With such a compelling and descriptive argument I'll be sure to give Sky a call!

I used to love nothing more than losing my Satelite signal whenever there was a light breeze...

And my BB running at 4mb was even more enjoyable.

I personally can't wait to go back :smirk:

Hi all

I work for VM, and they have told us that the Tivo monthly charge is going upto £5 pm from 1st April, But for new connections only...

So if you are thinking of getting Tivo, do it now, as the price will stay at £3 for existing subsriptions

Virgins crap, join Sky.

Dont bother, it is horrendous. Dont listen to engineers, they just dont know. Very,very very slow, getting worse. Rebooting complete waste of time.

I assume there is no issue in cancelling, and rejoining under the mrs's name - therefore getting the new deals???

Anyone done this?

I just had a call from virgin offering me a fantastic deal as a loyal customer. 60Mb broadband and a Tivo. They said the Tivo would be £49.99 for the one off installation, which I initially agreed to. Then when they explained the costs on my next bill there was a mysterious £20 something appeared which the sales person kept trying to tell me "Don't you worry, you are receving 95%" discount. Also my bill would increase by over £10 a month. It seems new customers get free installation, so I didn't go ahead with it. Not happy that they didnt explain the costs correctly the first time, and the sales guy kept trying to tell me it was still a saving as i was getting a new router. Well thats great, except my existing one works perfectly well, and new customers also get a free router.

I had a phone call on Friday, as an existing customer you have offered me a Tivo box for just 3 pound extra per a month leaving the other box here, and you will put it where i want it, is that right, you are suppose to put it in the house on Wednesday of this week. I want to be sure that i am right in all this.

I would like a reply A S A P.

Thank You

sky are no contender, if ya want super fast broad band and a good no hassel tv provider choose virgin. u dont lose picture in a match lol.
virgin runs off underground cables not satalites so there is no interferance sky are crap allways have been allways will be, trust me virgin are up and up they are even doubling broardband speeds so if u pay for 10 mbps u get 20 mbps for same price or if u are 30mbps u get 60mbps for same price. I VOTE VIRGIN EVERY TIME, SKY ARE **** JUST LOOK AT THE MATCH LAST WEEK LOL.
ive had virgin for 6 years now and i love it.

I suppose I should post my experiences here - I went for the TiVo on M+, it appears I need to restart the thing every 5 days. It locks up and after a restart (which takes a good 5 minutes) I can turn the channel and count up to 5 before I see a picture on the screen! When I complained I was met with hostility (Which I lodged an official complaint about). iPlayer doesn't always work - and worse the on demand doesn't have any of the stuff I want to watch (I can find it available on line though). Can't figure out how to scroll the text when reading the info about a programme....

RTP, i'd leave if i was you. Worst mistake i made switching completely to Virgin. Had nothing but problems with my broadband, Tivo etc. since the install.

I was on the phone for nealry an hour trying to resolve my issues with no luck, i gave up in the end.

Also, i tried getting out with the 28 day money back , but they said i couldn't due to me having the services already. I upgraded my bog standard cable box to 1 Tivo and 2 V+ boxes, went from 50 Meg BB to 30 Meg, and the phone stayed the same.

Regards
Mark.

I never get offered these deals! I've been with Virgin for around four years and currently out of contract. I have broadband L and TV L (no phone) and I'm paying £33 (going up by £3.50 from April). I just called them to say I'm unhappy with the price increase and would like to leave unless Virgin reduced my bill or gave me more for same amount. The best they could offer was to increase my broadband speed from 10mbps to 30mbps and replace my old router with a new 'home hub'. I mentioned new customers getting HD box installation and activation for free and all the Tivo stuff mentioned here. They can't do any of that. This was customer service and the disconnection department (or whatever it's called) was closed. So I'm going to call back tomorrow. But seems this is the best I can get. Or I'm doing something very wrong!

FWIW, I love my Tivo and don't know how I lived without one!

Hi,

I've not been impressed with the Tivo box or the V+ boxes since installation. Can i ask how the 28 day rule works. Am i right it saying i can call up and say i am not happy with my new packages and wish to cancel?

As stated in this link: http://shop.virginmedia.com/money-back-guarantee.html

I have been with Virgin for 13 years and just updated my 10 year old cable box to 1x Tivo, and 2x V+ boxes

Any advice is greatly appreciated.

fair enough - seems that i'll have to be a bit more reasonable. Thanks for the feedback.

you will not get the £50 credit either


you can only be a "new" customer when you join

you will not qualify for 3 months free as an existing customer it's purely for new customers....you need to look at it thus...after the new customer free period they pay standard prices, you are paying below standard prices with what you have been offered.....

VM reckon this rate is not possible, i been with them years as well and cant get this rate and i have a lot of loyalty's as well. can you provide and evidence of this rate?

I'm not sure it is a good deal compared to what new customers get. Here's my maths for a new customer signing up today.

£20 p/m x18 (I understand it has to be a 18m contract) = £360
- £50 credit = £310
- 3months free = £250

£13.90 x 18 = £250.20

£250+250.20 = £500.20

£500 /18 = £27.78 (on average per month)

VM have offered me the same package for £36.90 - not a good deal in my view!

Don't you agree?! I loath having to pay almost £10 more than a new customer.

what you have been offered is a good deal as vm's base pack at the moment, m+tv m tel and 10 meg bb is 33.90 add £3 for tivo and thats 36.90 so for 1.00 more you are getting xl bb which is a min of 20 meg increasing to 60 meg

I say thats a great deal esp with no 49.95 install

osianroberts - is £37.90 not a good deal then? If it's worth it to you, forget what others may or may not have achived, surely?

just called retentions for my mate, didn't let on i worked for v.m and said i was unhappy with price increase, straight away the agent said he could reduce my package and even after the april increase, it would be lower than it currently is.

I then mentioned tivo free for new customers online and again, no issues, he gave me that free and free install

then on to broadband, knowing the 10 meg will increase to 20 and the 20 meg will increase to 60, i queried the cost to increase to 20 meg and he said i could pay the same for the overall package as i currently pay even after the bb and tivo increase, so all in all very happy with 15 mins on the phone and no need to haggle.

and as i said, i didn't let on i work for vm

I'm presuming you work for retentions, if so could you answer a quickie for me?

I've got (large) loyalty discounts for life, is there any way I can change my package without affecting the discounts? I want to increase the BB speed but every time I've rang the price has more than doubled.
At the moment I have
Talk Mobile (which I don't need but have been told I can't remove or I lose the loyalty discounts)
BB Medium
Talk Unlimited
TV Medium
Phone line
for £26.69 a month.
Last time I rang to take talk mobile off and increase to 30mb the price increased to £50ish. Going from 10mb to 30mb should only be £5 more (minus talk mobile) but they say if I change my package at all the loyalty discounts will be removed :disappointed:

been a nightmare at work today, system issues in a few depts also unable to transfer to retentions, hope it's all sorted tomorrow

Just had a chat with Virgin about the price increase and I am unable to get through to cancellations but I will Wednesday.
The advisor told me she has taken so many calls from unhappy people about Virgin sales telling Customers about their price fixes and then getting letters about a price increase!
Seems most people are getting something from Virgin then.

Got mine installed, the guy said if you go on holiday for 2 weeks you must put it on standby or "it gets a signal from America and it blows up' - he must be a techie!

ok, finally done it, cancelled sky. On my 4th person in virgin retensions as I have 50mmbb and umlimited calls, got the same as now, but they threw in 1 x 1tb tivo, 1 x 500mb tivo, xl tv with movies and £50 credit. installing this friday. Saving a few pounds a month and daughter happy as she will get the free spotify for 4 months. Now just need to order the media extenders to use the magic eye in the bedrooms

iodax - good heads up on the Breaking Bad - I'm not sure I like the end being show at the beginning though! Have you watched Suits yet? I can't wait for season 2!

I had my first TiVo fault - couldn't get the 'free' Spotify to work (they 'forgot' to activate it), then my TiVo box locked up as well!
Over a solid hour on the phone and a total of 3 hours today - I actually have a life, I just want my entertainment to work when I am at home and be relaxed not stressed out getting it to work!
FFS, bring back the analogue terrestrial TV! I might have only been able to watch 3 channels (or 4 if I could put up with the ghosting), but at least there was something to watch!
Everything on the TiVo I have ether seen or I don't want to watch! Oh and how many ad breaks!
My Spotify has hung now...
I'm heading out to the cinema (no seriously - I've tickets to watch a re-screening of the God Father LOL!)

Have now received a VM bill and currently my monthly package works out to £35.40 per month for: Tivo and V+ in another room (both are TV XL)
Wireless Broadband L (which is about to double to 20MBPS)
Talk weekends and telephone line rental

This package also includes a loyalty discount of £11 per month, in addition to the one-off £10 discount they gave me. Also, I did initially pay a one-off £49.95 activation fee because I opted for the larger 1TB Tivo box.

So, all in all Virgin Media have done exactly as promised, the customer service and instillation were superb in my opinion, and I'm a huge fan of the Tivo service. It does take some getting used to and adjusting if you're used to another system like Sky or V+ and initially it may not seem that intuitive. But as soon as you learn your way around it, Tivo absolutely rocks!

Oh and last but not least - for those who haven't discovered it yet - there's an award winning Tv show that's not made it over the the UK yet but is a massive hit in the US (currently filming season 5), called "Breaking Bad". Along side The Wire and 24 it's one of my all time favourite shows and you can find most of Season 1 and 2 on YouTube. Enjoy!

:sunglasses:

Thanks OP - will give it a go.

BUMP:

This is now available to do in Virgin Media stores, this weekend only, any customer can get a Free 500GB TiVo box with free installation. £3pm for the TiVo service, which if you book after 28th Feb goes to £5pm. So book this weekend for the cheapest you'll get TiVo for a long while

Ok, so I got my TiVo box installed seems fine, but I'm paying nearly £50/month for Virgin Media services & close to £150/year for a TV license - how do I turn off the adverts?
I just channel surfed through 75 channels of adverts ffs!
:stuck_out_tongue:

Oh and FYI - it does have an optical out!

Edit to add this - I have become miffed by the fact that when you search it shows what you want to watch, you then select it and it reports that it is currently unavailable!? WTF?!

yes that should be the case

Andy - I am on M+ TV and at the moment pay £5 extra for my V+HD box. So to be clear, post TiVo install and the move of my V+ HD box, I will be £3 for the TiVo and £6.50 for the multi-room and the £5 for the V+ HD stops so I go from £5 extra to £9.50 - correct ??

Thanks in advance

Only took me 10 minutes, but a wins a win!

I agree though, I wrote down my strategy (letter about price increase, new customers getting better deals, Sky offering good deals) and she said "Tell me what you want and I'll see what the best deal is" - and 10 minutes later it was done :-)

Just spoke to two Customer Relations reps, both were very helpful (and UK based).

My current package is £53.40 (inc paper bill/non-DD charges @ £6.50).

After quite a bit of checking, asking and encouragement, my new package will be £52.90 for three months, then £59.40, including the price increase, so once I'm on paperless/DD it will be £52.90 (less than I pay now!) after the price increase. This includes entering into new 12 month contract.

