InterWeb Task Force

Can it be done?

The simple answer – yes it can! Today I achieved a ~60% reduction in virgin media costs by removing just the Movies, Sports and altering my phone line package. My original bill was around £127 per month which included the following services:

• 20Mb broadband
• Phone line + talk anytime/unlimited
• 1x V+ Box with HD
• 3x additional V boxes
• “TV XL” package (all channels)
• HD package
• Movies
• Sports

My bill is now £54 per month and includes the following services

• 20Mb broadband
• Phone line + talk evenings and weekends
• 1x V+ Box with HD
• 3x additional V boxes
• “TV XL” package (all channels)
• HD package

Whats the secret?

Doing some research online I gained some insight into how the ‘retentions’ team try to keep customers. The retentions team are the people you get put through to when you call customer services and press the “I’m thinking of leaving Virgin media” button. I’m led to believe (for example) that these people are given incentives for every customer they persuade to stay with the Virgin media service. They can use reductions in your monthly bill to persuade you to stay, however im told that the more they reduce your monthly bill by, the less of an incentive they get. I’m also told that if your are adamant and disconnect all of your services, they get no incentive at all. This means to me that when you call the retentions team and they have listened to your reasons for wanting to leave, that they will make several ‘offers’ to try to get you to stay.

How to go about it
First, call Virgin (150 from your phone) and navigate the horrible menus until you get the the options for ‘I’m thinking of leaving virgin media.’ Don’t worry about being on hold in a long queue for ages, and don’t worry about speaking to someone who is clearly in another timezone, speaks 2nd language English and is reading from a script – Virgin media realise how annoying such things are so immediately put any customer who is thinking of leaving directly to a UK call centre (based in Teeside apparently). No hold music, no foreign sounding person professing their name is ‘Terry’ or ‘James’ and no having to go through the customer service persons script before you get to explain your concerns. Simples.

When speaking to the retention agent, its always best to start off the call with a list of your complaints about the service. This will gain you a sympathetic ear and usually some apologies. Just getting on the phone and saying ‘I’m leaving unless you reduce my bill’ is not likely to work (or if it does, dont expect much of a reduction). Im going to make the assumption that if you are reading this, you have already have complaints about the service. My complaints with the service (as well as some common complaints that many people seem to have) included

• Slow broadband in the evening
• Broadband outages
• Broadband ‘overcrowding on the UBR’ (this is a technical term that VM 2nd level tech support use to explain many broadband problems and the retention team hear it all the time as a common complaint apparently)
• Useless, scripted customer services that (in my personal experience) either hang up on you or are no help at all
• Intermittent outages with ‘on demand’ and ‘BBC Iplayer’
• V+ box ‘lock ups’ and slowness when using the TV guide

Once I had listed my complaints, the agent was sympathetic but did go onto a little sales pitch about how the complaints were “confusing” as VM offer the best ‘fibre optic’ broadband service. At this stage I told the agent that while that may be the case, it certainly was not my experience of the service. I then told him that Sky had offered me a better ‘all in one’ deal of Phone, Internet and TV which nearly matched the virgin media package in features; but did not include movies, sports and only had unlimited calls in the evenings and weekends. I told him this package was offered to me at £45 less per month than I was paying Virgin media and that at this stage, it was up to Virgin to not only match it, but offer me assurances to the quality of service received if I were to stay.

By now we are about 10 minutes into the call and the agent has offered me a reduction in my bill to £75/month, retaining most services but removing movies and sports as well as switching to free calls in the evenings & weekends (instead of free calls 24×7). This matched the SKy price for the HD and 4 boxes and I would have switched to this on the spot, however the catch was that we would need to now renew our (currently month to month) contract for an extra 12 months. Given the problems we had experienced I was reluctant to do this however the agent said this was the best they could do.

Now this is where some tactics came into play – I asked the agent for pricing of keeping the TV XL (all channels) package, the HD package, no movies, no sports, keeping the V+ box and keeping the 3 additional boxes and removing broadband and telephone. The price offered was £42 per month which seemed very reasonable for 4 HD boxes and nearly every channel, while also opening the door to broadband and phone options from other providers. I then said that given we were removing services only, that could the agent confirm that this would not be a new 12 month contract and treated as a downgrade only to which he replied ‘yes it would.’

Before I could talk any further the agent interrupted me and said “I’ve just had a check on another system and I can offer you everything you have now, minus movies, sports and talk unlimited for £54/month as long as you agree to stay for another 12 months.” Paydirt. A near instant ~60% reduction in my telephone, TV and broadband costs for a 20 minute phone call and some perseverance. Losing movies, sports and daytime free phone calls (which none of us actually used anyway) should have only brought the cost down by £20 (ish) per month, based on the pricing breakdown from our last bill, and the new price they offered was much better than Sky.

The things I learned from this were

• It seems that the first bill reduction offer the retention agents give (after about 10 mins on the phone) will match the price and package offer you received from Sky
• It seems the agents will not stretch to the ~60% discount offer until you persevere and have been on the phone for 20 minutes (get the wife on the phone to complain too, it seems to help).
• It seems retentions agents have some kind of drive to retain customers on a new 12 month contract and will offer a further large discount to stay on 12 months contract, rather than have you remove some services and stay off another 12 month contract
• It seems like a good idea to tell them you are keeping one service, but removing the others to reduce the costs. Doing so does not result in a new 12 month contract (im guessing this means they get less of an incentive) so they will likely come back with a better offer of discount if you do

These are my personal experiences and reflect what information I found on the internet, as well as what information I got by putting 2+2 together from my interaction with the retentions team. I hope this information helps you to get the best deal for your Tv, phone and Internet costs