Virgin Price hike

Just got this from the dahlins at Virgin - isn't technology supposed to go down in price?

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The price of your broadband is going up.
But you're still getting great value from your broadband service.

Dear Mr XXXXXXXX

We wanted to let you know that, from 1st October 2013, the price of your Virgin Media broadband is going up by £2.50 a month. It's never nice when prices increase so we wanted to reassure you that you're still getting a great broadband service.

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Just thought if on a petrol head forum I started going on that my car wouldn't do 120mph or 50 miles per gallon would people start accusing me of doing illegal stuff?

Just a thought for the 'just interested in what you could be doing LEGALLY' mob.

Jon

P.S. It's tongue in cheek and good humoured reparte, just in case we are being observed by Cameron's 'TROLL POLICE' as well.

People are using their broadband a ton more than they used to and prices were steady for ages while speeds went up, so this all makes sense to be honest.

I reckon they'll be losing customers to FTTC at an even higher rate. The increase puts them neck and neck for me and with cashback available on most FTTC signups the first year will certainly be cheaper.

Its the price of the bundle really you need to look at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/5999-more-informa...

Interesting comparison at the end of that item with basic 10GB BT service changing in price, but offset by line rental increases.

Mine went up in February this year by £1.75 This extra £2.50 makes it a 17% increase over the £25 it was in January.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

People are using their broadband a ton more than they used to and prices were steady for ages while speeds went up, so this all makes sense to be honest.

Just under 10% increase when inflation is running way lower.... On that logic our i7 would cost about £4 billion as it does so much more than a ZX81....... weird!

We're stuck with them and on the basic 30mb deal - no phone or television - that's from 100mb, basic tv and phone package just over a year ago.

Truthfully IF BT hadn't quoted over 6 months of the Virgin charge for juat installing a line that already exists, we'd have gone already.

It wouldn't be so bad if I hadn't spent about an hour negotiating with retentions only to be billed the same as before and the a** h*** who dealt with the complaint decided that all that could have been offered was 'LIST PRICE'.

Yes I hate the D**b F***s but Virgin are still the best deal amongst a bunch of crooks who wouldn't be allowed to sell double glazing - ISPs that is.

It's a lot easier to work through a server in Holland, for stuff, with a slow connection at home (just for vonage, connection and downloads).

£26 a month for 30mb..... what have the Yanks been smokin'...... and if they follow the business patterns of USAISPs they'll increase at a price until the customer base stabilises without new infrastructure and milk the profits..... used to be called asset stripping when I were a lad.

Jon

In reply to a post by foxuk:

Truthfully IF BT hadn't quoted over 6 months of the Virgin charge for juat installing a line that already exists, we'd have gone already.

The last time looked at Infinity they were still offering a free line install. I actually ordered it June last year and they installed the phone line but the Infinity install was a no-show. They then gave a date 3 weeks later which was past my VM termination so I called BT and cancelled and then VM and got 60Mbps @ £25 which they increased to £26.75 in February.

andrew it gets even worse when you compare phone VM imo are not competitive on calls.

Which is odd as its their own local loop so none of the regulatory problems or costs of BT.

Seem to remember an old advert 'always cheaper than BT' which I always took to mean, they put their price up and we will follow suit.

so I called BT and cancelled

Ours was a bit weirder - 'there has never been a pnone line at our address' was the BT statement - even though the BT line was there running from the pole to the dormer and had been cancelled a couple of years earlier..... by me.

I tried a couple of the free installation deals but as soon as they check there are 'problems', so we're stuck with Virgin.

I was offered £28 to keep the 100mb without anything else by retentions but as they didn't implement it and then the a**h*** wanted full price ..... 30mb does it. Weirdly it works a LOT better than the 100mb.... no cut outs and everything runs as it should. the 'before 11a.m. has changed to before 4p.m. so that's a plus.

We've cut our outgoings by about 70% to 80% (heavy USA calls!!!!!! [censored] kids don't know how to dial their mother!!!) by juggling services and usage over the past two years. Virgin's 'International Deals' sound good but definatelly don't compare.

It's really sad when a company can't see the writing on the wall

Surely any accountant could see that an over £400 bill June 2011 becoming £23.50 can't be made up with a £2.50 price rise? OK herself was ill in 2011 BUT the 'normal' bill was over £200...

