Disagree.
But you
own that box.
Ok, rant time.
Over the last few years, many people believe that the monthly fees they pay VM are just like what you pay Sky, in that they are subscription fees. They're
not!
The monthly fee we pay VM is made up of three parts:
a. Subscription fees for tv, broadband and/or telephone services.
b. Rental fees for equipment.
c. A fee to connect to VM's network - VM call it telephone line rental.
Because we pay rental fees for equipment, we can get the equipment fixed/replaced if it breaks. It's
not free to fix/replace equipment as many people believe, we
pay for it every month.
I won't go into V+ as that's old news, but with Tivo, VM propose and I repeat propose, as we don't know all the charges yet, to charge us the following:
1. Our usual monthly fees as outlined above.
2. An additionally monthly charge of £3 to use the service.
3. An upfront charge of one kind or another.
All well and good?? Hell no!!
Lets break this down...
VM propose to charge an upfront fee (item 3) for a box that VM still owns. I'm already paying monthly rental equipment fees (item 1) as outlined above, so what is the upfront fee for? Then to add insult to injury, VM propose to charge an additional £3 per month (item 2) to use the service even though I am already paying them to use their cable tv service (item 1). I'm already paying monthly service charges (item 1), so what the hell is the £3 for. What do VM do to earn that £3? Absolutely nothing, of course!!
But hey I'm sure many will say that's fair, ok. But what if you leave VM? You've paid them a
non-refundable upfront fee to purchase a box which you do not own on top of normal monthly rental charges and an
additional £3 per month
surcharge.
Is that fair? Hell, no!
It's called a triple whammy.
If VM propose to charge me a triple whammy of charges, I propose a triple whammy of complaints to the government, OFT and Consumer focus.
I have waited for something like tivo on cable for 10 years. V+ was poor and I never bothered with it. If it had been 10 years ago, perhaps I might have been more relaxed about the charges. But I watch my pennies now and they are pennies and I am not putting up with this nonsense. VM are saying bend over and take it, no I won't!
I used to say on Sky forums that if people start paying for pay-per-view sports and films, even though they're already paying for subscription sports/film channels, then SKy will charge those fees forever. And that's exactly what they did.
I say its time to stop this nonsense and stand up to this greed. Anyone agree? No, I didn't think so.