Bundle Pricing

[boragthung]

I thought I would have a little play on the customiser for VM services so put in my post code with next doors house to see what it would come up with.
Looked at the Premiere package - cost is £48 plus phone.

So customising it to not have an extra box (text description states this extra box costs £6.50) and the total cost actually goes up for taking the box off. Only on VM! Totally ridiculous.

I am currently out of contract but I prepaid my phone until 4 Jan 2014. The trouble is I have to make a new prepayment by 16 November according to a letter I received a few weeks ago.

So I will have to ring up just before that date (don't have the money to pre-pay before the 14th November) to negotiate. I wasn't actually expecting to have to do this until January.

With FTTC in my area with the superior upload speeds and 'no buffering' I have to make a decision whether to dump VM altogether and just have BB/Phone with BT. While this will save money overall I would miss my telly and have to then rely on streaming as I couldn't afford a TV package on top of the more expensive BB. The other thing I might consider is moving up to VM's 120 Mbit to get better up.

Currently I have normal rip-off phone, 60Mbit BB and TVXL with an SA V+ box. I don't want a TIVO as I don't need the 'features' you pay a monthly fee for with it's only advantage in my eyes being a larger HDD (it doesn't even have the old archiving feature). I don't need a second box as there is only Me with my one telly.

I have a 'loyalty discount' of £6 (negotiated last year) which apparently runs to 1 May 2014 which reduces my package cost to £41 plus the prepaid phone. From the point of view of the Premiere package I virtually have that except instead of TIVO (£5) plus extra Box (£6.50) swap my one V+ box. Logically that would work out at 48-11.50 = 36.50.

What do you think is a realistic price I should get for my services? Less than my current £41? Because if I could negotiate a slightly cheaper price I would get the 120 for the extra 7.50 on top. If they insist on charging more for my current configuration I am likely to tell them to stick it. This year I am raging against the rip-off culture of this country and in particular the overpayments I have made for too long on stuff (like insurance in particular). So I am being a bit more pro-active in value-for-money.

Anyway when you compare the alleged full cost of my package @ £47 compared to Premiere @ £48 it's obviously over-priced (hence why they gave me that reduction when I complained, I should think). There are likely lots of people ignorantly over-paying their services and being taken advantage of ( I used to be one a few years back).

Any advice/imparted experience is welcome.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by boragthung

What do you think is a realistic price I should get for my services? Less than my current £41?

Current price for 60Mbit and TV XL with a V HD box is £41.99 + Line Rental

[djmagnifique]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Current price for 60Mbit and TV XL with a V HD box is £41.99 + Line Rental

If you use the bundle builder that comes out at £47 plus line rental.

[BenMcr]

Ah damn - was looking at wrong set of services (only changed BB, not Telco in bundle builder). Ignore me

[boragthung]

Originally Posted by djmagnifique

If you use the bundle builder that comes out at £47 plus line rental.

This is what I am comparing and why I originally complained of the poor value/stupid pricing model with my bundle @ 47 versus Premiere @ 48 when I have no use for an extra box or tivo service. So I pay 47-6 = 41 currently which seems OK but more would not be.

So if the extra box is supposed to cost 6.50 then the Premiere without the extra box should cost 41.50. Though obviously the cost of bundling that extra box is not really contributing a full 6.50 to the actual premiere cost.

To put it another way individual service costs are inflated so that if more services are taken then the cost can magically be reduced by taking more. That is really because having many services is the truer price but disguised as a bundle discount on the total calculated from inflated individual prices.

TVXL is 24.50. Add another 5 for tivo. BB60 is 19.50. Total 44 (tivo 49). Extra box 6.50 to give 55.50 compared to 48 for Premiere bundle implies that that bundle 'discount' is 7.50. So how can removing that extra box justify an increased cost for less things?

Comparing individual prices with and without phone:
BB60 costs £8 more to not have the phone. Considering a prepaid phone is equivalent to £10/month it means if you want BB60 it makes no sense to not have the phone as well at effectively £2 more. There is no real saving to be made having BB only.

