Broadband ISP Virgin Media makes it cheaper for UK customers to re-contract
Some good news to start the week. Existing customers of broadband, TV and phone provider Virgin Media (O2) will be pleased to learn that, come the end of their existing contract term, they are now much more likely to be offered a significantly more affordable renewal deal than before. Some customers have reported seeing out-of-contract deals fall significantly in price.
ISPreview first started to become aware of this over the past week or so. This occurred after a handful of our readers, who are Virgin Media customers, started reporting that the renewal deals being offered by the provider had suddenly become a lot cheaper than they were only days earlier when they checked. At first we ignored this, thinking it part of the usual fluctuations, but as the feedback grew it became clear something bigger had occurred.
Such a situation would normally be considered highly unusual for Virgin Media, which over the years has become quite well-known for hefty post-contract price hikes. In the past it was not uncommon for the provider to offer renewal deals that could double or even triple the monthly price customers were previously paying for their package. This is of course not unique to Virgin, with some other providers playing a similar game.
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“This has been one of the most frustrating things about being a VM customer, it’s not perfect now but my out of contract price improved by over 180% when I took a new deal yesterday. I will still be motivated get a new deal when it expires, but at least it won’t shoot up to a small mortgage payment now,” said Grooves, one of our readers.
The feedback provided enough evidence to suggest that something had recently changed in Virgin Media’s approach and the operator has now confirmed it.
A spokesperson for Virgin Media told ISPreview:
“We’ve been reviewing price changes for customers at the end of their initial minimum term. Whilst we’ve always ensured customers are made aware of how their price may change, with information about any future price changes clearly communicated to customers at the point of sale and included in their contracts, our recent focus has been on reducing the cost in the renewal offer and removing the need for a customer to call us to renegotiate.
This is intended to provide a better overall experience and recognise customer loyalty where they choose to recontract with us, and also means that our end-of-contract offering is among the best of the major UK broadband providers.”
The welcome move, which also seems likely to reduce the provider’s levels of customer churn, is said to be part of their focus on improving customer service and becoming a more customer-focused organisation, which is something they’ve been heavily targeting over the past couple of years.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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And my logic, if they can do it online, someone to renew would be much cheaper than having to haggle and spend up to an hour on the phone. And potentially save money on there, end Could be part of their cost cutting measure
checks date.. it isn’t april 1st o.0
If they’ve cut the price by 170%, they must be paying customers to take their service, rather than the other way round. I suggest a basic course in maths
Probably bad explanation and actually compare between original offer price and new offer price differences of before and after the change. I had a TV bundle that went from around £45 to nearly £160 when using Virgin a few years ago (230% ish). Didn’t stick around. If that 230% fell by 180% then you’re at more like £70.
That’s not how maths works GHJ. Try again.
Similar logic to something priced at £30 being ‘4 times cheaper’ than something priced at £120.
“Similar logic to something priced at £30 being ‘4 times cheaper’ than something priced at £120.”
This really grinds my gears, nearly as much as “4X less” would in the same marketing diatribe.
This is welcome, but it is too late.
The reputational damage out of contract price rises and poor customer service did have already driven customers away.
The reputation will take time to build back up but they need to start gaining customers and revenue right now.
So, if they fall by such a huge amount now, just shows customers were being milked.
It won’t stop my contract cancellation when it’s up, after being a customer since 2007. I’m sick of yearly price increases and haggling on renewals (to date). Also, I seriously doubt they will be on-track to convert HFC to FTTP in my area by 2028 as they’ve done no work at all and I wouldn’t want to be tied to their Hub 5x as there is no modem mode and it should just be an ONT anyway.
Obviously, after so many years of dubious customer service/operating procedures as witnessed day after day in VM user forums for years and various press articles, they are feeling the bite of the glorious Altnets and Openreach based Fibre ISPs. Suggest a significant salary reduction for top team, that should plug a chunk of the debt.
They were indeed milking their customers. They did this because for many people Vigin Media was the only way they could get fast broadband so they knew they could get away with it. Now that openreach has connected most of the population with FTTP and that other isps have connected a few million others with fttp they no longer have that leverage.
The Hub 5x has Modem Mode
I got one in June
The Hub5 for hfc does have modem mode.
The hub5x used for full fibre does not. It has a broken hidden page for modem mode.
Checked Internet and everyone agrees in posts made in September that it still doesn’t. If you have a router with SFP, you can configure an SFP module but its completely unsupported and VM could disable in the future.
Far too late and too little, the horrendous “customer service” based in india which also leads to your details being handed over to indian scammers is why this company has such a bad reputation.
Virgin Media give you a broadband contract @ £23.99 for 24 Months and when you’re out of contract that rises by 150% to £59.99, accept for the odd Penny or two. Is it any wonder customers are leaving them in droves? This supposedly rather late change of track is off course very welcome especially for those who have no other option but VM, but the damage has been done a long time ago!!
