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Virgin Media Price hikes coming soon leaves customers fuming
# 5 February 2012, 01:12 by Cable Forum
At a time of great hardship when unemployment is at an all time high since the 1990’s, those who are in work seeing no wages increase and with it being mentioned every other day in the news, that Britain is on the brink of entering a Double-Dip Recession and the Eurozone economic crisis looming just around the corner, it hasn’t stopped Virgin Media hiking up their prices from April 1st 2012.
From April 1st 2012, and no it’s not an April fools (if only). Virgin Media are set to increase prices between £1 and £3 on a number of packages. Customers could well see their monthly bills rise just short of £3.
From end of this month, new or existing customers wanting the XL TV TiVo pack, will have to pay £5 a month (currently £3) from April 1 that’s a 66% increase. Current TiVo subscribers will not see any increase unless they order an additional TiVo box after February 28th.
In addition, Virgin Media are making a number of changes to their phone usage charges:
- They are changing the time when daytime rate begins. This will move from 6am – 6pm, to 7am to 7pm.
- The standard Call Connection fee is increasing from 13.24p to 14.94p
- The local and national daytime calling rate for all their standard talk plans is changing from 8.68p to 9.94p
- For customers on Talk Off Peak, the evening rate is increasing from 5.1p to 6.1p
The Price rises announcement follows their recent advertisement campaign claiming Virgin Media Broadband customers are getting a ‘Free’ speed increase. Customers speeds are set to double on some tiers, the top soeed tier of 100 Mbps to increase to 120 Mbps, but the sheer logistics of the process will take around 18 months to complete and will roll out from end of this month.
Commenting on the price rises announcement – An angry VM customer said on our forum:-
“I’m sorry but this is a joke. Anyone telling me £2 is nothing and to stop moaning. I would if it was “just” £2. EVERYTHING is going up in price just because they can. Every direct debit I have seems to keep increasing by “JUST” £X. Well it JUST takes the flippin mick now. Are my wages going up “JUST” £X. No they aren’t. They can JUST shove their £2 up their bums. Right when we are told to watch F1 next year it will be over £20 more per month for the sky sports channels. Nice. Not happy. If anything else goes up like line rental etc I think I am going to go over to sky sadly after 10 years with virgin/ntl.”
Not every customer is angry though, some customers hope the increases will help improve services and Virgin Media get more HD channels.