"No need for a Phone line" I see nothing has changed with virgin then ?

[NitroNutter]

Quote from page 6 new media brochure dropped through my door today.

"Only on
Virgin Media"
"No Need for a Phone Line"
"Because Our Broadband comes down a superfast fibre optic cable, you dont have to pay for a landline if you dont need one. It is really that simple."

Umm really ok so how come if I dont have a landline supplied by virgin media most package levels actually cost more per anum than if I had it with the phone line ?

eg.

50 Mb line no phone = £33 for 3 months + £38 for 9 months which is a grand total of £441 a year however when taking the 50 Mb line with virgins £11 a month phone line it costs nothing for 2 months then £28 a month for 10 months plus £11 a month for 10 months or 12 months depending on how you read the virgin website as this portion is failry ambiguously worded its not specific if the phone is subject to any free portion in line with the broadband offer or not but even still this totals £390 a year and perhaps an additional £22 for the extra phone line which is still considerably less than the £441

The 20Mb deal works out very smilar and you dont go into any kind of positive territory till you get down to the 10Mb package and the positvity of the savings is distinctly less at aprox £3 a month saving than the £11 line rental a month that it really makes the saving an insult to the average persons intelligence.

Virgin should put this in your bundles pipe and smoke it a bit;

I may be tied to my current phone provider, I may be happy with my current phone provider, as it is also not possible to have adsl on virgins own phone network I may not ever want a virgin media phone line but whenever I look for broadband possibilities I always look at NTL now known as Virgin media and it is not me that rules them out, it is themselves and their ridiculous bundles that do not provide value for money unless your prepared to put all your eggs into one basket, something I would never do after NTLs messed my billing about several years ago. To sumarize Virgin, if you want to sit in my living room again you need to get the foot in the door, and you have failed every year since I left your service. Finally if I was running virgin media I would today be firing the following persons, the person(s) who drafted the new brochure, the person(s) who proof read it, and finally the manager(s) who authorised it as it mounts to nothing less than false advertising as I would be undoubtedly be paying for a phone line even if I do not want it.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by NitroNutter

Umm really ok so how come if I dont have a landline supplied by virgin media most package levels actually cost more per anum than if I had it with the phone line ?

Because Virgin will make more money out of you if you do take one - so they price their services to encourage you to take one.

Needing a landline to get broadband and getting a landline to get a cheaper price are two different things

---------- Post added at 15:45 ---------- Previous post was at 15:41 ----------

as it mounts to nothing less than false advertising as I would be undoubtedly be paying for a phone line even if I do not want it.

No it doesn't.

Virgin say you don't need a landline to take the broadband service, which you don't.

Nowhere does it say that it'll be cheaper if you don't take the landine - because it won't.

[NitroNutter]

I reiterate the quote from the virgin media brochure which the key word highlighted.

"Only on
Virgin Media"
"No Need for a Phone Line"
"Because Our Broadband comes down a superfast fibre optic cable, you dont have to pay for a landline if you dont need one. It is really that simple."

as you can see it clearly is that simple, they state I dont have to pay for a landline if I dont wish to have one but if I chose not to they will charge me more for the privelage which in my opinion is at best misleading, and I would think if consumer direct and/or ofcom were to be notified of this they would probably consider it to be false advertising. The reality is even when carrying the virgin brand they have not changed their ways and dont appear two have two ounces of moral decency or social responsibility to rub together despite the fact they are in a very privelaged position of providing the only alternative public telecomunication service to the UK population to BT as anyone else is just reselling BT's services or piggy backing their BB service onto the BT network.

Typical of todays corporate society and it is this kind of blazen corporate attitude that is the biggest contributor for the current state of the economy which as Mr Branson himself alledgedly put it a while back, "The economy is f...."

[m419]

Well there isn't a need for phone line, some areas don't have Virgin phone lines, Marylebone in Westminster the ex-BT cable franchise supports Virgin Broadband and Analogue TV but Virgin can't sell there phone service there anymore as part of the lease rules for the franchise even though the telephone network exists there.

Orginally,Videotron built the telephone network there but intended to offer ADSL and IPTV services on it. But in 2000, BT stopped NTL offering it to residential users, eventually NTL rolled out broadband there to some parts of the BT cable franchise, so rather than use a BT line, you might as well use something like Vonage and save a packet???

[beeman]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Nowhere does it say that it'll be cheaper if you don't take the landine - because it won't.

Your absolutely right they dont say its cheaper so its not false advertising, they do how ever imply its cheaper making it misleading. though im sure they've had it checked by their lawyers to make sure its just on the right side of the ASA guidlines (then again VM have followen faul of ASA several times.....

My favourite one was an add they had on the side of the busses about a year ago. It was something along the lines of "dont be tied to your phone, VM broadband only £X per month" the in the "legal stuff" which you could only read if you where standing less then a meter away from the bus "when taken with a VM phone line for £y per month".

[Raistlin]

Originally Posted by NitroNutter

I reiterate the quote from the virgin media brochure which the key word highlighted.