Services have been upgraded as follows:
Thanks to all on the thread, especially the OP iodax, smulx and Andy1300! I got NatWest to refund me £75 charges yesterday too - maybe I'll see what I can get out of British Gas next :P

If it's any help to those who haven't gone through this yet, bear in mind that you're basically getting more than £100 worth of hardware and services for free, so put a bit of effort into it! Take a couple of hours to read the whole thread like I did, build a package on the Sky website to compare costs, and have it all written down in front of you, along with your latest bill when you make the call. I spent nearly two hours negotiating the above deal, and am very pleased, considering our payment history has been chequered at best!

Thanks to those who have helped, and good luck to those yet to try!

I got Large BB, XL TV and M phone plus a free TIVO and extra box for £47.40 as I'm paying the install fee and having the £3 fee knocked off each month. It's only £7 more than I'm paying now, it was going up £3.50 anyway, so I'm happy.

Andy - if I get my V+HD box moved to another room when my TiVo gets installed, do I still pay the £5 for the V+ box AND £6.50 for the multi-room ?

Yeh, probably right. Rang them back, the now have knocked off £25 a month for first 3 months. Now, if I ring them back again, I wonder if they will change one of tivo to a 1tb one?

Bloody annoyed.
Re-ring retensions to find out the previously person missed off sky movies.

I have already 50mb BB and phone, plus 2 x Sky HD, and multiroom (all channels apart from sports) and tv links

Virgin best deal so far foo 2x tivo, 50mb bb, movies and std phone is £100.25 a month and a free second tivo and installation. This only works out a few quid cheaper than sky with existing phone and bb costs. They wont budge on any additional discounts as been with them like 15 years+. Talk about frustrated as seems others are getting far better deals.

Thank you very much for your quick replies Andy.
Clears everything up for me.

Regards
Mark.

also as long as you order by 27th you will be able to keep the v+ on your account

just had info that v+ will not be offered from 28th feb so if you want one phone before then

Andy,

I'm due an install on Friday and just want to get confirmation from you if possible about the V+ Box.

Are they still doing them?
I ordered a Tivo and 2x V+ Hd boxes. But upon checking the Virgin media website, the V+ Hd boxes are nowhere to be seen? Only Tivo and V Hd boxes. Am i missing something?

Thanks
Mark.

Don't know why I'm bothering to type this..

The £3 Tivo fee can not under any circumstances be reduced to £2 like it says in the original post. If you have Tivo, the £3 charge will be applied to your account. There aren't different kinds of Tivo that cost different amounts, it's £3, end of. If the OP was offered a £10 loyalty credit this could possibly have been increased to £11 to offset part of the Tivo cost, but the monthly fee certainly wasn't adjusted from £3 to £2.

If someone was given a manual credit to refund the cost of Tivo for the whole year, it must have been the first day on the job for the person they were speaking to and they had no idea what they were doing, or it was their last day and they were trying to **** people off on their way out. If everyone starts phoning trying to get big credits added, you're absolutely wasting your time. I'm not going to go in to detail about how everything works with credits, loyalty discounts, targets, etc. but people just aren't going to add a new deal and a manual credit for something like Tivo. No one that I know ever has done it or would even consider doing it. It has nothing to do with how long you've been a customer or whether you think you deserve to not pay three whole pounds for the most advanced PVR available from any of the TV suppliers (which also includes HD), doing that would cause us more trouble than it's worth and would massively restrict how much we're able to help other people with things as simple as getting them on to a better deal.

Remember you're speaking to a person that's working within the confines of their job. We obviously don't have free reign to do whatever the hell we want. We have to work within certain limitations. If it came down to a choice of putting someone on a good retentions deal, free Tivo and refunding the three pound monthly fee for the year or disconnecting the account, I'd disconnect it every time. It would be like the Easter bunny going around giving kids easter eggs. But the first kid really needs ALL of the eggs. So the bunny gives all the eggs to the first kid to keep them happy, then has nothing left for the rest of them. I'm sure everyone is thinking "screw that, you're just a dick, I'll phone and speak to someone that's helpful and generous" but trust me, there may be one idiot that's refunding the annual Tivo cost but everyone else that works there wouldn't ever do it.

Here's a quick example to let you know the kind of stuff we deal with. Spoke to someone that wasn't happy with the price increase in April. I should have said "okay, got you on a new deal, you price wont increase now, BYE". Instead I go out of my way to help him, as I do with everyone. Get him on the highest loyalty discount we can do with his deal so his price will now decrease come April. He mentioned a new TV, so I offered to send him a VHD box completely free, he didn't even have to ask. He mentioned he had an old router, so I offered him a brand new one, he didn't have to ask for that either. You'd think he'd be over the moon, but then it started... "What else can I have?". He couldn't have anything else. I'd given him what he'd asked for and much more, but obviously that was a mistake. The conversation continued for a further 15 minutes with him begging me for more. He didn't even know what he wanted. He just wanted anything. It went on and on and on, it was like he was starving on the street and begging for scraps of food. Eventually he said he wanted to disconnect if he couldn't have anything else, so I just told him I'd disconnect the account.

My point is, like I said before, we don't have the freedom to do whatever we want. Most people will go out of their way for you and do everything they can and 99% of customers are happy with this. I'm sure no one cares and will still end up calling repeatedly trying to get credits added, but I'm just trying to save you the time. There will always be people that think it's as simple as "Virgin are a company. They have more money than me so I should have to pay for stuff".

if you don't already have an offer on your account i.e 3 months free upgrade then yes you should qualify for a 3 month free upgrade to the next tier of service

I rang up & got 3 free months, M+ 500Gb TiVo, 30Mb & telephone for an extra £6.50 a month. It'll be £40.50 after 3 months is up...
I then went onto the web site and noticed this:
Your first 3 months free worth at least £60
Free installation worth £49.95
Free TiVo box activation worth £49.95
£50 off your bill when you order by 29 February, so get in quick!

Grr - did I just get short changed? Should I ring back and ask for this £50 off?

is this for free? i called up VM today and the sales rep told me that yes i could upgrade / downgrade at will but would be charged for the package on a pro-rata basis.... how do i get this 3 month upgrade free ?? :smiley:

I'm tempted to phone up about this TiVo probably to also get 50mb broadband as well, we won't be getting double speeds in our area for another 8+ months or so mind.

Only concern is it's taken my mum well over a year to get used to the very basics of the V+ remote, i'm hearing the TiVo remote is every technophobes worst nightmare for some reason, is it fairly easy to navigate through? (Saying that, my mum just goes from memory what channels she wants to watch, she doesn't go through the menu's really)

So far i'm paying £55 per month for XL TV, BB and calls plus line rental,so the TiVo service shouldn't break the bank so much.

Anyone got them to give a few months half price like new customers get?
Have BB and phone and thinking of ditching sky as it will save me a few quid but as I need 2 x tivo boxes and will no doubt have an overlap with sky ending, trying to reduce the outlay.

So I spoke to virgin again and spoke to a nice chap.

As it happens I am entitled to loyalty discount but he can't apply it until after the tivo box had been installed so he will call back in a couple of weeks.He's quoted me the price for 2 diff packages and both are good. Hope he does call me back so I can get the discount

Andy is right, the Tivo has a built in modem which uses the same cable as the TV signal. It doesn't need to connect to your router so you wont have to change anything at all.

I do have one question which smulx or some other helpful bod maybe able to answer.

We have the engineer coming on tues to install the tivo. Currently the feed for all VM's cables into our house is downstairs in the corner behind the TV in the living room. The current VM broadband modem (not a Superhub) also lives downstairs behind the TV.

We then feed an ethernet cable to the bedroom upstairs where our own router lives. This router provides Internet connectivity via wireless and physical connections to 1 desktop, 2 laptops, 1 xbox360(via powerline to another room where the wireless signal is pants) and a couple of smartphones.

Now what I am unclear on is what the engineer will actually need to install for the Tivo. I was under the impression that it uses a seperate link so as not to conflict/interfere with other equipment.

Is this understanding correct and if so does that mean that VM will need to install a new modem, possibly a superhub also? Although I was also led to believe that the Superhubs only work with 30mb + broadband (we currently have 20mb).

will the tivo install require changes to my exisiting setup ? If not how will it work if it's supposed to have a seperate line? Will I experience slowness if it is trying to download info from the Internet if the xbox360/laptops are also on at the same time as the current V+HD box can be slow at times and I assumed that was the reason why.

We were bargaining on the phone for about 15 mins and I think they were just desperate to keep me. It helped that Sky were advertising good packages etc

in reply to point 1, in customer service we get a hell of a lot of unreasonable callers who think they can speak to us like crap when we cannot give them what they want

point 2..... I am with sky as i dont live in a Virgin media cable area and i get a much better deal than my neighbours either side of me, maybe its down to my negotiating skills or most likely down to the person i spoke to just offering the best offer i could get, either way its not just virgin who put customers on different deals FACT

Today I decided to revert back to the 10mb bb as increasing it to 20mb will mean I will pay £5 more a month than if I stuck to 10mb. Whilst it is a good thing that u get the free upgrade to 60mb from 20mb, I'm happy to have 10mb so when it upgrades to 20mb that will be more than enough speed for me.

So to get 10mb bb, L tv and the basic phone package, I will pay £46.40 come April, or £38.90 if I reduce my tv m+

Should add, I already had a £10 per month loyalty credit, which increased to £11.
In addition I was given a one-off £10 credit, which is the one I was referring to in the OP.

Yes, that is correct, the £10 loyalty credit that was already on my account was increased to £11, effectively reducing the new £3 Tivo fee to £2 per month.

For those of us who don't work at Virgin Media, this amounts to the same thing in terms of our monthly spend.

In my view Virgin's customer services are generally very good; of course there's the odd exception, just as you may get the occasional unreasonable customer.

Perhaps what would help customers most is if Virgin simply had a clear price for everyone.
Whilst I'm glad to have received loyalty discounts and a better value package, the underlying issue here is that customers are not all on exactly like-for-like deals. If the price was already as low as can be, there'd be no need to speak with customer retention and then this whole post would be unnecessary.

As it stands, reading the comments here, it's clear there's been a wide range of customer experiences.

For those wondering about Tivo, I've had it a couple of weeks now and it is fantastic IMHO.
The one gripe so far is with Youtube, in that three quarters of the way through a show, the programme will suddenly end and return to the home screen. Unlike watching Youtube in a browser, it's much slower to get back to what you were watching and you have to wait ages for the programme to load until you can fast forward to the previous point. This appears to be a general problem with Tivo from what I've read in reviews on-line.

What exactly did u say to them to get the £40 credit?

I'll call them again to see if they can give anything else off

I just upgraded with the free installation and activation but they said they can not alter the £3 fee or give loyalty discount. They said they cant do that for anyone.

Also upgraded my BB to 20MB from 10MB so it will get a free upgrade to 60MB.

