The price of your Virgin Media service is going up

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Itshim

Guess all that are signing up to line saver think Virgin will still be trading in 12 months !
Think MFI & Comet. Never pay in advance if I can help it.

You must get your dreams sorted out Itshim as your imagination is running riot with the thought that Virgin won't be here in 12 months.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by denphone

You must get your dreams sorted out Itshim as your imagination is running riot with the thought that Virgin won't be here in 12 months.

Virgin boss Sir Richard Branson has offered to bet British Airways (BA) £1m that the Virgin Atlantic brand will still be around in five years.

Sir Richard dismissed suggestions from Willie Walsh, chief executive of International Airlines Group, which owns BA, that the Virgin brand would soon disappear.

Yesterdays (mondays) news article causing subliminal messages getting into dreams

Originally Posted by Qtx

Wonder if they are pushing to line rental saver to plug a gap in this quarters takings due to customers leaving.

Why is this forum full of clowns who make comments like this, there really does appear to be a number of Sky customers on these forums posting comments without facts aimed at putting thoughts about changing suppliers into their heads.

Wait until they post their numbers in Jan/Feb - you will probably get a shock

This is the view of people who know whats what - investment companies, this is reuters view

In the context of a bleak macroeconomic environment and high broadband and pay-TV competition in the U.K., VMI's ability to steadily increase penetration of bundled products and advanced services and attract and retain subscribers generating the highest ARPU in the market are likely to be key considerations for the rating over the coming year, along with management's update on its shareholder return policy beyond 2013. We anticipate at this stage that management will adjust shareholder returns to reflect business prospects and cash generation.

[Chad]

I just cancelled undet the price increase. Incredible conversation!

The person I chatted with was prepared to offer reductions on my package however I made it clear about joining SKY under friends and family. Virgin couldn't match the package.

Anyway he told me I was in luck as my 30 day window was due to expire in 2 days. He claimed my letter was sent to me in the middle of November. I advised this is simply not true. My letter is dated December 2012 and was only received on Saturday. I challenged him on this and advised I would share this information with others here as there are other members of the site in the same boat.

He advised I should be careful what I post as Virgin can and will hold me liable for any misleading or inaccurate posts!

I can assure you I am not making this up. If you plan to contact Virgin about your price increase do it now, just in case they claim your letter was sent 28 days ago too.

[120d10u]

£4.65 Increase for me! Abit drastic i have to say!!! Still going to stick it out with VM though as internet speeds from sky here are slow (6-8Mbit), no FTTC planned here.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Top banana

Why is this forum full of clowns who make comments like this, there really does appear to be a number of Sky customers on these forums posting comments without facts aimed at putting thoughts about changing suppliers into their heads.

blah blah blah

I put out a thought regarding the line rental and you panic that your VM shares will go down in value? Says a lot about how secure you think your shares are

When virgin announced their 3rd Quarter statement I predicted the last quarter would be worse and you replied with the same vm-shares owner type worry then. Looking at the whole picture I actually think the first quarter next year will be the really interesting one.

I am a VM customer still and only had Sky TV installed yesterday.

Originally Posted by Qtx

I put out a thought regarding the line rental and you panic that your VM shares will go down in value? Says a lot about how secure you think your shares are

When virgin announced their 3rd Quarter statement I predicted the last quarter would be worse and you replied with the same vm-shares owner type worry then. Looking at the whole picture I actually think the first quarter next year will be the really interesting one.

I am a VM customer still and only had Sky TV installed yesterday.

You said due to customers leaving, if you base that on the views of people on this forum , fine, however this forum contains posts from a miniscule number of VM's overall base. I am not panicking at all about the share price as it continues to rise - over 35 dollars this morning

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Top banana

You said due to customers leaving, if you base that on the views of people on this forum , fine, however this forum contains posts from a miniscule number of VM's overall base. I am not panicking at all about the share price as it continues to rise - over 35 dollars this morning

I read a lot of forums and the trend from customers is similar in other places. As you say though, forum users are still a very small number of virgins overall base. For some things forum users can be a good sample size and for others not so good.

Thing is we know that a lot of people are leaving vm and was it not last quarter that vm mentioned it knew customer churn was high but it didn't matter as they were selling more services per household? Hence me wondering if the upfront line rental push was for similar reasons.

