prevent a bunch of other useful stuff from working. I thought I’d always be able to revert to the old hub but now I see the fine print says they’ll switch that off (permanently, I’m guessing) five days after the courier registers delivery of the new one.
They are a total arse ache Graham but glad you eventually got a better deal. Still holding out on the TiVo here. The LG TV apps we have do the job of the deprecated ones on the V6 box
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In case you thought the grass was greener on the other side…
My mother just renewed her phone/internet contract with BT. I went through it with her in advance, she needs internet, no outgoing calls and no TV.
The guy on the phone ended up selling her unlimited phone calls (£12/m) and their max TV package, the latter being “only £30”, but it rises to £88 in 3 months.
We’ve got it back down to a sensible package, but all these companies are basically predators, culling the weak. Hateful business model.
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