For Gig1 HCF I was paying £55.48 P/M. I had to temporarily move out of my house while building work was in progress. Virgin said there was little cost to move £20, well that was rubbish. https://www.virginmedia.com/help/moving-home
I found myself on a new contract with a minimum 18-month term. Because it was a new contract I was forced to pay 2-months upfront + £20 = £129.13. They did honour the remaining term of the previous contract, but nevertheless I was now in another 18-month minimum term contract.
My previous minimum term finished while I was in my temporary home and my monthly payment went from £55.48 to £72.52 and then £83.03. That is a 50% price increase for the same product, and I’m trapped in this for another 18 months!
Time comes to move back to my old house following completion of building works, and yes, if you didn’t already guess, the cost to move back to my permanent home was another new 18-month minimum term contract, and the double payment the month after moving in! £155.60.
So, this is how Virgin Media treats their long-term customers. Virgin wants you on a leash and then they want to milk you for all you are worth. Before this episode I was a happy VM Broadband customer, now I hate them, and as soon as my minimum term is up I’ll be moving over to the best FTTH product I can afford.
I see EE will offer me £200 early termination costs. That looks very tempting and I will pay less as an existing EE customer for a better fibre broadband product.
My advice, avoid Virgin Media like you would the plague or Black Death.
I am sure VM got in hot water over this. Many were raising complaints and having their original contracted term reinstated. I think the issue was (if I remember correctly) that VM were simply slapping a new 18 month contract on the account without making people aware at the time of informing VM that they were moving
Since I went to fibre I get 10x the speed at an under half the cost. Will never go back to Virgin.
Maximum 15% price rise now out of contract
Probably doing this as not that long ago VM were one of the only options for speeds above 100Mbps. Now they have an awful lot more competition with Openreach FTTP they have to step up.
And not a moment too soon. The dismal renewal experience with protracted undignified haggling, calling repeatedly trying to find a mindful operative, every 18 months since time immemorial with Cabletron-Virgin, has been mind-blowing. I almost left for Hyperoptic this time round but in the end got a moderate deal just enough to offset the disruption of a different supplier.
I filled in a detailed report on request, giving Virgin Media 1★, detailing precisely this disgraceful process. Presumably others did likewise and they’ve finally listened. Or more likely they’re haemorrhaging so much custom to Hyperoptic and the like, with the free TV options rendering their expensive packages irrelevant, that they’ve adopted a more pragmatic approach for a bit of customer retention.
+1 to this comment.
I did exactly the same – I wrote war and peace in response to their questionnaire about the dismissal re contract process.
I just cancelled in the end. The next day I got a call from a London number and they offered me £23.99 for the 1Gig which was actually less than we had been paying. Was for a 24 month instead of 18 month contract which I was less pleased about.
I’m one of those who they wanted to triple my contact price to renew.
I was a customer for over 20 years, and for many of those years had all 4 products.
After eventually speaking on the phone to someone, the best they could do was to bring down their initial offer to just over double my monthly bill.
Until then, I was happy to stay with them forever, paying for channels I didn’t necessarily need, a landline I didn’t need, and broadband speeds I didn’t need but they didn’t want that loyalty. They were indifferent on the phone, so I’ve jumped ship. I’m paying about 10% of what they wanted from me and have all the services I need elsewhere.
Things must be bad at VM if they’re.. *checks notes*.. providing reasonable renewal prices.
I just change provider every two years, plug in new router, change the WiFi name and password so my smart stuff logs on, and away we go for another two years. This one touch switch system will need just make it easier than ever. All the providers milk you if you stay,dont
I was out of contract a few years, contacted them to ask for a new deal. Ended up just switching to BT and was done with VM.
Competition is such a beauty isn’t?! Too little too late. These phrases come to mind:
“Give a dog a bad name and hang him”
“Your reputation precedes you”
“Once you’ve got a reputation, it sticks”
“You’re only as good as your reputation”
It will be a fun chat next year when I got to renew. I will put a cancellation request for sure and enjoy the call from Retentions!
What consumers want in 2026:
1. UK Based Call Centres who are actually helpful when things go wrong.
2. A flat fee for the duration of the contract – providers could simply build in the increases to offer a flat price.
3. A fair price at renewal, heck, even a modest discount to reward the continued business would be nice.
Yet, all of these companies are driven by corporate greed. VM are no exception.
Giving VM the benefit of doubt, I suspect the tactic was a ridiculous post contract price to encourage you to re-contract with them. Unfortunately many get caught out by this, particularly the most vulnerable customers they serve, so regardless, I add it to my list of scummy practices by these companies.
It’s always a carry on with these companies. Offered a silly price. Proceed to serve notice. Then get a call from retentions offering a very good deal.
