Huge price hike on Virgin Mobile PAYG.

[altis]

Originally Posted by email

From 28th September 2009 some of the calls you make will be charged differently. Calls to other mobile networks in the UK will cost 35p a minute (instead of 40p a minute). That's 5p cheaper! And if you're calling a UK landline or another Virgin mobile, it'll cost one simple flat rate of 20p a minute, instead of 15p for the first 5 minutes each day and 5p a minute after that. Calls to our Groupcall service will also be charged at 20p per minute and calls to freephone numbers will cost no more than 15p per minute in the UK. What's more, you can keep browsing the internet as much as you like for just 30p* a day, any day you use it.

Making calls that last less than a minute
From 22 September 2009, the first minute of any calls you make to UK landlines or UK mobile networks (including mobiles on Virgin Media) will be charged differently. This means that if your call lasts less than one minute, you'll still pay for one full minute. After that first minute of each call, you'll be charged the remaining cost of your call per second. All other call types in the UK will continue to be billed the same as they are now.

Ouch!

[caph]

Yeah I saw that too and thought exactly the same thing. How can they suddenly justify a 300% price rise on all but the first 5 mins of calls a day?

I know things are bad at the moment but 300%. Give me a break.

[nodrogd]

They'll start charging for Voicemail next I suppose. Left T-Mobile several years ago due to a price hike like this.

Don't use the mobile much. Tesco Mobile PAYG Lite is looking more and more interesting.

[raefil]

no probs, slip your sim out and move on to cheaper. Simple economics virgin, there were cheaper before you did this.

[HD462]

I'm really disgusted in this, we've only switched to Virgin Mobile contract about 3 months ago, surely this is a major change to what we agreed and gives us the option to cancel.

We're on the £8.50 existing customer deal with 100 anytime/any network mins, 100 texts, and 100 bonus Virgin to Virgin minutes. This was a good deal for us, but these changes will have a big effect, for example:

Say we made three 20 sec calls. The old way, timed by the second would amount to one minute gone out of our allowance, now the new way, it'll be three minutes gone (minimum of one minute taken for calls less than one minute). We make alot of short calls, so this will make our included minutes disappear a lot more quickly.

Then if you're out of bundle and start paying for your calls, the old way a 10 minute call would be £1 (15p for the first 5 mins - 75p, then 5p a min after that - another 25p). Now it's going to be 20p a min all the time, so a 10 minute call will cost £2, double!

How can they justify such increases, and does it give us the option to cancel as they've changed the terms of the contract we signed up to?

Virgin Mobile getting as bad as VirginMedia for back door increases...disgusting!

[Matth]

Looks like the VM tariff is going from good for calls, bad for data (which it used to be) to bad for calls, good for data.

Unless they are going to bump up the 30p per data day as well?

[HD462]

The 30p a day was another hike, much more expensive than before if you only used to check your email daily. Using it every day would cost you £9 a month, there's much better deals than that around. I was paying £7.50 on my old PAYG o2 sim for a data bolt on. The 30p a day is ok for occasional use, but not if you use it regularly.

[alferret]

Originally Posted by HD462

I'm really disgusted in this, we've only switched to Virgin Mobile contract about 3 months ago, surely this is a major change to what we agreed and gives us the option to cancel.

Your on contract this will not affect you, these price hikes are for Pay As You Go.

[HD462]

It does, we both had letters about it yesterday, once you've used up your included allowance you revert to the standard tariff, and the way they take minutes off your allowance gives less value too, as I mentioned earlier..

[m419]

Originally Posted by altis

Ouch!

This is only the standard tariff.

I would recommend you switching to Daily bonus tariff or Addict.