After the April increase I will be paying £51.90 for M phone, L TV and 20MB/60MB BB

they must have removed the 20 meg option from the website, it should be same price as 30 meg option. The 20 meg option is no longer available to new customers.

if you call in and get a price for 20 meg and they offer you 30 for the same price take the 20 meg as if you take the 30 meg option you will need to have a superhub and have to pay £30 activation fee, however if you take the 20 meg option you will be given the equipment free when you get upgraded to 60 meg as part of the double speed upgrade

so to sumarise 30 meg = £30 fee and 60 meg on free upgrade later in year
20 meg = no fee and 60 meg on free upgrade later in year also free equipment

where is the 20 Meg option Andy.. on their site i see only a 10, 30 and 50 MB option.... i am on 10 Meg now so how do i get a 20 meg upgrade?

Just done this now and spoke to a very helpful man on the phone.

Extra £3 per month but they have saved me a couple £ when the price rise occurs on 1st April.

Thanks to the OP.

What's the typical cost increase from 10 to 20meg likely to be?

I will maybe just 'phone - as you say for piece of mind. Thanks again to you and Andy1300 for taking the time & effort to answer all our questions - much appreciated.

you could try doing exactly what this thread is all about and call 150 option 5 to see if can get tivo with free install however it will be £3 per month if you order now also i would sugest moving to 20 meg bb as that will be increased to 60 meg for no extra cost aber the 20 meg cost

as for the price increases, these are an anual occurence with most providers, the way you need to think of the double bb speed upgrade is that you will be getting the improved speed for the same price as the old package you were on before the upgrade, so if you stay on 20 or move to 60 the cost will be the same, i know i wouldn't complain.....

try using sky broadband, its dire

almost at the same time as the Tivo box, came the letter telling about the price rise.. 10% increase almost... my 44 pound pack became 49.50... and then add 3 for the box... not very happy when i see the ad on TV which says speed doubled for free..... its not free... u give from one hand and take from another :disappointed:...

anything that i can do ? 10 MB Broadband + L TV + Asian Mela

smulx / Andy1300 thanks.

Do you think I should 'phone Retentions and double check or do you think It will kick in at £3 ?

I just called 150 and went to the 'Are you thinking of leaving us' option as I have a TiVo installation booked for tomorrow. As mentioned here, I just explained that I've seen new customers get this free and I don't see why I shouldn't too....there was no hassle, within 60 seconds I'd saved £50. Result :smile:

I feel left out! I have the telephone (basic), TV (M I think), 30Mb BB & mobile. The problem is I upgraded to a 1080p display and am using Scart to connect (yuck!) via an old samsung box (the SMT-2110c). So this upgrade would be ideal, I've been a customer for over 14 years, after reading all the posts in here (quite a few!) I want the best deal - which looks like free 500Gb TIVO & £2/month sub (yes two pound a month!). Should I just go for the web site offer (which is for free 500Gb TIVO @ £3/month sub) or should I try the old "cancelling line" and request some deal sweetners?
I suppose either way an extra £3/month isn't going to be an issue - I just want to get best VFM! If I'm brutally honest I don't really _need_ it - I actually visit the cinema about 3 times a week (I know! Star Wars 3D - what was I thinking? I have that on video, DVD & BluRay and special editions as well!) and when not out I can use the catch up or download the episodes I missed. I also have a Sky Go account - which I don't use! (It's not worth the hassle!)
One final thing - does the TIVO stb have optical out?

exactly as stated above

The cost of the tivo is increasing to £5 but not until the rest of the prices change in April. Anyone that takes a tivo before this time will remain on the £3 price unless they change on to a different deal. The option to waive the £6.50 is only available if you have XL TV.

Just had the call from VM after I put in cancellation request 2 weeks ago. I now am getting the Tivo box, free installation and free subscription as well as a £20 reduction on my bill and not tied in so told them if I find a cheaper deal being given to ANY other VM customer I will be allowed to switch within the year for free or can leave

Happy days <3

Just 'phoned retentions - got a nice lady who gave me the 500gb TiVo for free (installation & activation) but wanted £6.50 to keep my old V+ HD box (standard multi-room charge I believe). Wasn't up for negotiation unfortunately. Maybe the discounts I already have prevented this - I already have 1/2 price line rental and a £4 credit giving me £18.99 / month for M+ TV with V+HD box, 10mb BB and M 'phone.

I get installed next Thursday and she told me TiVo was £5 / month - Andy1300 or smulx is this correct ?

Other posts seem to suggest it doesn't increase until 1st April :smirk:

Just called and got the free Tivo with installation and super hub modem.
Also reduced my monthly subscription of £33.90 by £6. Signed a new 12 month contract.
Thanks OP!

Thank you very much for the information smulx. You have probably saved me a few pounds with this.

Regards
Mark.

One thing that REALLY annoyed me when speaking to VM was their rep telling me that I had only been with VM for 4 years when in fact it was 18 years (in various guises), and then him saying 'aah yes but our system counts you as a new customer if you move!!!'

Then he tried to catch me out by saying 'I dont believe your brother gets that deal...can I have his account number'...upon which I threw the account number & password in his face and told him 'theres the proof, now dont call me a liar again'!

Here's my Query.

I have been with Virgin(tele west) and sky for 13 years. I have TV with sky and 50 meg BB, basic tv and basic phone with Virgin. I'm liking the look of the TiVo box. And want one for living room, one for our bedroom and a normal vbox+? For daughters bedroom.

I haven't got the old virging tv receiver anymore(might be in loft) as I never used it due to having sky multiroom.

If I take all three boxes, will I need to pay £50 activation for each as well as £3 per month each?

Thanks
Mark.

As an existing customer with TV, phone & broadband they are still insisting on a £49.95 installation fee for the 500gb Tivo box!

Here's my Query.

I have been with Virgin(tele west) and sky for 13 years. I have TV with sky and 50 meg BB, basic tv and basic phone with Virgin. I'm liking the look of the TiVo box. And want one for living room, one for our bedroom and a normal vbox+? For daughters bedroom.

I haven't got the old virging tv receiver anymore(might be in loft) as I never used it due to having sky multiroom.

If I take all three boxes, will I need to pay £50 activation for each as well as £3 per month each?

Thanks
Mark.

Nice. Engineer arrived, asked if i wanted another v+ or tivo, so opted for tivo. Is it normal for them to set up the box and leave instructions to finish the rest off yourself?

The TiVo will have its own broadband connection and wont have any impact on your regular connection at all :wink:

My V+ box went *Zip* last night, had quite a few recorded things i wanted to watch which i suspect have now all gone :disappointed: it was the only reason i hadnt got tivo yet as i wanted to watch everything i had recorded. Might have to look into this now ive got nothing tying me to my V+ box.

One question, i was under the impression when it came out that it was said to have its own 10mg connection, separate to your own incoming BB but a previous comment states its slower on lower BB, faster on higher. Slightly confused. Any clarification is appreciated.

Apparantlty its all tied into your package too (or something like that). If you have 10MB Broadband, your TiVo will be slower. But I'm on 50MB and a friend on the 100MB says its like ligtning.



This was my ‘sold’ point. The lady said there is no “Please Wait” screen on TiVo and that it’s a lot smarter.

Was also told they are phasing out V+ in the next 2 years, so thought I might as well a) get it whilst its free and b) get ahead of the learning curve!

I mentioned the website – and she said “I believe you” – she didn’t even check.

But as outlined in my last post – this is now available to existing customers (without the need to threaten a cancellation):
http://shop.virginmedia.com/existing-customers/customer-offers/tivo-box-upgrade/tivo-box-prices.html

Well, having had my TiVo now for 12 hours, I can safely say it's a fantastic piece of kit! Some of the features are confusing when going from V+ but given a few days no doubt i'll be up to full speed. One thing was concerning me before I got it though, and that was that some people were saying it was slower than the V+, but tbh I wholeheartedly disagree. It's much faster and far more responsive. Catchup TV used to be quite sluggish, but on TiVo it is extremely fluid, far better than I expected. If there is anyone still on the fence, I can assure you that it's a much better experience than V+.

^ Great deal!

300 posts on this already!

I have basically just downgraded my internet from 50mb to 10mb, and added Tivo and multiroom.
I was paying £68 per month. Also 0870 and 0845 are included in all XL Phone packages now! Installation 1st March.

Now available to new customers without having to threaten to leave.

Literally just upgraded to the 1TB for £50 installed.

Complained about some other stuff not working for the last couple of months and got a £127 credit.

Just had mine fitted. all seems good,just reprogramming my Logitech harmony's now
for those with Logitech harmony's you want Cisco CT8685DVB for the Tivo box.
.
The installer was a nice fella , wasn't here long as all cabling was already in place,so only needed to setup the tivo box and i was good to go :smiley:

I got my Tivo fitted today, it took about 45 mins as they have to download software onto it.

Like it so far, especially the catch-up bit.

The bloke fitting it said if I upgraded my broadband (currently on 10m), then i'd get a super hub for free. My broadband isn't getting doubled until the end on the year, so I may look into upgrading sooner.

Which TV service do you have? If you have anything below XL then the V+ will be £5 a month, but it's free on XL. Only customer relations can send the box for free.

The V+ box will be getting removed shortly. The Samsung models are no longer in production and the company only have a stock of the older Scientific Atlanta models left. For the moment we can provide these free of charge but when this option is removed, the remaining stock will be used for fault replacements.

To my knowledge there hasn't been any official word about the future of the V+. I found out directly from someone in head office. As with any large company, there's often breakdowns in communication.

We couldn't do the second tivo for free if you were paying £49.95 for the 1TB box. The 1TB is normally £99.90 so getting this for half the price already involves us using the discount we have available of 49.95 and we couldn't use it twice on the same order to also reduce the 49.95 for the 500GB box to zero.

You could use the online offer to get the first 500GB for free and then pay your 49.95 for a second 500GB. The only difference between the 1TB and 500GB is the hard drvie. They're otherwise identical and the smaller one still records 250 hours. As for the cost, the £3 monthly fee is per connection so you would pay £6 for the two.

It would also normally be another £6.50 on top of that for the multiroom connection but as you said, you're getting this included for free.

Just rang Relations
Got the following deal
Free installation free tivo box 500gb
Free multiroom v+ hd box upstairs
XL TV package
L BB package (10mb)
XL phone line package with
Loyalty discount
12months contract but fixed price for 24months
At £50.90/month going up to £54.40 onApril 1st.
Thank you op.
Muchas Gracias!

How come i knew before before VM Customer Service :smiley: and i work for SKY !

lol, no not really.

on a serious note i think its great of both you guys are helping folks with their questions etc...:smiley:

My question is: as im getting my V+HD box moved to another room,cable is already there so nothing needs doing and paying £50 for the 1TB Tivo box would i be able to have another Tivo box(500gb) for free to replace the sammy V+HD box ? as i did read media streaming over LAN between tivo's is coming soon.
If not for free, then any idea of the price and do VM allow 2 Tivo's on one account ?

well as a customer service agent, we have not heard anything about doing away with V+

where do you get your info? or is this just what you believe, if so then please stick to facts

With the services you have, L TV and L BB with asian mela, £44 is the cheapest we can do. An upgrade to XL TV would cost extra and we have no way to offset that cost unfortunately. If you had a phoneline too, we'd be able to discount it a bit but we probably couldn't add XL TV without the price also increasing.