Jon

they dont have the obligation that BT do to have certian 0845 pricing, as a result VM are pretty expensive for 0845/0844 etc.

higher connection fees.

and BT are obligated to allow alternative call providers to work on their lines.

In reply to a post by foxuk:

Just under 10% increase when inflation is running way lower.... On that logic our i7 would cost about £4 billion as it does so much more than a ZX81....... weird!

One's a service the other is a piece of hardware and are completely incomparable so there's zero logic to be had there.

EDIT: Perhaps a better comparison if you're talking about inflation would be to check the current 'inflation' rate of average broadband usage per household. The infrastructure to support that costs money.

Edited by deleted (Tue 20-Aug-13 13:21:22)

Glad it makes sense to somebody. Virgin Media pricing is beyond my comprehension. Everybody seems to be on a different price and in general the longer you're with them the higher it is. I don't know how they get away with being so opaque.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

One's a service the other is a piece of hardware and are completely incomparable so there's zero logic to be had there.

It may be a 'little advanced' for you as it compares different things......

Do you always have to be such an insulting troll?

JDS

P.S. I'm still not playing your little game - anyone who could assess logic would have cottoned on by now.

Accusing someone of being an insulting troll doesn't make them so. I actually find your accusation pretty churlish. My posts have been far from insulting and I am sorry if you find disagreement with your point of view so insulting. I would recommend avoiding discussion forums if you have a problem with other points of view.

Broadband usage has increased dramatically and, hence, the cost to provide it has increased. Virgin have overstretched themselves with their speed doubling programme and are trying to recoup infrastructure costs by rinsing the larger part of their customer base with cost increases.

Using a PC more just results in a higher electricity bill, incidentally the reason electricity is priced per unit is because there's a higher incremental cost to the supplier the more of it you use. The cost to provide the components within the PC doesn't go up the more heavily the machine is used hence the comparison is invalid. There's nothing advanced about that in any way.

The cost of providing the infrastructure has dropped though not as much as you might think as it's largely based around civil engineering work and installation costs rather than the actual hardware, the infrastructure required has increased considerably.

I didn't say I liked it, I merely said it made sense, which it does. The majority of VM's customers are on 30Mb, so that's the largest base to rinse with one price rise.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Virgin have overstretched themselves with their speed doubling programme

That's hardly anybodies fault but their own. They obviously decided the only way to compete with Infinity when BT doubled their speeds (probably at zero cost as they just started out with a conservative profile) was to push their creaking infastructure past sensible limits by offering doubled speeds too. To make matters worse sticking to advertising "unlimited" forced them into removing just about all teeth from the STM so now they have to tolerate people constantly seeding torrents in many areas leading to high congestion and presumably more and more customers realising they aren't getting a decent service quitting for alternatives.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

... are trying to recoup infrastructure costs by rinsing the larger part of their customer base with cost increases.

Well I for one won't tolerate a 17% hike since January. Assuming I get notified I'll be calling in and if they don't remove that increase I'll be running that interesting project we discussed in the other thread 24x7 until late October when I'll be back home full time at which point I'll re-order FTTC, pray that Openreach have got their act together after a year, and eventually ditch cable. If that's how it pans out I'll be sure to let you know just how much a VM60 connection can deliver each day - that crawler in the past was more limited by the compression of results files on the ITX I was running it on so this time around I'll try an I5

I can't say I blame you at all. It's a pretty rapid and large series of price increases.

There's rather a provocative amount of work to be done on the network to get things ready for the next tier and keeping up with VDSL on upstream.

I am still thinking BT doubled in reaction to an earlier VM speed increase, the vast majority of speed increases in the past decade have been VM led. I blame noone but VM themselves for the position they are in.

Of course customers need to realise nothing is free in the end, these speed increases were either paid for by previous profits, or future price rises.

Also we cant forget VM have recently changed ownership as well.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 21-Aug-13 14:48:15)

Most people meekly sat and waited a year for their doubling while new customers were getting it immediately. After my aborted Infinity install a year ago I called in and got a doubled package at less than new customer price. It's only recently that my area was doubled. The jitter on my own connection is rather high but I can normally force a full 60Mbps+ out of it with multiple http connections.

If VM continue to run their business like a car boot stall and I can haggle their increase away I'll probably stick with them - if not I may risk TalkTalk who are cheap as chips but I'll check all the deals before I take that option. They used to have an abysmal reputation but I see far fewer complaints that look legitimate these days.