Haggle to avoid Virgin Media’s price rise (we got £10 off!)

Virgin Media has admitted that you can haggle to avoid the impending price rise on its broadband, and in some cases get huge discounts.

A member of the Computeractive staff even managed to knock £10 off his bill after contacting the customer service team.

The company has angered customers by saying that from November prices will increase by between £1 and £3.49 a month. In a letter sent to customers it wrote: “We understand the price rise is never welcome. However, we aim to keep bringing you more and more value for your money”.

Customers have 30 days after being notified to switch to another provider without a penalty fee.

But Virgin has now said that it will “review price rises on an individual basis”, opening the door for customers to negotiate a smaller increase, or even a reduction in their bill.

The company was responding to a story on the Daily Star’s website, in which a journalist from the newspaper managed to get £6 a month knocked off his bill, and an increase in speed to 100Mbps.

Computeractive bettered this days later by reducing a staff member’s contract by a whopping £10, from £45 to £35. Virgin also increased his speed from 60 to 100Mbps.

However, the first discount offered to us was much lower. After ringing the customer service number 0800 052 0422 we spoke to an assistant who said that we couldn’t avoid a price rise, but that he could reduce it from the maximum £3.49 to £2.41, which would take our monthly bill to £47.41.

When we said that was a disappointing offer, he put us through to another assistant who took little persuasion to reduce the price to £35.