Virgin phoneline to rise another £3 a month

I'm paying £54 per month !

Yuh Cheapskate !

It is Three network on a  Iphone 6 Plus.....and I can change contract or upgrade now though.

Thats for the network service Im refering to.
Akin to the service of a landline line rental, since the cost of the mobile phone isnt really to the benefit of the carrrier.

Virgin selling old rope, and charging a premium for it.

I hear they are going to have to change their name to Old Wh*re soon, due to the trades descriptions Act

(Stephen....normal rates apply if you use that )

I'm with VM and I pay about £55 per month (after the recent price rise). This includes unlimited calls to other Uk landlines 24/7, basic TV package, but does include ATR and 150Mb broadband.

But VM have been upping their charges over the last few years and it has been much higher then the rate of inflation!

The main reason I'm sticking with them is because of their fast and (generally) reliable broadband speed. I can't imagine me going back to the BT copper cable broadband system. Also, a friend of mine who is also with VM cancelled his landline and TV package, but is still paying about £35 per month for the lowest speed broadband option (50Mb) which to me is a lot considering what he's getting.

I'm staying with BT :
.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2016/may/05/bt-roll-out-superfast-broadband-4g-6bn-investment

Moke
Thats the same as me, I only have the broadband now for £36 a month.
They do overcharge the less you take, but thats the crazy world of profiteering economics we live in....where you can actually add stuff to a package on their website and the price actually FALLS
It just goes to show that even they see much of their content as worthless.

Still, the fewer things you take that you dont require, the less overall overcharge you experience.
They can keep upping the speed to numbers that mean nothing or add tv packages that never in a sane person's mind would they entertain, while trying to find reason not to drop prises that they should as a technology company at heart.

100MB fibre broadband package should have decreased in price relative to its placing within the market of increasing competition that are governed by Moores law.
But they dont, they get artificially held up or even increased over time.
Its about subsidising the tripe content they spew out in tv package deals to pay rights holders of garbage tv that brainwashes a generation of fools.
Ill lose a few quid each month on just the internet rather than fork out excess for s hit I dont need.

left them behind. no more direct debit cash to Virgin. not paying them after i'm gone. it's a pull bank transaction. they can dip into your account.

I do save a small amount with VM by taking their offer up of paying the line rental 12 months in advance, but even that deal is not as good as it used to be, but still worth doing I reckon as the saving is about 14% over the full pay per month line rental cost. Last year the saving was about 30% if you took up the advanced payment option!

Regarding the TV package - the only thing I watch these days is the ATR channel during the afternoons racing, a little BBC4, but not much else really.

I get my entertainment from reading funny Betfair Forum comments and watching certain Youtubers who I occasionally follow. As far as I'm concerned, Youtube has overtaken the mainstream media for entertainment. I can watch/listen to virtually any piece of music on Youtube/Spotify whenever I like.

I used to take that saver too, and if you are buying a package all at the same time it's a no brainier.
However it's just another contrived mechanism since they leverage the fact they have your guaranteed custom for another 12 months on a product that is losing market share to newer products.
They also stagger the contracts now and then on the tv/broadband packages so that they create an overlap, so that one way or another if you take all services at some point a 'deal' has run out and you are having to pay top whack before you can move supplier.
Tease and squeeze marketing its called and something like 70% of customers who buy anything from utilities to bank accounts suffer from inactivity that overpays on a product.

The bottom line is that the standard phone line can't upgrade, it has nowhere naturally to go other than become cheaper with time, but it actually rises which is the biggest pi ss take of them all.
It's like digging out a parasite getting rid of these contrived packages.

Also, beware now of phoning mobiles from a VM landline. It's very expensive (not included in the 24/7 free calls package). They've been upping the cost of phoning mobiles from landlines for quite some time now hoping that customers haven't noticed.

So, any phone calls to mobiles is now from my own mobile - much cheaper than using the landline. Last time I checked I think it cost over 20p per minute from my VM landline to any UK mobile number. From my mobile to any UK number (landline or mobile) is 6p per minute (I'm PAYG).

The notification letter of the price increase actually arrived today.
So it must have been in the post as I was cancelling the service.

Felt good reading the nonsense for once smiling to myself that they not longer could strong arm me with these forced increases.

'we know a price rise is never welcome news....'
Staged rhetoric from script attempting to manipulate the customer into thinking we are all on the same side.

FY Virgin Media, I declined my custom.

dustybin - yes, I've been very tempted to do the same whenever these greater than inflation price rises come along, but I really do like my 150Mb broadband, but there will come a time that if they consistently keep upping the price, then there will be a tipping point and I'll look around for alternatives.

I suppose I don't like change really, and therefore I'm paying for the convenience of what I've got. It would just be a hassle to change everything over back to the old BT line. But never say never as they say - I'll be keeping an eye on things and an ear to the ground, but any alternative would have to be a LOT cheaper for me to change at the moment.

I guess you're changing more on the principal of the thing rather than any huge cost saving?

Well Im changing due to pointlessness of having the old landline in addition to the mobile now that mobile are reliable and cheaper.

You were never able to rid the landlane until relatively recently.

I too will continue to have the broadband as its perhaps the best available.
Infact in the letter they tell me my 100MB will be boosted to 200MB soon for free, though what 'free' intails now Ive cancelled the phoneline can only be guessed at.

I cancelled the tv several years ago and never for one moment missed it, now I suspect the same for the phoneline.

My mate, like you has recently got rid of his landline with VM. I used to contact him for free of course before he changed. So to contact him now, I can only talk to him on his mobile which costs me money.

However, I have managed (after quite some persuasion) to get him to install Skype on his smartphone which he was very reluctant to do (I think he just couldn't be bothered with the hassle of doing something which he didn't know anything about.) Anyway managed to get him to install it after much huffing and puffing on his part, but now he's familiar with it I think he secretly admits to himself that it is in fact a very useful communication tool - and it's free for both parties of course as long as we are both in a wifi zone. Not to be used though if you are PAYG on a 3G or 4G mobile internet connection!