The renewal dance as I call it.
Just cut the crap. Offer your final price. That’s it. And I’m sure it would save them all a few quid in staffing costs for the retention teams.
Anyway, let’s watch this space. Hopefully this is a genuine, permanent change. One that will be welcomed by many. Although I fear if the tables turn and VM start turning a corner, the greed will come back.
I wish they would all just keep their prices down. I hate having to do the merry little dance of trying to keep my prices down every 18 months to two years. Maybe as others suggested, one touch switching has rendered Virgin’s inbound cancellations team surplus to requirement.
I wonder if this was phased in, I renewed earlier in the year, all done online for a decent price (I opted to remove TV). I got a discount but no new contract(I think there was supposed to be one, but nothing shows), which was a suprise.
Previously it was a battle, with removing the TV either costing money, or saving £1-£2 max. Obviously they’ve realised this isn’t working, and instead of recontracting folk were leaving through OTS
They’ve just got rid of one of the call centres in the UK that was handling outbound retentions. People have been reporting for the last couple of weeks that the usual calls begging you to stay have thinned out a lot with many people not getting them at all. Over the past week people calling the usual retentions number are getting connected to agents in the Philippines rather than the UK now.
They appear to be saving money by cutting the UK Based call agents and giving a better offer by self-service means on the website and/or with the usual frontline agents on the phones instead.
This is a good thing for simple, good value renewals. But it’s an awful thing for the UK based staff that used to act as a safety net when things went wrong. As well as having deals to keep you they had the discretion to deviate from a script and apply common sense to sort out an issue if it meant they would then keep you as a customer. So I wouldn’t be surprised if this decision leads to a slight increase in complaints numbers as a result.
Once bitten, twice shy!
However VM no longer hold the crown for being the “speed king”, so for those customers after fast/good enough speeds the majority of the virgin media network footprint is now covered by either Openreach FTTP or Altnet FTTP (iirc VM only have about 6-7% gigabit+ footprint monopoly).
So their only real play left is to start to be nicer to customers, new and old, because its never been so easy for customers to switch. Heck with one touch switching and CWMP, I’m surprised we don’t wee ISP’s offering a “WiFi matching” service, where either an installer or though the use of an app for self installs, the gaining ISP will remote config the new router to match the WiFi config of the old router to reduce the friction of adding your existing devices onto wifi.
This is a functionality on EE when new equipment is sent out.
@John Smith – Interesting, is that for router swaps, when upgrading the router from an older EE router to a new one for example, or is it something they offer to new customers too?
For a straight “router swap”, that would be easy enough for them to do (and any ISP using routers released in the past ~20 years) as they already have remote access to the existing router – periodically backup the router config in case of router failure, or just query the existing router when the replacement is ordered, and restore wifi settings when the new router is provisioned on the network (They could also be nice and restore other things such as dhcp/port forwarding/etc too).
My thinking was that this would be for new customers. Customer/Installer enters their old routers SSID & pass into an app/website, new router gets summoned (tr069/181) or commanded (tr369) to do a wifi scan using the existing diagnostic functions, finds the existing router so it can read the wifi secuirty standard, then sets either the main Wifi to the existing settings or sets up an secondary “virtual AP” (so the ssid/pass on the label still functions), so the majority of the customers existing wifi devices just auto connect to the new router. Can also get “clever” as to not actually apply the changes until the new router doesn’t see the old one any more (for when a customer is switching between networks where an overlap in service could exist for a period of time)
This was very handy info it came at a very good time.
I was able to login to our account and secure a 35% discount on our VM RFoG internet service.
My Virgin contract was up last November, they emailed sometimes in October to say they weren’t increasing the price, and just keep on paying the £40 for 1.2Gig. No phoning them, no faffing. I’be not heard a peep this November yet, so they must just be rolling it on at the same price.
Wouldn’t go back even if they were the only broadband in the area – sooner use my mobile data as the default for the house than suffer their incompetence again.
The worst customer service I’ve ever dealt with in 40 years of dealing with various customer service
My £29 was going up to £55 but by recontracting it would go to £25. Very happy with the service (own router) so I didn’t hesitate
I have been with VM (started as telewest) for over 30 years, trapped by the blueyonder email. Now email is going, there’s nothing keeping me to VM so it’s cheerio VM but you are shafting me no more once my current contract is up. I don’t care how cheap a deal they offer me, their customer service when there’s a problem (of which there are many) is shameful.
Virgin media have made a big mistake with the email service and they will start losing loyal customers. Impacted more if other providers start reducing there prices.
I pay £60 a month for everything , including all sports,movies, other channels, mulitroom, netflix,unlimited landline, 1 gig broadband, so I can’t complain . I never have any tech problems either, I’m happy with vm been with them for 8 years