Price Hikes Pain for Virgin Media’s UK Broadband and Phone Customers

The on-going expansion of Virgin Media’s cable network, combined with rising data usage costs, new TV products and faster Internet speeds should perhaps reflect part of the reason why the operator has just revealed another round of annual price hikes, which will hit customers from 1st November 2016.

Customers should start to receive the related letters today and the average increase comes in at around +5.1%, although none of this should be a surprise. Virgin Media has tended to follow the same culture of annual increases as all of the other major providers, which started with BT a few months ago.

As usual the latest round of increases also bust way above the current level of inflation, but then that’s only part of the story (as per the first paragraph of our article).

Key Virgin Media Price Changes 2016/17

* Line Rental rising from £17.99 to £19 per month.

* Line Rental Saver will increase from £184 per year to £196 (equivalent to £16.33 per month).

* Broadband packages and bundles all rising by between around +£3-£4 extra per month.

Virgin has already increased prices for their TV add-ons, calls and mobile plans this year and as a result those aspects will remain unaffected by the latest announcement. Never the less this move is likely to cause frustration for existing subscribers, particularly as it occurs at a time when the economy appears to be suffering a blow from the recent Brexit vote.

Gregor McNeil, Virgin Media’s MD of Consumer, said:

“Customers are doing more online than ever before – data usage continues to grow by 60% every year. At Virgin Media our customers are getting more: faster broadband, an upgraded TV service including a greater choice of box sets and the only place where you can watch all the live footballing action from both Sky and BT Sport in a single package.

We do everything we can to keep prices competitive while striking the balance with investing in more of what our customers want.”

Ofcom’s guidelines for mid-contract price hikes, particularly those that run above the level of inflation, providers subscribers with the option to exit their contract penalty free within 30 days of receiving the price notification letter. Take note that this does not apply to any of Virgin’s optional add-ons, only your primary service subscription. But remember that other ISPs will be imposing the same increases.

Alternatively you can always call Virgin Media and attempt to negotiate a price decrease and then leave if they fail to offer a suitable discount, which works for a lot of subscribers.