The box you have there now would be taken away. It's only possible to keep it with no monthly fee if you are adding tivo and have XL TV. If you wanted to keep it, we could only do it for an extra £6.50 per month.

hi

can anyone tell me whats the deal with the V+ HD box? (it might sound outdated but ya i am on a basic V HD box). I cant see the details on their page now but I know they offer this? Some 5 Pound extra with a XL tv package? what the big advantage with a Tivo as compared to V+ HD?

That was the purpose of the thread - you got the freebie, what else did you want?

Thanks for the advice mate

decided to just get the 500gb tivo on our current package for an increase of about 60p per month

seriously need to determine whether the sky package is really worth it though as like you say that's where the biggest savings will be.... plus on the footy coverage Jamie Redknapp hasn't got a clue what he's on about anyway.
:smirk:

I did price up an equivalent deal with sky and it was nearly £120 ... bl**dy rip off merchants.

cheers anyway

I must be seriously unlucky. VM are point blank refusing to waive the £50 fee for me, even after telling them I can get a better deal with Sky including a 1TB Sky+ drive. Really wanted to save the hassle of changing to Sky but they are not budging for me. Glad for all those that managed it, but really annoyed now :disappointed:

i just did it and got the superhub upgrade too which will come in handy when the internet speed boost comes to me in July

here's what i'm getting
TV M+ ( i previously only had M like a loser)
Broadband XL (30mb climbing to 60mb in July at which point i may downgrade and save some cashola :stuck_out_tongue: )
Phone M (weekend package i think that it i cant remember)
500mb Tivo (free activation & installation)
free superhub to replace my knackered router (it whistles)
and this will be costing me £38 p/m although he admitted there are price increased in april which will see it rise to about £40 p/m but i can deal with that when i downgrade my broadband

Hello all, I called back and spoke to a nice lady. I did notice I also had talk mobile and talk international (which I didn't need) so by taking them off and swapping for tivo paying now £34.90 (saved 4p). I also ordered new hub, which cost me only £5 (nothing else). I am now locked in 12 months contract. So my deal (not bogus, as it's an old deal that was offered to me as I wanted to move to vonage about 5 years ago): talk unlimited, broadband m (10mb to double in July), tv m+ and tivo 500gb for £34.90

After a few calls & me changing my mind i finally decided to leave my package as is and just added a 1tb tivo box.
Im paying £66.96 plus the one off £49.95 for:
1TB Tivo
My old V+HD moved to another room
XXL BB
XL phone with caller id
XL TV

was paying £67.95 for XXL BB,XL TV,XL Phone.
If i wanted to downgrade my BB to XL would have cost me £62.46 plus the one off 1tb £49.95.

If i wanted 100meg BB then would have cost £80.96 plus the one off 1tb £49.95,then drop to £75.81 after 1st April,but gonna wait for the free speed boost.

being fitted tomorrow as a free slot was available

After speaking to a nice woman at Retentions not long ago she has managed to knock my bill down by a further £2.60 or so p/m after the price-hike. After the hike it should have been £83 for XL TV, XL BB, M Phone, Sky Sports, TiVo (500Gb) plus V+ in bedroom. But she said the best possible deal that she could do was £80.40 after the price rise, and she certainly seemed genuine enough so I believe her. I know people like to come on forums like this and big-up about their bull**** deals that don't exist, or are somehow on archaic deals that they are somehow clinging onto since the Telewest / NTL days. I am satisfied now that I have a decent deal, and won't be pestering Virgin for sometime now.

Good luck to anyone looking for deals, just don't expect to get amazing discounts because there is a lot of bogus deals in this thread, either that or discounts that are no longer available - it seems we have missed the boat on these.

Hi, I was offered nothing just free installation and if I wanted to keep existing box I need to shell out and other £5.....I told them I would think about it. It could be because our packages are cheaper than the others? I also have a v hd box (not v+) and paid £20 installation fee few months back (even though was self install)

hi

i called up Virgin guys in hope to bargain for a deal. Currently I have Broadband (10MB) and TV (L) + Asian Package (11Pound), all adding up to 44 pound a month, using a basic V HD box (not V+ HD).

Though they agreed for a free TiVO 500 GB box @ 3 Pound a month, they did not agree for anything else...i was hoping for a TV upgrade to XL from L atleast.... but the retention fellow did not agree and told for the price i was paying currently, he could not upgrade me to XL (am i paying so less?? i dont think so)

have i been shortchaged?? please suggest if it makes sense to try again...:disappointed: i read people getting so many deals but i only got a TiVo box...

I phoned on behalf of someone else who was paying:

£34.90 for TV (M), Broadband (10MB), Phone (XL)

I pay £17.99 for the same pack, but VM refused to get remotely close to this. So we decided to knock the TV element off and its gone down to £23.99 but VM playing hard.

Seems strange that they have so many price inequalities for like for like packages

Lots of people on here got their old V+ boxes fitted into another room at no extra charge, myself included. I did request it when I phoned though so it might be worth a call back to arrange it...:smiley:

Hi, I do have one question, As you can see from my comment above I have just managed to get the TiVo free like other people. They are coming later this week to install it. What happens with my old box? I'm not very up on this kind of thing so just wondered if I can use it in another room? or would I have to pay to get it installed in another room? or do they just take it away?
Thanks in advance for any help/answers :smile:

Thank you for this!
I phoned Virgin today and got the free installation and activation of the TiVo box and they knocked £2 per month off my bill. They also agreed to upgrade my TV free for 3months to L from M+. Disappointed I still don't get FX channel for the new series of True Blood but I think i've done pretty well out of the deal. The guy at the retentions department was really lovely too. might send them an email saying how good he was. Thanks again for posting this on HotUKdeals.

That pretty much sounds like the cheapest price for those services. All I could suggest is downgrading the broadband to 10Mb to get the price down. If you take a new deal and request a superhub at the same time, when the speed increase goes ahead, instead of your speed doubling it will increase to 30Mb.

The sports and the movies are what bumps the price up so much. It's £29.50 for both of them. If you book a disconnection you can cancel it whenever you want, but it doesn't really get you a better deal anymore. The outbound retentions team can't do the kind of crazy offers they used to be able to. They don't have anything available that the regular inbound team don't have. Sorry I couldn't be more help, the retentions team just don't have a lot of flexibility with what we can offer. Most people will give you the cheapest price straight away without any haggling. It is cheaper than sky though, with sky world costing 62.25, then multiroom, linerental, anytime calls and unlimted broadband it comes to almost £100.

Hi mate,

I can't send pm's yet but would appreciate your advice on our current deal and what if anything we can get

Current deal is

TV XL
Broadband XL (20)
Talk Unlimited
Talk 08 2 - not really sure what this is though
Additional V box
Monthly V+HD
phone line rental
sky sports and movies

we get a triple loyalty discount but our monthly bill is still £90.90 before the planned increase in prices.

Ideally I would like to get a new tivo box and keep everythin else but also get a reduction in price.

Is that possible? The best that retentions offered was for a 500Gb tivo (free install/activation) and ongoing cost of £93.46 (with a minus £2 for the talk 08 thing) so a slight increase to £91.46 (before the planned increase).

Is this really the best offer I can get.

I don't really want to go down the giving 30 days notice for cutoff and then hoping that VM ring me with a better deal. What if they don't and I end up with no services?

Is it even possible to cancel a service termination from my end once the 30 day notice period has started?

Any advice much appreciated. Just want the best deal we can get. We have been NTL/VM customers for over 15 years so I think we do deserve a better deal.

Had the Tivo installed yesterday, after phoning on Wed. Not really sure if I like it yet, but not gonna knock it as it was free and like others I am paying less than I was before. I really just wanted the larger recording capacity, and the ability to watch Virgin tv in another room, which is exactly what I got, plus extras...so definitely not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Now where did I put that manual...:stuck_out_tongue:

Cheers

I phoned this ,morning and got the tivo box but the guy told me that for installation after 27th of feb you have to pay the £5 monthly charge instead of £3 monthly, i was lucky that they could come to install on tuesday

I've answered quite a lot of retentions questions via PM :confused: Does anyone else want to know anything?

A MASSIVE THANKS TO THE PERSON WHO HIGHLIGHTED THIS DEAL WITH VIRGIN. I TRIED THIS 2 DAYS AGO AND IT WORKED. VIRGIN ARE COMING IN A WEEK TO INSTALL A FREE TIVO BOX...AND REMEMBER YOU HAVE TO MENTION THE DEAL TO THEM, THEY WILL NEVER OFFER IT TO YOU. GOOD LUCK.

Thanks op

Just phoned up and after a bit of negotiation got the 500gb tivo box (fitted and activated free) , upgraded tv package and the april price hike frozen..

But the real winner was all that for around £5 cheaper than i was paying with bog standard box and basic tv.. RESULT :smile:

incorrect again....virgin do vhd box, v+ box and 2x tivo boxes

Thanks OP just rang, was talking to a really nice scottish guy. Upgraded my TV from L to XL free activation and installation..Free tivo box and got to keep the box that i already have. For a extra £4
a month

He said because the Red button on some channels isnt working on the tivo box atm, its the reason why they offer to let you keep the one your using. Also he did say the prices are going up in April which i wasnt aware of but it only works out a few quid for the package i am using.... (Its the ploy behind the upgrade of BB speed thats what i think). So im a happy bunny wanted to upgrade as i bought a new 50" tele a few weeks back. :smiley:

my point was that we cannot direct to a uk centre but you will be put through to the first available operator in whatever country

i mentioned quidco plus refer a friend at the time.cant quite remember exactly but i think it was £165 =£13.75 per month.this brought sky down to less than £80 pounds a month.
have you actually gone thru with the cancellation and asked for a day for your'e services to be cut off.turned 3 offers down before accepting my deal,also told them my 3 30 day rolling sim only contracts would be going if i went to sky.
p.s did'nt get my first call back from retentions for 11 days.
good luck by the sounds of some comments on here i did

mig - you should try for the tivo. Hope you get it and still keep your price

The difference in pricing for people on very similar packages is staggering. Like solid I have 10mb BB, V+HD with TV M+ and the lowest telephone package - Talk week-ends and only pay £18.99 !!

I was going to 'phone up and chance this TiVo deal but with the package I have, I think they'll chase me.

I haven't tried it yet?

I was paying £34 for 10mb BB, V+HD (TV M), and the lowest telephone package.

After speaking to CS, I managed to negotiate:
£33 for 10mb BB, V+HD (TV M+), TiVO (TV M+), and the lowest telephone package.
No additional fees for installation or activation. Not paying extra for TiVO or the extra box, or being able to record on that extra box.

So, I managed to get an additional TiVO box for £1 less every month.

My Tips
- Decide beforehand how much you want to pay every month (in my case, I am happy paying about £35 per month), and try & get more for your money. If you are happy with what you are already getting, then try and reduce your cost.
- Try not to compare with what everyone else has (but do use it as a guide). Make sure that you are happy, and feel that you are getting value for your money. I am pretty happy that I am paying less than a tenner per service per month (but that's just me :smiley:)

(And always insist on any discounts to be applied for the entire length of the contract. Not 3 months. Not 6 months - but for the entire time.)

