Virgin Media - offering discounts!

[bidstermeister]

Having given VM a strongly-worded letter last month asking them to explain thelmselves re: £5 payment charge and £10 late payment fee I thought I'd ring them up as they sent a letter on the 18th April saying "thanks for getting in touch, we're kinda busy right now but give us a couple of weeks and we'll hope you've forgotten about it"... So imagine my surprise to be told that the matter had been marked as "resolved"... Cheeky sods.

 

After going round and round for ages with a rather rude lady who insisted on interrupting me - I hung up and rung back, this time I went through the menu to get to the if you're thinking of leaving us department. After a few moments explaining my problem, the nice lady offered to scrap my last £10 late payment fee (which, to be fair was my own fault anyway) and also offer a 12 month discount of £3.50 on all further "payment processing fees".

 

This means that they're now charging me just £1.50p to process a non-DD payment. I still doubt that's a fair charge, but I'm happy with that for now. Just to prove that VM are a bit odd - I can pay £3 LESS per month than I am now and get a phone with the weekend package... Go figure!

 

Anyway, thought it may be of interest - ask for their special £3.50 discount

[poochball]

Nice one.

 

I am due to call their "I am leaving" option to get my broadband cheaper again.

[bidstermeister]

I also had the usual "well BT and Sky are charging for these payments blah blah"... I felt like saying "yeah, and every consumer and his wife are reclaiming them, so I will too".

 

I wonder, just out of interest what sort of discounts I could get on my broadband. I used to have the XL service but downgraded to 2MB. We have Sky+ and reasonably happy with the BT phone - So it's £18/month for the internet which is a bit steep but because I'm miles from the exchange the ADSL is 1MB at best and very un-reliable. I switched to cable in Jan 2006.

[davethorp]

You should have haggled harder. I get a £5 a month goodwill credit on my VM account to wipe out the payment processing fee