Goodbye, VM!

[Jeremy Harris]

I've been an ntl, then VM, cable broadband customer for about 6 or 7 years. I had 2Mb broadband and a 'phone line, which was costing me £29 per month, not exactly a good deal I believe.

I've suffered the trauma of trying to contact the call centre many times over the years, endured the massive price hike when VM took over without managing to get any sort of explanation as why my monthly bill went from £19 to £29 and have tried in vain to get both an address error changed and to get nuisance calls from VMs call centre cancelled.

The latter were the final straw. Having tried all manner of things to get VM to stop calling me, including registering with the TPS, requesting many time to VM to stop being a nuisance and doing a bit of detective work to prove that the silent calls all originate from a Manchester area VM call centre, I finally decided enough was enough and cancelled my contract.

VMs response to this has been predictably incompetent. I gave the reason for cancelling as the nuisance calls from VM. Since then, I've been inundated with nuisance calls from VM, both to my landline and even my mobile, each one asking me yet again why I was leaving VM...............

Thankfully my new ADSL ISP (the Phone Coop, pretty good so far) have been great to deal with, plus I get about three times the VM speed and a phone line all for £26 a month.

The crazy thing is I'd have stayed with VM if only they'd stopped being such a nuisance, even though I think their pricing policy for existing, long standing customers is pretty grim. I don't actually need the extra speed, but it seems to come with the package.

Do VM really think that £29 per month for 2Mb plus a 'phone line is good value for all us long-suffering older customers?

Jeremy

[Planetgarb]

cya

[Richy99]

you could always have called them to get a better deal......

[Jeremy Harris]

Originally Posted by Richy99

you could always have called them to get a better deal......

I don't understand? Surely VM have a set pricing structure, don't they? Are customers supposed to individually "barter" with VM to get a "personal deal" of some sort?

I did call them when VM first took over my contract from ntl, and upped the price by £10 a month for no apparent reason. The person I spoke to was absolutely adamant that I had to pay £29 a month from now on, as that was the new VM price for 2Mb broadband and a telephone line.

Given that experience I felt sure that there was no way that VM were going to offer some sort of deal, so I simply didn't bother.

Anyway, the real problem was the very large number of silent calls filling up my answerphone most days, all of which seemed to come from a VM call centre. I've tried for more than 2 years to get this major problem resolved, and I've also tried for several years to stop half of the posted correspondence from VM being sent to an address 2 miles away from me, a problem that has caused more than a little friction with the hapless recipient of my mail from VM.

Personally, I think I've been very patient and tolerant of the problems VM have inflicted on us; cancelling the contract was really a last-ditch measure to resolve the nuisance they have caused.

Jeremy

[Matth]

To be on a decent deal, it seems you do need to deal with retentions, and I don't mean the kind of stupid deals which were around at one time, short term - some people would only be happy if VM were paying THEM, but if you are paying more than the continuing rate of a bundle (after discount period has finished), for the same or lower services, then you ought to be able to get something off.

In our case, we had been full no-bundle price for Phone:M, BB:M, TV XL, when the loss off Sky basics, and VM's own Price comparison ad with Sky, got our dander up (and unlike empty threats to move, we had a BT line alread - the VM (C&W) line was mostly modem line back in the glory days of X-stream and IC24 free hours).

In fact, if it wasnt for she who must be obeyed not being that keen on having a dish on the wall, VM would have lost a customer there and then, dropping the little used phone line (and setting up Voip as an extra "line"), dropping VM TV and BB, and going for more channels and higher speed with Sky (all mixes, plus the £5 broadband).