It could equally be that its a tool for when customers call up to leave due to the price rise, they can offer the line rental saver and say that will bring a customers bill down to less than before. Never count out psychological warfare with virgin

---------- Post added at 10:58 ---------- Previous post was at 10:43 ----------

I just got the letter about price rises even though my services are due to go in a couple of days

Virgin are going to get in to some trouble over this letter I believe, although like their advertising it would have already served its purpose. The letter is not dated except to say December 2012. While it does say that you can cancel your contract without penalty, it does not say you have to do it within 30 days. With there being no actual date on the letter it is impossible to know when that time is up.

So many will be told its too late to cancel and choose to stay as it will cost them to leave. With the timing being over christmas many wont want the hassle of switching at the moment. So the letter has done well there.

The ones who complain may be let out of contract anyway, to stop them taking the complaint to higher bodies who will pull VM up with the date issues. VM will probably avoid trouble by saying they will honour letting anyone leave until the end of the next of the month after the date on the letter.

VM are just way too tricky.

---------- Post added at 11:02 ---------- Previous post was at 10:58 ----------

Forgot to say, the price increase was £4.24

Services were £32 at the start of the year and had increased to around £43 during the course of the year already. With that increase on top im actually getting Sky much cheaper with more broadband speed and instead of M+ tv, getting Sky entertainment extra.

Worth switching for the year and then checking who offers what in a years time.

QTX not sure where you get your info from you think this "Thing is we know that a lot of people are leaving vm and was it not last quarter that vm mentioned it knew customer churn was high but it didn't matter as they were selling more services per household? Hence me wondering if the upfront line rental push was for similar reasons"

This is what they actually said

The number of cable customers we serve grew by 39,500 during the quarter compared to 6,300 in Q3-11. Churn fell from 1.7% to 1.4% with gross disconnections down year-on-year for the fourth quarter in a row.

[Qtx]

You are right with that, so maybe I got something confused there. Happy to admit if I have made a mistake. I'll do some digging later to see where the confusion came from.

VM's published results are always a bit dodgy due to wording anyway. You can search these and find this is exactly what they said in their announcements:

Virgin Media 2nd Quarter 2012 Results - On a percentage basis, monthly churn was 1.4%
Virgin Media 3rd Quarter 2012 Results Churn down from 1.7% to 1.4% in the quarter

Worded different to make it look better. So the 2nd Quarter churn was actually 1.7% and not 1.4%. The good news for you is that churn did go down.

That is probably where my initial confusion was and I thought churn had gone up to 1.7%.

[BenJSmyth]

It's really only 8 months though. If you pay for the line rental saver, once you pass the 8 month point you have paid as much as you have done if you'd not elected to pay it upfront.

[Itshim]

Originally Posted by denphone

You must get your dreams sorted out Itshim as your imagination is running riot with the thought that Virgin won't be here in 12 months.

It has nothing to do with VIRGIN as a company ; It could easily go into receivership to "lose" debits & restart with a clear book. That being the case you have no hope of getting "your" money back. It happens on a daily basis,not saying by any stretch that it would, but it has to be born in mind.

Secondly & more to the point I was making ANY company may not be around in 12 months time & as such I do not give payments up front to any one.
Be it a hamper company , leather sofa company. electrical goods store. All gone it recent times. So I would NEVER give monies upfront for goods or services not received.I have no sympathy for those that choose to & then get stung

[Qtx]

Strange day today. Received the letter saying the price has increased along with 2 retention calls and a CEO complaints dept call which ended up with my last bill scrapped and the Friday disconnection date of all my services extended a week without any more payments whatsoever.

My email did tell them to disconnect my phone/broadband/tv immediately as I would not pay them any more cash. So a bit shocked that they called and offered me another week free on top.

Gobsmacked

[grahamf]

Just spoke to retentions and they changed my package all fine, apart from they took me off Talk Unlimited Extra - down to Talk Unlimited and then added 1000 free mins for mobiles and 0845 and 0870 numbers. is this legit?

[Smileyman1963]

Hi all new to this only joined due to vm shambles.
I cancelled my tv, bb & phone package, I gave 30 days notice on 9th October 2012, only to receive a call C.S on the 13th October 2012 offering me phone & 20mb bb package for £20.90 for 18months, to which I agreed. Both November & December bills were incorrect, finally got them sorted yesterday 12/12/12 only to receive a letter today informing me of a price increase of £3.24, 15.5%. Phoned vm gave me a load of verbal rubbish. being disconnected 12/01/2013 :-)