Pricing and OFCOM rules

My M100 monthly cost (with phone) went up to £60.50 in August and VM wouldn't go below £40 for a new contract prompting me to get an Openreach install and sign up with BT FTTP. No sooner was this up and running (took a few months) than I get the inevitable call from the customer retention dept.... Long and short is they are now offering M200 with phone for £25.

I made the point that it would have been helpful to have had this conversation 3 months ago when I first discussed renewal but was told that "OFCOM don't allow us to make you the best offer until you choose to leave". I really find this rather hard to believe. Does anyone know if there is any truth in this or can point me towards the relevant OFCOM rule here?

I'm sorely tempted to keep the BT contract (still in the first 14 days) as I'm so fed up with going through this process every 18 months, but the offer is probably too good to refuse and now the fibre line is in I have a bigger stick to beat VM with at renewal time.

Incidentally, as part of this process I discovered VM's website doesn't show you new customer pricing if they think you are already a customer - I needed to connect via a VPN and use a cookie-free (private) browser session before I could see offers for new customers. Surely this is anti-competitive?

I don't think that they are allowed to initiate contact with the prime purpose of getting you to stay after you have started the process. You can of course contact them during the process.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

I don't think that they are allowed to initiate contact with the prime purpose of getting you to stay after you have started the process. You can of course contact them during the process.

This was originally the case but changed in 2014 (GC22.15).

Matt

paritycheck

Lot of BS, VM can make you any offer they like at any time. They choose not to give you the best offer until you choose to leave in the hope you will take a worse offer.!

Take the BT offer and try the service or take the VM offer you are the customer. ( I would take the BT offer on moral grounds having caused them to do spend to do the provision then swap once out of contract, but you may feel differently)

The trick with Vermin Media is to switch it each contract period between your name and your wife's name, coping with the few hours of downtime you usually have.

That's what we do.

Yeah, I might have a bit more sympathy for BT if it hadn't taken three months of arguing with them and Openreach to get to the stage where they acknowledged I could get FTTP installed, when I can actually see the kit on a pole from my living room window.

VM are clearly very keen to make the effort to retain customers but I don't like the attitude of viewing existing customers as cash cows until they are prepared to leave. Pretty sure my elderly father (who has been with VM since they were Telewest and doesn't really have any other options) is paying them £70-80 for a load of services he doesn't use. Pity the new rules on insurance renewals for new vs existing customers don't extend to telecoms.

I left VM after 18 years because of lies like this and always having to wait until the last moments to get the retentions deal. Too late to get anything else by then.
The last nail in the coffin was an area manager who called to the house and promised all kinds of things. I cancelled within the day when I checked his claims and found they were a load of bull!

Yeah... Some member of staff are better than others, It's only when I said that I was going to migrate to another ISP that I started receiving emails, texts and a better offer, the only catch is I had to lose my phone