"Only on
Virgin Media"
"No Need for a Phone Line"
"Because Our Broadband comes down a superfast fibre optic cable, you dont have to pay for a landline if you dont need one. It is really that simple."

Reiterate it as much as you like by all means, but the facts are:

1. You don't need a telephone line to receive Cable Broadband, and
2. If you don't need one, then you don't have to have one, and therefore you don't have to pay for one.

The fact that they choose to provide you with a discount for taking multiple services is immaterial to your argument. The advert is factually correct.

[NitroNutter]

Originally Posted by Rob M

Reiterate it as much as you like by all means, but the facts are:

1. You don't need a telephone line to receive Cable Broadband, and
2. If you don't need one, then you don't have to have one, and therefore you don't have to pay for one.

The fact that they choose to provide you with a discount for taking multiple services is immaterial to your argument. The advert is factually correct.

Well in normal circumstances when taking multiple services/products from a company where you qualify for a discount it still usually tots up to being above the price of only having a single product, showing virgin media are far from normal or from another angle are an all or nothing company and have no interest in clientelle thats not taking their full packages. I cannot and will not suport such a company, furthermore this reflects across the entire virgin brand as virgin media is as big a household name today as most of the other virgin brands what one does is certainly going to reflect across them all, and I still have a bad taste from virgin when they entered the power industry and tried to steal my power services from my current providers with their poor telesales.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by NitroNutter

Well in normal circumstances when taking multiple services/products from a company where you qualify for a discount it still usually tots up to being above the price of only having a single product

It does with Virgin Media as well:

BB L by itself is £20
BB L + Phone M is £23.50

BB XL by itself is £30
BB XL + Phone M is £31

BB XXL by itself is £38
BB XXL + Phone M is £39

So taking a phoneline with broadband costs more than broadband by itself - however the overall value is cheaper than having broadband by itself and a landline from another provider

[NitroNutter]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

It does with Virgin Media as well:

BB L by itself is £20
BB L + Phone M is £23.50

BB XL by itself is £30
BB XL + Phone M is £31

BB XXL by itself is £38
BB XXL + Phone M is £39

So taking a phoneline with broadband costs more than broadband by itself - however the overall value is cheaper than having broadband by itself and a landline from another provider

You have failed to take into account the two free months when taking on broadband with a phone line which does not apply to those chosing not to have a virgin phone line which is detailed in the original post that correlates the differences to per anum rather than per month which shows even you can be mislead.

Besides even following your calculations that exclude any introductory offer the argument that the saving of £1, £1, or £3.50 respectively is really a moot point as its not going to do much going towards any current tie in with a current phone provider and is really an insult to the average persons intelligence.

whats ironically funny is the brochure itself iterates the ability to provide the virgin broadband service without having to pay for a phone line on multiple occasions but it fails to ever declare what any prices are without one.

[Stephen]

It doesn't mention the cost as thats not the point of the comments.

Its basically saying that unlike ADSL you DO NOT need a phone line to get cable broadband.

[NitroNutter]

Originally Posted by Stephen

It doesn't mention the cost as thats not the point of the comments.

Its basically saying that unlike ADSL you DO NOT need a phone line to get cable broadband.

Well unfortunately the keyphrase "pay for a landline" is used and by doing so makes cost very relevant

[Stephen]

No its saying if you get VM broadband thats all you need. Where as with ADSL you need to pay for a landline as well as your ADSL package.

[NitroNutter]

Originally Posted by Stephen

No its saying if you get VM broadband thats all you need. Where as with ADSL you need to pay for a landline as well as your ADSL package.

I see no mention of refering to being in comparison to alternative delivery methods of a broadband service so to me there is no relevance in that comparison within the document, I do however see mention relative to cost.

[Stephen]

Originally Posted by NitroNutter

I see no mention of refering to being in comparison to alternative delivery methods of a broadband service so to me there is no relevance in that comparison within the document, I do however see mention relative to cost.

Well if you think about it what I said is the most logical answer. I think most people would come to that conclusion too.

Originally Posted by NitroNutter

Quote from page 6 new media brochure dropped through my door today.

"Only on
Virgin Media"
"No Need for a Phone Line"
"Because Our Broadband comes down a superfast fibre optic cable, you dont have to pay for a landline if you dont need one. It is really that simple."

Also this sentence in your post from the brochure confirms my point that they are simplay comparing cable not needing a landline to ADSL.

It makes no mention of price just that if you don't want a landline you don't have to take it.

[NitroNutter]

Originally Posted by Stephen

Well if you think about it what I said is the most logical answer. I think most people would come to that conclusion too.

Also this sentence in your post from the brochure confirms my point that they are simplay comparing cable not needing a landline to ADSL.

It makes no mention of price just that if you don't want a landline you don't have to take it.

Regardless of how you take in the information from that sentence in regards to delivery method in comparison to alternative methods of which today you can get broadband from multiple suppliers other than virgin media and still not have the need for a landline, it still uses the term "pay for a landline" within that sentence and is therefore directly relative to promoting potential cost saving to the customer which simply put does not exist when you do the maths.