I hope that helps someone....

cheers op , good deal

Just called and was offered to upgrade for an extra £3. If I wanna keep spare box would cost me an extra £5.....I said I would think about it. At the moment I have the 10mb Internet, xl phone, M+ tv with v Box for £34.89 a month not sure if cheap (find the broadband fairly slow)....

for the record

tivo is 3.00 per month with free activation but a 49.95 install fee, 5.00 monthly fee after april 1st but those already with tivo will still pay 3.00 after april 1st

now relations may be able to offer you the INSTALLATION free but not guaranteed

Surely when a customer asks to be put through to 'Retentions' it cant be made any clearer even when you elaborate by saying 'I want to leave Virgin services' or 'I don't want to be with Virgin anymore, can you put me through the department that deals with customers that want to leave'.
In my experience it has worked.

Bransons saving a fortune by outsourcing some customer services and technical...he can afford free installation and activation for those who like TiVO.

Also something else offered by VM after the Necker Island fire was a service to back up peoples treasured photos etc
https://my.virginmedia.com/my-apps/backup-and-storage

Hope it helps!

Hmm.. am I the only one who has the 500Gb Tivo box, but NOT paying the extra £3 per month?

That said - I can't explain why I got such a good deal, apart from the suggestions and advice in the original post. Similarly I've been with them since they were called Telewest too. I was genuinely thinking of moving to Sky when I rang and I did get lucky with an excellent person in their retentions team. Then I noticed the posts on here about keeping my old V+ box and moving it to another room, so I phoned VM a couple of days ago and they agreed to do that as part of the Tivo install I'd already booked. I was already on a £10 monthly discount, I think they added that a few years ago when they lost Sky 1 for a few weeks and customers were jumping ship.

For this install I complained that a £3 per month fee and an activation fee seemed unfair, because the only difference with a 1TB box and 500GB box is the size of the hard drive - so if they were happy to activate the 500GB box for free they should do so for the 1TB box too.

The person I spoke with said he just had no leeway with the 1TB box, but what he could do was reduce the monthly fee for Tivo from £3 to £2 and that they'd add an additional one-off £10 credit this month.

I was previously paying £40.90 per month for the service, so the only additional charge is now the £2 Tivo fee per month, which brings the monthly cost to £42.90.

Hope that helps.

CORRECTION - apologies I made an error - my current broadband is 20Mb which will be doubled to 40Mb in the next month or two. Still a great deal! :sunglasses:

no ....customer service

Andy, do you work in Retentions mate?

Good luck to those trying the above just a couple of tips below if it helps:

Step 1: If you dont have a VM phone line so cant call 150, try 08000520237. (When you get through to the call centre sound a 'little' annoyed and say your calling the 0845 number to be put through to Retentions but your just being passed around. They should put you through to the UK based Retentions dept.)
Step 2: Keep calling till you get someone nice and cheerful at VM.
Step 3: If your with an unhelpful retentions staff member and they say they'll put you on a 30 day notice period to terminate your services, just say you need more time to think about it and do step 1+2 again.
OR if your well peed off with VM and go down the 30 day notice period route all services to be terminated keep your cool dont jump ship yet, VM will call you back to renegotiate your contract and services.
IF you dont think VM will call you, try steps 1+2 again after about 15 or 25 days!

Been with VM for 5 years all above from experience. Good luck!

This is directly copied from their website - they have no arguement!

Existing customers: Irrespective of the number of set-top boxes you already have, for every new sale - If you take a 500GB TiVo box as your first box, the activation fee will be waived; if you take a 1TB TiVo box as your first box, we will reduce the activation fee to £49.95.

Having seen a demo of teh TiVo box, if you're a Virgin customer and thinking about it, with the increased monthly fee going to up £5 in April i'd act pretty quick - this box knocks spots off the V+HD box!

I phoned 0845 5451111 then Option 5 then Option 2

Update - I had my install this morning, extremely smooth and quick. Having read a few comments on here about Tivo I was apprehensive, but if you read the quick start guide and go to settings it's relatively easy to get rid of the menu sounds, extend the length of recordings and basically get the settings how you want them.

Youtube and Spotify are working great and whilst the 1TB hard drive is empty right now (I paid the extra £50 for the 1TB box) the menus, moving around the system and everything is excellent.

Unquestionably a great step-up from the V+ box.
And, my old V+ box with all the recordings saved on it is now in my bedroom.

Broadband is working great and will be doubled in a month or two - from 30 to 60MBPS at no extra cost.

So, right now, with the discounts and everything I'm paying £42.90 per month, for telephone line rental, free calls on weekends, XL TV with a Tivo box in living room and V+ box in bedroom, 30MB broadband (doubled to 60 soon).

Well done VM - so glad I didn't jump ship to Sky!

Is there a number to phone (rather than retentions) if still in contract?

Thanks,
Nige

I just got a stunning deal!
Currently was paying £62 for 10MB broadband (with rubbish old modem and my own router), Large TV and two additional paid (£5 pm) boxes and one free channels box (so 4 in total), and the line rental with evening and weekend calls. We got a letter saying it was going up by £4pm and we were looking to install another additional box so £72 overall.

Phoned the retentions team and I have upgraded to 20MB broadband with a super hub (as to whether I'll use that or not is a different story..), TiVO as the main box & 3 additional boxes ALL with XL TV package, and same line rental etc...£69 on a 12 month contract with no April 1st price increase!! RESULT! Thanks OP heat added

I have 10M at tyhe minute and it is fine 2 x pc 2 x laptop 2 x Xbox phones etc etc etc

No issues

Having the 100M is just Hype - you dont need it.

I will take the upgrade when it comes though ;-)

....oh and one extra bit of advice - when the engineer arrived today, the work order info he had was for the standard 500GB box, but as I explained to him I'd in fact ordered the 1TB box. Fortunately he was able to call-in, correct the order and install the 1TB box. Worth mentioning that you should just confirm and double check the install with the engineer. :man:

Virgins pricing is a mess,just phoned up to confirm a few things with my Tivo order.
Come the 1st of April 100meg BB price is dropping to the price of the 50meg,but no drop on the 50meg price.
my free speed increase isnt happening untill Oct 2013 :disappointed:
so after the 1st i was advised to upgrade to 100meg (on 50meg atm) then will be paying the same as i am now ,then come the free upgrade it'll jump to 120meg.

anyone else been told similar info ?

Did this lastnight, got a free 500Gb Tivo Box, had to sign up for a new 12 month contract, but it reduced the price what i was paying now by £5... saweet

i just tried and they didnt give me anything! they never do must just be me!


he said there is no way we would give the tivo boxes away for nothing to existing customers!

dupe post.

Worked for me even though I am only a few months into my contract. No diffculty at all in getting it.

Currently I pay £81 a month for 3 HD boxes incuding a V+ box, on TV XL, Broadband XXL and phone.

New deal £84 a month for all the above plus a 4th TIVO 500GB box....No install or activation charge. Being installed on Tuesday.

just phoned up but didn't want a tivo box but got a v+HD box instead, free installation and an engineer round instead of self installation. Will not cost me a thing and also received a £5pm loyalty for 2 years although just signed for a 12 month contract-wasnt willing to move to sky anyway! So not bad as I complained that the I wasn't getting any discounts as most people were.

Fantastic thanks Op - just worked for me!!
:innocent:

good point - may give it a try -I have old skool loyalty discount from ntl/telewest days so gives me a good saving

just phoned up and they're gonna replace the standard relocated box for a v+hd box. result

I don't think I'm getting any discoutnts? what sort are we talking about ? I rang up about the tivo box, he said its free activation but 49 for installation.

Reasons I wouldn't join. Don't want to change my phone number, Cost is just as much as sky and also I've just bought a 3D tv and Virgin don't have 3D yet.

Here is my deal for comparison just renegotiated

500 TiVo
V+ upstairs
Xltv
Sky sports
Sky movies
Sky channels in hd
Xl broadband 30
L phone +talk international
Line rental
£77.65
Got the free spotify with this.if you are on virginmobile you can stream music to you're mobile without it coming of you're data allowance

I currently pay £38 pm for M+ tv, XL broadband + telephone rental. Is that good or bad? I wanted to upgrade to a Tivo box but they wanted to charge me 49.99 for installation. Should I stick with Virgin or are there better offers out there?

Can't help but laugh when people complain about matesrates. A similar thing with sky would cost over £70.

Does anyone know if this deal is available for
i) Customers who are still tied into a current (till May) 12 month contract
and
ii) available in their VM shops?

Ta, Nige

^ I was just thinking that. I've had 50MB broadband for a year and it is constantly fast, my speed tests always show at least 48MBPS downspeed and they have said they are DOUBLING everyones speeds - as a 50MB customer I am getting upgraded to 100MB for free in 2 months, and then in the summer they are adding another 20MB.

If you want to say they are crap, keep enjoying your free Sky or TalkTalk broadband, and call me when you see speeds of 50MB. :wink:

Their internet is shocking? Many consumer awards groups beg to differ.

One person's experience doesn't taint us all. My broadband has been superb for years, and being doubled in July. Won't hear me complaining.

Got TiVo myself with this offer a few months back. The price-hike (£3 to £5 for TiVo from April 1st) is customers last chance to get this deal. And the extra £3, in my opinion, pays for the extra STB you have to go up stairs.

I think its safe to say, if you are currently paying full whack (i.e not getting any discounts applied on to your account), you will benefit from this deal, and your bill might come down a few quid

If you are currently on a discounted package with VM, then you will have to pay more to get this deal.

So you have to decide whether your existing deal is too good to give up. In my case, it is too good to give up.

I've been with VM for 15 years+, but didn't get offered the sky sports, and he said it would be an extra £6.50 a month to have my old box in another room, so I don't think that theory applies..

(Still pleased with what I got though, and it's costing slightly less than what I was paying before).

I just managed to get this too, but I wont get a 2nd box discount as I already have loyalty bonuses supposedly on my account.

So I now get:

20Mb BB
XL TV
Sky Sports Collection
M Phone
TiVo in living room
V+ HD in bedroom

all for £78.90 p/m. Does this seem a good deal? Unfortunately my costs are due to go up £3.50 soon.

Heat added for the deal!

new Tivo box, xl tv package & a multi room v+ box thrown in to stop us from straying :o)

Also done and signed up. Also get the 6 months spotify at the same time. Thanks for the headsup

On a 30M broadband connection I typically get a bit faster than that, and when it does slow down due to downloading a shedload it's a bit over 8M, so still faster than what BT etc offer as their normal speeds

I tried it on with the hub and asked the installer when he came to my house.

Apparently the old modems cannot handle the higher rates - so we will all be getting upgraded :-)

Thanks OP.

I tried to get the TiVo for free before Christmas but the lady somewhere outside of the UK just would not waive the £50 install charge so I left it.

Today I spoke to a lovely lady in the UK who has upped my broadband to 30Mbps (from 10 - which will then double to 60 in a few months) and replaced my V+HD box with a TiVo whilst saving me £2 a month. No mention of a new contract - but I'll assume the worst - and either way very happy.

