Cancelled Virgin

[jungleguy]

I've had a VM staff deal for near on 10 years, I quit VM back end of last year. I was paying £45 per month I had Sky Sports in my package. Anyhow since I quit my bill went up to £102 per month, so I renegotiated and got it down to £57.99. Not bad, I just rung Sky and they've offered me everything I want, including sports, and I get Sky Atlantic for £39.75 per month, which is less than what I was paying when I was staff at VM!!!!!!!! (PS not interested in BT sport....its rubbish)

[djfunkdup]

Kool Story Bro .....

[Ignitionnet]

Not entirely sure this is news but have seen those deals. Sky are feeling the churn-burn and are appreciating how crap their broadband seems to the public compared to the competition.

[23prince]

Originally Posted by jungleguy

I've had a VM staff deal for near on 10 years, I quit VM back end of last year. I was paying £45 per month I had Sky Sports in my package. Anyhow since I quit my bill went up to £102 per month, so I renegotiated and got it down to £57.99. Not bad, I just rung Sky and they've offered me everything I want, including sports, and I get Sky Atlantic for £39.75 per month, which is less than what I was paying when I was staff at VM!!!!!!!! (PS not interested in BT sport....its rubbish)

Less than my dad pays which is £44 for everything - however they put his price up half way through so he is kicking them to the kerb too.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Not entirely sure this is news but have seen those deals. Sky are feeling the churn-burn and are appreciating how crap their broadband seems to the public compared to the competition.

Joe bloggs doesnt consider sky broadband crap, only techies like yourself who have an addiction to high access speeds and the ability to pretend VM doesnt have congestion issues.

Indeed my sister was on 50mb VM, and got sick of her netflix buffering every night, and now has moved to "up to" 36meg sky bb and she is happy netflix works again. They just care about "things working".

Now you talking as if your 60-70mbit synced pulse8 line is some kind of junk and when you get VM it will be the second coming. But what will this 200mb VM connection do for your working from home that the pulse8 doesnt?

[23prince]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Joe bloggs doesnt consider sky broadband crap, only techies like yourself who have an addiction to high access speeds and the ability to pretend VM doesnt have congestion issues.

Now you talking as if your 60-70mbit synced pulse8 line is some kind of junk and when you get VM it will be the second coming. But what will this 200mb VM connection do for your working from home that the pulse8 doesnt?

This is rather harsh. He has never once portrayed to me that VM are angelic, he tells things as they are which is refreshing in this day and age. I guess you are as well but there are ways to get your point across dude.

I believe Carl is saying that he will be glad to have a resilient backup, which makes more than perfect sense when working from home. He's always (to me anyway) had a bee in his bonnet about people who torrent and use USENET and consume junkies in general so I highly doubt he would turn into one.

However, if he has to download something large (like I sometimes do - up to 1TB at a time) then it will deliver it faster and help to do more - something that Pulse8 won't. But it's all down to subjective opinion.

You'll tell me to sod off for butting in I am sure - but then again I don't care. I also know he doesn't need anyone to stick up for him, but once again. I don't care.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Joe bloggs doesnt consider sky broadband crap, only techies like yourself who have an addiction to high access speeds and the ability to pretend VM doesnt have congestion issues.

Indeed my sister was on 50mb VM, and got sick of her netflix buffering every night, and now has moved to "up to" 36meg sky bb and she is happy netflix works again. They just care about "things working".

Now you talking as if your 60-70mbit synced pulse8 line is some kind of junk and when you get VM it will be the second coming. But what will this 200mb VM connection do for your working from home that the pulse8 doesnt?

I think you're confusing Joe Bloggs with people like us, not to mention that I said 'the competition' not VM.

BT offer 52Mb as the base product now. Plusnet charge as much for 76Mb as Sky do for 38Mb. Joe Bloggs may see the high numbers VM offer and think 'Ooooh shiny', they aren't likely to know that in all honestly 38Mb will be fine for them for right now - why do you think VM and even BT use speeds as a selling point?

Joe Bloggs isn't going to have much idea of what contention or congestion are. They care about the shiny numbers and the price.

This ignoring that the vast majority of Sky Broadband customers are still on their old LLU equipment on ADSL which isn't surprising given they quite literally give it away for the entire length of contracts. I didn't specify the package.

You seem awfully sensitive about criticism of your ISP. Relax.