So all the pricing structure is just crazy. I know it's designed to force people to take the full caboodle because if you were to choose different providers for each service your personal cost would probably at least double. So doing a one stop shop is the most economical even if not necessarily the best performing. I'm not knocking VM's service as I even though I have had my share of niggles for the 12 years I have had cable I generally am happy with it. I'm just not prepared to be ripped off. And will vote with my feet if necessary.

A proper pricing structure would be service A costs £x, B costs £y, C costs £z. The reality is individual services are advertised as A costs £x+m, B=£y+n and C=£z+o. Take all 3 and we'll 'discount' that bundle to a magically reduced cost of £x+y+z (aka the true price). Only a fool would think this is not actually the case because they are seriously not 'reducing' the total price to get a purchase, just inflating the prices in the first place.

It's not just VM that practices these stupid games I'm sure.

While moaning at silly pricing - Casting the net wider as far as pricing of goods is concerned the Supermarkets are the biggest con artists of the lot artificially changing prices up and down day to day and week to week. Anyone with any sense will only buy the items they want when they are at the normal 'reduced' price and totally ignore those things the next week when they are 20-100% higher (and yes I have seen such massive price changes). Anyone buy plenty kitchen towels at £3 (or £3.50) for 6. Or do you only buy them at £6.75 for 6? Bottle of whiskey one week £14 the next £22? (and most of that is tax but that's another rant entirely). Sale price should be purchase price + mark up. Not purchase price + random how much can we get away adding this week.

Rip-off Britain.

[Wild Oscar]

Hey, you are trying to make sense of VM's pricing structure??

I should give up right now unless you like giving yourself a headache ...

[bubblegun]

The pricing structure is to encourage people to take bundles for the perceived "better value" not for what they actually need.

It is designed so that people will say this is what I need... and with BT it costs £W and on Virgin it costs £X, and despite £X being more than £Y, but on Virgin I can add this other thing which I don't really need but it normally costs extra but in this bundle it's only a few £'s extra so that's better value despite it not being something you will actually use but because on BT it costs 2*£'s more to add it that makes Virgin better value.

[boragthung]

Well today I rang VM up as I was now in a position to be able to prepay my phone line rental again and had to do so by the 16 Nov. But I was only going to do that if I could negotiate a new contract. I was also interested in upgrading to 120 BB for better upload.

They basically would not offer me any discount whatsoever. If I upgraded to 120 it would be something like 53 -odd and would rise even more in February to 58 -something. I had not heard of any price rises until then! (I've noticed on the forum it's mentioned now that I logged in today). I was looking at paying 48.50 at most (My VM tells me to upgrade to 120 for 7.50) as I consider 41 a fairish price for what I currently have.

Bear in mind I am comparing the cost of Premiere 48 to mine at 47 (at full whack). So they are essentially trying to make out that changing from one V+ box to a TIVO plus spare box adds £1 to the cost.

I am working backwards by saying the cost of £48 less the cost of an 'extra' box and the 'tivo service' should be my cost. After all a tivo is essentially a pvr (v+) plus the 'extra service'. My discount of £6 was going to run out next may and wouldn't be renewed.

The crux of it is I have now told them to disconnect all my services on 4 Jan when my prepaid rental is up and I will be moving to either Talk Talk or PlusNet. I can get 69/19 from both for 17.50/19.99 respectively plus line rental (which will be prepaid). So cheaper and better broadband and 'no buffering'. My Parents have a basic Talk Talk connection of about 6 Mb and it has seemed better than my 60 Mb (until very recently whereby my connection has seemed to improve).

I really wanted to stay with VM after the 12 Years+ I have been with them. But no dice. Their loss. I'll miss the cable telly but I have the fallback of Freeview, Free(multi)Sat, Lovefilm (maybe I'll actually use the streaming function with fttc) and even some BR and DVD's I have bought years ago and not even opened/watched yet. Comparing what I would have potentially been paying next year I will be saving a much as £40 month (equivalent monthly 68 v 28) but losing the cable telly. And that cable telly is not worth that £40 difference.