Yeah, that's what the bloke told me too. Hope it'll make my wireless connection better!

I'm going to try again today, last night I got a scottish bloke called Chris who just said I have to pay.

Hope I get a nicer person this time.

just spoke to them, got a really nice person answered the phone, kept all existing loyalty discounts, got tivo 500gb box, free inst, they are moving my v+ hd box upstairs, putting in an extension for the telephone, increase my broadband to L for M all for free

thanks OP :smile:

small print says you lose any existing loyalty discount though so I am apprehensive!!!

i pay about £50 for
Free installation + free activation+ free tivo box 500gb
v+ hd box upstairs
super HUb
XL TV package
XL BB package
XL phone line package
0845/0870 free calls add on (saves using sayno0870 for some calls - got this free)
12 months contract on super hub and tivo as other stuff ive had for 12+months
i get alot of loyalty bonuses as ive been with ntl/vm for 12 years

Is there an HD charge on TiVo like there is on V+ ? From reading the posts, I suspect not. So if I got this deal I would be £2 / month better off ? i.e. no £5 V+ HD fee but a £3 TiVo fee instead.

nice deal

thank you!

Virgin Media are crap!
Just rang them and because we are on mates rates and paying £65 pm they seem to think we are not paying enough to deserve it! Is £65 pm not enough!!? 100% don't go with Virgin 'Money grabbing Branson' Media...

Virgins crap, join Sky.

Just called and they said I have to pay for the box!

Do you have to threaten to leave?

ill give this a try tomorrow. was only in the merry hill shop today looking at the tivo.
sales guy said i can have it for free, but must pay £49 activation fee. well that aint free!!
thanks for the post op

Virgin Media are crap!
Just rang them and because we are on mates rates and paying £65 pm they seem to think we are not paying enough to deserve it! Is £65 pm not enough!!? 100% don't go with Virgin 'Money grabbing Branson' Media...

OP, you're awesome! I just rang Virgin, got free TiVo box, relocating our V+ free of charge, and our bill is WAY cheaper than it used to be - AMAZEBALLS!!!!

I got a surprise today! Rang up and asked about TiVo, do you want one? Was the reply! Yesterday I threatened to cancel and was rejected immediately, I was so annoyed. It just depends on who you get on the other end. I got TiVo, 20meg bb (i only had 10mb) and hd box moved upstairs all for less than I am currently paying!

i have v+ hd box and cant see a point in payin 3 pound extra for a bigger hard drive as thats all that seams different.think sky is better but virgin is cheap and fast bb which is goin up to 60 meg in aprilX)

I currently have VM for M TV , M BB and XL phone (inc international calls, lower price calls to mobiles and line rental for £28.44pm (loyalty discount included). I also have Sky too.........
I phoned them up a few weeks ago asking for TiVo box (XL) to replace my Sky+ and the price was going to jump by £41pm to £69pm!!!
Apparently the loyalty discount goes out the window and the M TV service would also go to XL - can't I have multi-room but M in one room and XL in another? I only use the M TV service for the news and BBC.

I got a free TiVo box and activation/installation beginning of Jan after complaining about service. Also didn't have to extend my contract. Just an extra £3 per month which is fine cos now have TiVo in living room, v+ hd in bedroom and I'm on the XL package for tv, phone and broadband all for £38 as I'm on a mates rates deal. Although soon to go up by £4.50 from 1st April. Still great deal though!

I have Tivo and in all honesty I wouldn't recommend it.
One problem is the controller for example when you are browsing the guide or the menus it does things you haven't pressed for example your browsing the channel guide only pressing the down button and all of a sudden it decides you pressed record or that you pressed tv which turns the guide off which means you have to bring the guide back up and start browsing it from BBC1 again.

However my main problem is its speed when browsing through the menus or looking through the films or tv programs that are on demand or catch up its painfully slow and I mean SLOW and to make matter worse the whole layout of it is utter rubbish and makes searching for a program or film a real chore.

Time - date and name noted. All of there calls are recorded hense the direct and specific questions! They can not argue with that. Its still happy days!

We got a Tivo back in the summer. It's ace frankly. Only issue is that we only bought a 500MB...
The menus are not lightening quick, but as fast if not faster than a Sky+ box, and normal V boxes.

I have ran a PC based mediacenter (mythtv) for about 8 yrs and Tivo is the only thing to come close in terms of recording ability and flexibility.

It's a pain that the iplayer integration is clunky, but it is fast - if your's isnt then log a service call

Virgin Internet is fast and rock solid as well, only about 4 interruptions in about 9 years, each of only 3 or 4 hours.

I wouldnt swap it for Sky (ex Sky customer).

ok phoned them back and got a different bloke and got the tivo box straight away!!!!

he said that the other fella should have given it to me too!

so i suppose it depends on who you get.

I'll be sticking with my V+ box, since I replaced the miserable 160gb drive with a 2TB one it's been superb for me, just need to remember to swap them back if an engineer ever needs to visit:)

My experience of about 15 years of United Media/Telewest/Virgin has been without complaint, it's so easy to find fault when it just works day after day of which you quickly need to remind yourself and put it into context.

£44pm ..good deal...is that with line rental included?...if it is then wow, you have a very good deal.
.
like i said the only thing that would make me go back to virgin is the broadband (which looks very promising especially with doubling of speeds promise)...that would cater for all my htpc to my hdtv....yes the internet is my VOD. watch whatever you want, whenever you want...yes iplayer, 4oD and the rest.....the only sucker that sky have over me is the football and probably very soon the F1. i cancelled the tv for a year ...and was doing fine until the constant nagging of half price sky world offer (£28.00 atm) with no contract just sucked me right back.

Again it comes down to how much tv you watch and at what cost....regardless of all the marketing gimmicks of what the box does that is either free to begin with or you'll probably seldomly use.

Ahhh, now am in a predicament. :smirk:

I am getting a V+ delivered on Friday, free as i have just bought a blu ray player and HD tv. What should i do? Shouldl i call them and say i have seen this deal, bla bla bla and ask for them to change it to Tivo, free?

Fantastic. I have just done this and they never extended my contract!!

iodax: Thanks for that. They also offered to move my V+ box without asking. Really surprised they never tied me down to a 12 month contract! I made a point of asking when my contract ends and she confirmed July 2012! Happy Days.

Dont worry, Im sure they'll call you back to keep you. Beleive it or not they cant afford to lose especially as their doubling up everyones broadband. Remain calm...they NEED YOU...and negotiate a better deals with the sods!

Woohoo - thanks to all the super feedback on this comments threat, I phoned VM today and they've agreed to move my current V+ box to another room for free as part of Friday's Tivo installation.

If I hadn't posted this deal in the first place I'd probably never have known I could relocate the V+ box for free and keep all the stuff recorded on it - not to mention I get rubbish freeview reception in my area so cable in the bedroom will be a winner.

As they say, you get what you give! :innocent:

Normally I get a fair offer form the retention team but be warned, you could be chasing up that offer constantly having it corrected and claiming back over charges.

I rang them about 10 days ago, we'd be cut off the phone for 2 months over xmas, so I phoned for compensation and charges for this period.
They offered only 4 quid a month for 1 year, however the multi boxes were only meant to be 5 quid a month as agreed previously, these are not costing us 12 quid extra a month from being raised too 8 quid a month. On top of this I pointed out only weeks before I'd seen them offering a FREE TIVO box and install for existing customers, no matter how much I debated this they wouldn't give us a TIVO box with FREE install, as well as this I was offering to take 2 extra boxes but I wanted the boxes reduced back to the 5 quid we agreed. I was told they were increased shortly after I'd agreed 5 quid and had them installed and this was a price increase across all.

I wasn't happy and after checking bill and working out the mess of what they did the previous time to reduce the price, I realised how expensive they have become, and increasing my charges sneakily over the past year. I orig agreed for XL + 50Mbit Broadband + Phone Line + 24/7 Local Calls = £66.50 for 6 months then £76 the next 6 months. First 6 months was like a roller-coaster and constant calls to fix it, 2nd 6 months starts at 78 then raised to 88. This was all to get out price same as what was available on there site.

Since then I've looked about and we mainly use free view channels and catch up, and most the catchup on virgin is incomplete compared to the providers own websites, but in looking I found that GoogleTV is launching here in the UK soon but untli then there are a lot of cheapish Anderoid TV Boxes around.
They allow apps for catchup tv etc but also for games, social networkng, full web browser and more right on your TV. like TIVO but more FREE stuff, less controlled stuff and so on.
With the full web browser you can just goto 4OD, ITV player and the rest and get the full content, along with others like Crackle.com and similar. For this you need a broadband but virgin are doubling all speeds and 10mbit is more than enough to streaming online content.

First thing I thought was yeah but web browsing with out a mouse :disappointed: but the controls are like wii controls, you point and aim and press to select, to type they have keyboards on the actual controls, or some are like a mini keyboard.

GoogleTV is best though, you plug your existing Freeview, Freesat, Virgin, Sky box into it then it interacts with them. So you press a button and up pops a menu over the say virgin box which then lets ya access apps, online catchup, web browser and all sorts. With an android box you just change to that that then use it. GoogleTV also does picture in picture so you can browse and watch tv or play a game on it whilst tv sits in the corner, or maybe chat with others watching a reality tv show or similar.

So we're now keeping broadband, cutting virgin down to just channels like free and fx and stuff and probs ditching the expensive phone line.
Virgin have recently made available M+ and L tv choice on demand, so basically more of the catch-up that's around online. I guess this could be in response to GoogleTV's launch and maybe why they're focusing on their broadband services.
GoogleTV is a good thing, it will mean lots of online services can offer you your favourite channels for less money, and that virgin and the rest will have to slash prices to compete or get people hooked on 1 year contracts.

I must admit that I really didnt get on with the TIVO box, it was just slow, buggy, the ondemand features were useless, it just had the feeling of being rushed to the market and we as customers were being used to find the faults, whilst paying or teh pleasure....

However, the BB side of VM i find very good, so the easiest soultion is to have TV from Sky and BB and phone from VM, fortunately during my short time on TIVO I was offered several half price TV deals by Sky, so took that up, and for now my total cost is less than I was paying VM for a full service, when the 12 month half price deal with Sky is over, I will cancel it and see if I get any retention deals.

But that seems the sensible thing in my mind to do, but as always it all depends on yoru own preferences etc doesnt it.

Incorrect. As long as you don't pass the recording on to a third party then you are not legally obliged to tell them you're recording the call.

thanks

Good deal i suppose if you ar e happy with Virgin already or were thinking of becoming a customer.

Personally i wouldnt touch these dickheads with a bargepole

After dealing with them for over 6 months after they constantly over charged u on eberything from the phone to the internet we left and went to Sky , never had a problem since.

I'll give that a shot next time, I always seems to miss these deals!

How come everyone who threatens to leave Virgin gets offered great deals? When I rang up to leave I actually got shouted at by an angry Scottish woman who then cut off my services long before I left...
Needless to say I won't be going back and I actually find Sky's service is better than Virgin, particularly for broadband speed... I must be in a strange alternate universe or something!
Hot deal for those of you who speak to nice people lol.