As far as what the VM service will allow me to do when it arrives goes, as one example download 10GB+ crash files, then upload parts of the archives to our data centre in San Jose for review by our development team more rapidly. The SLAs on our support can be strict and our customers very demanding. A few minutes not spent waiting for downloads and uploads are minutes that can be spent analysing the data.

Hope that helps.

[Steven Charles]

We have been with Virgin Media for many years. The main reason we have a TV package is for the live football. We purchase a Sky Sports deal every August, keeping it on until the end of the football season in May, but entering into a new 12 month contract each time. No problem, same process every year.

Upon calling Virgin Media to turn Sky Sports off today, Monday 16th May, I found a completely new attitude from Virgin Media. Firstly they tried to tell me I had entered into an 18 month contract last August, something we have never done at any point, for the reasons explained above. Secondly, they also said we would have to pay for Sky Sports for the next 30 days, again, something which has never happened in the past. Usually Sky Sports is turned off, we are charged for the days we have used it that month and, if necessary, our account is credited with the difference.

The slightly arrogant customer service advisor, with our full annual account history in front of him detailing the rolling 12 month contract, also told us if we turned any other channels off, it would mean a new 12 month contract.

I called Virgin Media today with the sole purpose of turning Sky Sports off, an annual task each May, potentially turning it back on in August and entering into a new 12 month deal, which costs us about £100 a month. By the time I got off the phone I had decided to leave Virgin Media, a company I have been with for twenty years, because they are openly and arrogantly trying to con me.

I would never have agreed to an 18 month contract. I asked the customer service advisor to contact the person I spoke to when making the deal and he said he could not do that because that person was in another department. I asked him to look at our annual history of 12 month contracts, that mad no difference, by the end of the call I was asking for further services to be reduced and I was being 'threatened' with a new 12 month contract if I reduced the package.

Something has gone wrong at Virgin Media, the dweeb I spoke to was merely carrying out instructions, I understand that. I am now waiting for a call back off a manager, something which I have been told will take between 24 and 48 hours.

If you thinking of signing up to Virgin Media, whether it is broadband, TV or phone, my advice would be don't do it. If you do sign up, make sure you receive your contract in writing and make sure you return it signed, a process they do not require and now we know why.

As I say, we have been with Virgin Media a long time, even suffering the awfully slow Tivo equipment, try using BBC IPlayer on it as an example of how slow it can be. The customer service has changed, the service is no longer transparent and the company are out to con their customers into longer contracts they never agreed to and extra payments where possible.

[23prince]

Haha - You get my written Kudos. just because it's been 20 years since I heard someone call someone else a "dweeb" and it's made my day

[Kushan]

I had no idea that changing your TV package incurred a new contract, I thought the package tiers could be moved up and down freely during a contract period as long as you kept the base service at least.

Shows what I know.

[JPAC]

VM do state on your bill if you change your package, you will lose any discounts on your account. A very difficult company to deal with, especially these days. Still on a countdown to cancel, 30 days notice isn't it?

[Gavin78]

I'm in the same boat was on an old premier package which is now called the Big Khauna.

Virgin offered me a deal because the wife explained to them the £87 was too much a month so was going to drop down the BB to lowest tier and at least move onto the BK price which was about £15 a month cheaper than on the same old package price we were paying.

So VM did a deal £56 a month with sky movies and moved us onto 200mb. I then noticed they had entered into an 18month contract with our deal due to run out in OCT 16 moving us to £97 a month.

They did say call in 9 months and they can do a deal but I certainly won't be paying £97 a month

[23prince]

Originally Posted by Gavin78

I'm in the same boat was on an old premier package which is now called the Big Khauna.

Virgin offered me a deal because the wife explained to them the £87 was too much a month so was going to drop down the BB to lowest tier and at least move onto the BK price which was about £15 a month cheaper than on the same old package price we were paying.

So VM did a deal £56 a month with sky movies and moved us onto 200mb. I then noticed they had entered into an 18month contract with our deal due to run out in OCT 16 moving us to £97 a month.

They did say call in 9 months and they can do a deal but I certainly won't be paying £97 a month

Get a cheap course off Groupon, get a NUS extra card - get a 9 month contract with a stupidly low price

I'm considering it!

[Osem]

Some of what I'm reading here seems like very shady practice indeed.

[23prince]

Originally Posted by Osem

Some of what I'm reading here seems like very shady practice indeed.

Not really shady, totally legal actually. Sorry if you feel otherwise.