Do you get anything extra with TiVo?
I currently have their 'ordinary' box, broadband, and phone ( all on lowest packages).
If I did this, would I get any extra channels or faster broadband for about the same as I'm paying now?
.. Or is the TiVo just the same but it records?

Hey thanks so much....I've been ummming and ahhhing for ages about ringing them up....finally did said what you said got it all completely free without paying a penny extra a month ....they also said they'll connect my other box to another room free of charge...woooo....oh and this is on top of my already hefty discount!! Actually liking Virgin a lot more at the moment and in terms of service last year not so good for the last few months it's been fab!!! Oh coming on Monday too !!
thanks so much for making me do it!!

I think you will find that the SKy hype is an 'UPTO' figure.

The VM figures run very close to what they promise.

Sky is running scared with all the BT Infinity stuff that is going on.

Been with VM for years and never had any real issues - any there have been have always been sorted out fast and usually involve a refund too.

Now if we were to talk about their mobile phones then I could rant ;-)

nice one, been a customer at ntlworld and virginmedia for 10+years - cant fault them, unlike Sky who were hopeless and i doubt id ever go back to (who i was with before ntlworld)

getting ours on friday am - free install, free box, free activation, just paying £3/month - cool as have an old virgin/ntl box which is sd/scart only and we only get basic channels and aerial connection is knackered - also saves me a job to fix the latter

Just called them also,but as i wanted the 1tb box my deal is slightly different,i got a 1tb box for free,and a £20 discount off the activation charge.
So paying £29.95 in total +£3 a month and only a 12month contract.
rightly or wrongly i recorded the phone call as they record me just in case they try it on and got them to repeated the offer a few times so its nice and clear.

just be careful this doesnt negate any other discounts you may already get

called today. they weren't having the £49.95 off but i got them to reduce my bill reduced by £10 a month. not bad for 5 minutes work.

i only have the tv XL package but got an extra tiro box for £49.95 but minus £120pa. so a good £70 off for the year.

Before deciding to 'upgrade' to TiVo, it might be worth checking out the TiVo forum to get an idea of what it is like....

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/TiVo/bd-p/Tivo

I wish I had.

My near constant 11MB/s downloads (MegaBytes, not Mb) on their 100Mb service would suggest otherwise. Decent online customer service forum too. But hey, my level of service is just one unique view as is yours. Unlike you I don't use it as a benchmark for what everyone else will experience.

Thank you so much. I only rang VM less than 10 minutes ago to get this package. After reading this, I rang them up again and they removed the installation cost. There was no activation cost.

I have to say huge thanks, they first of all tried to say I could get a free box but had to pay for activation even though I'd seen it online, I then replied with "well my friend just got a free upgrade all included and shes an existing customer" I was put on hold for a couple of minutes and then told it would be installed all free and only at an extra cost of £3 per month :smiley: Thanks again I've been trying to upgrade for ages from the standard box even though Ive been a customer for 7 years :smiley:

Limited? Yes only compared to what sky can offer with their sky anytime - your probably not aware of the VOD service on tivo my friend up to 300hours ! Its crazy. PLUS the extra features on the TIVO box . Iplayer 4od youtube twitter etc a delete restore folder a suggestions folder record 3 at one time switch between two chanels at a time without recording but able to rewind ..when switched on after standby able to rewind the channel its on

Def Agree wih Broadband thou VM and fibre optic all the way not to mention doubling our speeds for free..

I left sky TV 2months ago for Tivo (only had the BB with VM)

Free installation free tivo box 500gb
Free multiroom v+ hd box upstairs
Free super HUb
Xl TV package ( imo free espn compensates for the loss of channels compared to sky)
L BB package
Standard phone line package
Loyalty discount
12months contract but fixed price for 24months
At £44 pm ..happy days!

I have to say huge thanks, they first of all tried to say I could get a free box but had to pay for activation even though I'd seen it online, I then replied with "well my friend just got a free upgrade all included and shes an existing customer" I was put on hold for a couple of minutes and then told it would be installed all free and only at an extra cost of £3 per month :smiley: Thanks again I've been trying to upgrade for ages from the standard box even though Ive been a customer for 7 years :smiley:

I have to say huge thanks, they first of all tried to say I could get a free box but had to pay for activation even though I'd seen it online, I then replied with "well my friend just got a free upgrade all included and shes an existing customer" I was put on hold for a couple of minutes and then told it would be installed all free and only at an extra cost of £3 per month :smiley: Thanks again I've been trying to upgrade for ages from the standard box even though Ive been a customer for 7 years :smiley:

Hmm - I'm awfully tempted to upgrade from the V+HD box I have to a Tivo. The engineer I had over a few months ago had nothing but good things to say about them! I might pop into my local VM store and ask for a demo of the box to see how it runs.

Ok am interested in this but rubbish at asking for stuff, those of you who phoned up what did you say initially to get the tivo, did you just mention outright that you wanted the tivo for free, if not how did you work up to it? Just want to be prepared in case I happen to get a cs rep on a bad day!!

****! Phoned and they refused to do any deal as I have 6 months left on contract with them. Suppose I'll have to wait grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Result...free Tivo, getting installed on Friday, V+box getting moved to bedroom, all for £4 less than I am currently paying. Also got free caller display on my phone line too! As the OP stated you do have to mention that you have seen the offer for new customers shown, he did press me to find out exactly which offer I had seen, but no problems after that.

Thanks OP!

I've had both providers, virgin prior to sky for a minimum of 5 yrs each and i never experienced any difficulties in terms of service or quality.both companies seem to be very good in enticing new customers and letting existing customers chase up loyalty discounts (understandable since they are both competing), so it's up to us,the consumer, to take advantage of that.

In my opinion the least item you need to have in a house is probably the phone and the broadband, TV subscription is a luxury (unless you are constantly in the house) but even then it's bore because it's always programmed for you rather than the other way around, hence the emergence of V.O.D and even then the content is still limited.

All in all, my conclusion based on my experience is at the moment for Broadband i'd go for Virgin, TV i'd go SKY.

Thanks for that, getting it insalled on Friday and phoned, they gave me my £50 no problem and are upgrading my origional box to V+ upstairs and fitting V+ in the kids room all for £3 per month, result!!!

I was with vm for 4 years and always got a good deal when i threatened to leave, until last year when they wouldn't give me a better deal and i had bb phone and tv plus sports and movies (not hd)

I phoned sky and got the same deal but with sports and movies in hd, for £10 cheaper per month, virgin phoned me back a few days later and asked what i had been offered and offered me the same but without movies and sports in hd.... Needless to say i just laughed at them, had sky for 6 months now and not had a single problem whereas id have a vm outage for a day once every 2 months

On the phone to them now the rep is called bob, technically I got it free but (always a but) I pay the £40 installation fee but they credit my account for £5 a month until it is paid and had to take up a new 12mth contract.

Also he said that a bew Firmware will be released sometime in march to fix the red button problem (hopefully other issues too)

And finally they are doubling the current bb speeds, I'm currently on 20meg and going to get upgraded to 60mb free. This is happening to every customer, to find out when google virgin media double speed and it will tell you when in your area.

I have an old V+ box they never collected over 18 months ago. Would they know if i swapped itt with the ordinary virgin box we currently have?
I did try to ge the free tivo a few months ago and they woldn't entertain me and when I said I was thinking of leaving they said go ahead and leave!

Depends what deal you are starting off with thought - yeah.

If you have 2 minuters a month on your PAYG phone and upgreade to an IPhone - do you expect to get it for an extra £3?

I dont think so.

MY Bill - either VM or SKY has not bee £17.99 since I used dial up.

Fair point. I expected as such as I think the discounts I already have a pretty good - and he said as much, although he seemed disgusted that I was paying £17.99!

Thats probably because of the value involved - we have XL TV, V+, 50mb Broadband and VM Telephone with a couple of extras.. was paying £82 per month..

Now we've got the Free Tivo deal and our bill dropped to £77 per month..

Hmmm.diasppointing call. (But I expected it)

Currently paying £17.99

They offered me a Tivo 500GB box for £36.90/per month (2 year contract!) So whilst some are paying £5 less after this deal, my bill is being more than doubled!!!

No thanks!!!

Surely you can get both Sky and many VirginS if you do the right thing :man:

I did similar recently but was unable to get them to drop the £3. I had 2 V+ boxes and got one swapped out with the Tivo and installed in another room for free.

The pictures are fine as is the internet.

Only channel 5 is crap - but that is an issue with the suppolier not Virgin - 5 HD is fine.

What number are you guys ringing? Thanks

Sky is an alright provider, they're unrivalled in the UK, atleast in the NE. I personally just use the interwebs for all my TV, TVOD is the best way to watch it, I'm busy most of the time anyway. Tivo? Isnt that, the american thing that's starting to make a break in the UK? Old tech much :/ Also, since half or more, consumers of BB are actually not inside of a cable area, how can this even be beneficial to the majority of the users on this site?

Good find, but this is standard whenever you call a retention team.

I’m not going to vote on this but I do want to say that having upgraded from V+HD to TiVo, I miss my V+ box. On paper TiVo looks so much better but it has cut off programmes on us (I think I’ve yet to see the end of a Graeme Norton show) and brought up more warnings about program clashes than I ever had before. The warning noise it makes is painful and the new features on TiVo are rarely used.

V+ just does the basics better imho

Tivo menus are so counter intuitive, e.g. anyone who's tried watching a beeb programme through it will know how long iPlayer takes to load, and often fails to stream.

Also as mentioned the SD image is pretty bad, you'd get far better quality out of the standard freeview tuner you get with most TV's made in the past few years.

I managed to haggle an increased download speed from 10 to 30Mb/s as well with free superhub. All for the Same cost of 45 doubloons per month. Bear in mind the doubling internet speeds so its actually 60mb.

So thats Tivo, superhub, unlimited phone calls, 30mb internet for less than what I was paying before. No activation fees to boot.

Managed to get this deal from VM Retentions - so free Tivo, free installation and activation, relocation of my old V+ box...

The guy also reduced by monthly bill for me by £5 per month...

Thanks OP :smile:

Just Phoned Virgin, and I got the deal of free Tivo!!!! Had a moan, I wasn't getting any benefits after being with Virgin for 3yrs!! I also got installation of another box in a different room!!!!! Thanks for the tip :laughing:

That'll do me!

Don't bother. We did this a while ago. And have had nothing but problems with the stupid Tivo box since. It regularly fails to record, we're always "losing" channels. Its crap. The only benefit was that it somehow reduced my bill by £3 a month.

My hubby just called them after i sent him this, and he got:
Free TiVo box
Free Installation
Free Subscribtion of TiVo till April
Plus we keep our old V+ box
Free Installation upstairs into out bedroom (V+ is going)
Free subscription of the V+ upstairs

Hubby is very pleased...we have been with them for years and we have XL package, Cable and home phone through them.

Thanks

Is this Tivi 500GB box in HD?

My 12 m 1/2 price deal with Sky HD has just ended - no phone call off them yet! You got 18 m? Wow!

I rang up VM last year after so many VM customers I knew were paying considerably less than me for a better package. I called up 5-6 times and they werent interested. SO I decidsed to quit & move to Talk Talk - handed in my 30 day notice & then got a call off them a few days later with the above offer.

I think its pretty much random with VM though - you can have 10 people on identical packages all paying different prices.

Did you get it after or from retentions before you quit? I still hope they phone up with a decent offer, probly just fooling myself!

I shouldn't really complain as I've had SKY HD for over 18months at half price since the Bestbuy deal. That ends in a few days as they wouldn't continue the offer for me..

Oh and lets not forget Virgin Media are doubling our download badnwidth for no increase in price. Bring on the 100Mb/s please !

Edit: I can only sing praise about the service I've received from VM. NLT was awful and I was looking at going back to Sky, but then I stuck with it when VM got involved, and it all went uphill

i get the same on wired and wireless download speeds in evening is 0.xxx range!

They also have the worst customer service!!

I think it will help those who are with VM and paying full whack without any discounts.

For those of us existing customers who have some sort of discount applied, we will lose that discount if fortunate enough to get this deal.

Basically, its all about what discount you prefer to keep.

Sorry!

Ive been with them in all their guises since 1994 if thats any consolation,

Only got this deal when I handed in my 30day notice last April.

Tried it was told I could have one, but would loose discounts bill would go from 64 to 80 a month, so leaving it for now...

I'm not very good at understanding these deals.

I currently have the following with VM: Phone line (XL), Broadband (10mb) & TV (M) - the cable box isnt even connected but what do I need to say to get the above deal?

I currently pay £17.99 for the above and that 12 m deal ends in April & it goes up to £24.99

Tried this a couple of months ago and they wouldnt waive the fees but that's because I'm on the retailer rate "discount".

I can confirm this works I did it 3 months ago when it wasn't even available for existing customers and got free installation, Tivo box, installation and relocation of existing V+ box.

I just phoned Virgin - having already complained via email and not getting a response. We had a letter last week telling us our package was going up £4.50 a month from April - so I wasn't happy about it. Phoned cancellations dept just and was told they couldn't do anything to compensate me for the increase as I'm on a mates rates package. When I said I'd seen the deal online for new customers and TiVo boxes, she quickly said "Yeah we can do that for you" but I would still have to pay £3 extra on top of the £4.50 per month. Sadly, despite trying to negotiate a bit - I couldn't get that knocked down at all - but installation and activation both free. And they are repairing my current V+ box to move it upstairs. So not bad for 10 mins on the phone.

Heat added.

just rang got nothing like this deal!!!!
they wanted me to pay for installation (£49.95) but they would take £10 off my monthly bill.
which is ok ish but still not as good as this!!!

To be fair I was talking to retentions, if he'd have said that deal is impossible I would have said OK. What he did say was that I wasn't as good a customer as them and it was all a bit like insurance, some getting better deals than other. Kept harping on about BT this and that. As I told him VM aren't the only ones who offer unlimited downloads and that I wouldn't touch BT with a bargepole anyway.

I just paid the £50, been with em years so a bit miffed plus annoyed I also had to pay £30 for super hub when upgraded from 10mb to 30mb BB. On the plus side you will never beat Virgin On Demand services as XL tv customer I love it, I'm getting some really good customer discounts from them at mo and they also put my old Virgin+ box upstairs in the bedroom free of charge and no extra monthy cost! Sky boradband has nothing over virgin....if I could change one thing about Virgin it would be to bring the Tech Support ba k home from India or wherever they based - extrememly frustrating...

and for the record....i live in a non cable area so have sky at home and the broadband is dire 5 meg on a 20 meg service, i am constantly getting advised on google that my connection is too slow for the auto site feature to work....how bad is that, no issues with tv though and been lucky that only had 2 issues with sky+ box in 2 years

i get fed up of people calling in saying that a mate gets this or that for a ridiculous price per month.....customer relations can do more in the way of deals than we can in customer service so please don't slate customer service for doing our job within the limits we have to work

I had both installed at one point so was able to compare side by side directly and the Virgin cable connection was better ..... by miles.

The drop-off in speed during peak times on the Sky connection was incredible and even outside peak times the Virgin connection was still more stable and faster. Obviously, this may vary depending on your local exchange but in my experience cable won hands down.

Nice offer. But the Tivo box doesn't seem to offer much of an upgrade really. Have had a look at it at a couple of friends places but then, I'm quite happy with my current V+ HD box (maybe I'm just lucky but I never have freezing or crashing issues with mine?) so I'll stick with what I have.

The only area I preferred Sky was the HD sports channels. Until they give Virgin HD versions of ALL of them, I'm not paying the extra to upgrade only two of them to HD ....

I got TiVo a couple weeks ago, after blagging a free install.

Finding it fantastic. My only niggle is that there isnt a fast delete option. I have to manually go into every recording sub menu and chose delete. Oh, and you dont seem to be able to fast forward quite as quickly.

But hey, I record way more now, and am loving it!

Nice one VM!

As someone that works in retentions, I can assure you that a long term deal like that doesn't exist. Off the top of my head I think it's 32.40 without the talk unlimited. They must have some kind of campaign which wouldn't last any longer than 6 months.

Didn't Virgin make a big song and dance a few years ago promising that new customers would no longer get preferential treatment over existing customers? So much for that then.......

It's an OK deal if you're a VM fanboy or happen to be stuck in front of a very large building or some trees and unable to pick up a satellite signal. Personally though I'll stick to paying £26 a month for the top package on Sky.

Just called VM but they said they could not waive the £49.95 installation fee as I was already on a good deal anyway. Paying £45 for XL TV, L Broadband and Phone. So a little frustrated but not that much to end my contract. Only incentive he said was the subscription price would be £3 rather than the £5 increase for April and I could keep my V+ box.

I got the same deal, the TiVo box is awesome, much prefer it over Sky+

I'm sure these boxes are great but won't stop me leaving virgin, been a customer for 5 years and the internet speed has suddenly gone crippling, and for another £30 a month I can go with sky and get all sports and movies and the 3D channel (i have no sports/movies/3d with virgin). Price has nearly doubled since i joined and i've been through 3 faulty boxes in the last year alone

I'm assuming it's £15 discount as they only pay £32 for the package I mentioned. £4 more than me for 30mb broadband and anytime phone calls.

To be honest, whenever I've called, I find the CS at VM obnoxious so may well be better getting away.

I ordered Tivo yesterday but after reading reviews I'm not sure if I should just stick with v+ (despite how bad it is!). Can anyone recommend Tivo over V+? I'm 6 months into an 18 month contract so I can't threaten to leave and it's costing me £3 for Tivo, £49.95 activation fee, £6.50 for multiroom and £49.95 for install in 2 other rooms.

is any of this worth doing as i am on the old medium package (not m+). do i get any more channels?

thanks

looks good

A £15 loyalty discount doesn't exist so they were likely on a short term promotion. You could get a phone line and 10Mb broadband for around £21 on a retentions deal, with the broadband speed due to be doubled for the same price.

I phoned up as someone at work was getting a much better deal than me. They wouldn't offer me anything and I ended up cancelling....They were getting XL Broadband (30mb) and XL phone (free anytime calls) with a £15 loyalty discount

Gutted because all I really use is Broadband, pay £28.90 for 10mbit, TV that isn't conneted and phone line (never used due to mobiles). Although I can get phone line. evening and weekend calls and broadband from sky for £11 a month (for 12 months taking into account quidco) it will only be around 2-3mb as I live a long way from the exchange :disappointed:

Lose my Broadband 7th March and have no idea what I'm going to do :disappointed:

I also called Virgin to ask what they could offer me as an existing customer. I ended up getting the Tivo box installed for free and they also installed my Virgin plus box in another room free for 24 months - all this and a monthly saving of £1 per month! I periodically call them as an existing customer to see what they are willing to do to keep me!

20Meg broadband shocker!!! Ive been with Virgin/NTL for 8 years and had no broadband problems so have never had to speak to customer services so cannot comment on that but surely that speaks volumes of the service

You don't have to connect it to a router, it has a built in modem with a dedicated 10Mb connection.

I had Tivo put in last week to replace a faulty V+ box. Tivo seams ok & nice to have a bigger hard drive in case its ever need but imo if you already got a V+ box you might as well stay with that for now as iv not found any extra about the tivo that is worth paying for.

What's the main difference between a Tivo and a Virgin+ HD box?

Had Tivo for a little while, because they told me it would only cost an additional £3p/m. However, they neglected to tell me if you're still on the cheaper 'M' package, which I am, they also upgrade you to the 'M+' package which adds another £6.50 p/m. And you can never go back to 'M' again, as it no longer exists. Wasn't fussed enough to pay £9.50 p/m for Tivo, so they had to take it out again.

I rang up to sort moving house out and I was offered the same deal without even asking for it!

Hmm, strange... When I called up a couple of months ago to get TiVo installed, I was told there was no way to get free installation (although the activation was free) even though I specifically mentioned that new customers get it all for free... So I paid the £49.99, which was ok overall given that you get to keep your V+ box for free, with the same packages etc as the TiVo.

As for all the Virgin-bashing, they've actually been quite good for me. It also helps that I'm able to get 30Mbps with them, whereas BT would've ground down to a painful 2-3Mbps...

Their call centres are in the Phillipines I think, but if you ask them nicely they will put you through to the English call centres...

Change to the iPlayer interface had two reasons

1) I think BBC were requiring that all access to iPlayer programming were going through their menu system - hence then need to load up the iPlayer frontend. I think VM have got some leeway from the BBC so that you can get direct to the iPlayer program via the "past program guide" (i.e. selecting program from the program time from before current time(

2) Originally iPlayer was using same mechanism as other catchup TV and sending program over cable signal ... hence the issue where occasionally/often youd get the "unable to show program currently - try again later" message when there was no bandwidth available due to other people already using catch-up TV. Now it uses an app and streams programs over the TiVo's broadband connection which has much less, if any, bandwidth limits. Incidentally, use of the TiVo's broadband connection for streaming via app is, according to VM info, going to be rolled out to other apps to provide some of the "red button" features - e.g. a BBC olympic app giving something like 24 channels of live coverage

Just done it, got it all free, monthly charge stays the same and free move of old box. Very nice helpful man booked it in for Saturday - well happy! Big thanks to whoever found this out!!!

Only and extra £3 per month? I'm paying an extra £5 per month for V+. I might give this a try, it might work out even cheaper.

with that comment i take it you have never been through to the callcentre in Scotland or Wales then.....

because you had a bad experience doesn't mean everyone has.......perhaps it may have been due to the fact you couldn't get what you wanted ??????

My 82 year old Dad, paid to have TIVO installed - and was very disappointed, can't get text and a lot of the features advertised are not available until a later date. Does anybody else have trouble getting text - they have sent him another box v+( I think) and that doesn't do text either and they took his money !! He is hard of hearing and has spent so much time on the phone and writing/emailing to try and resolve it. Not impressed with Virgin Media at all. They have now told him the boxes no longer do text?? We have the original style box and can go on to interactive and get news.weather/sport etc. Anybody got any suggestions for him??

My 82 year old Dad, paid to have TIVO installed - and was very disappointed, can't get text and a lot of the features advertised are not available until a later date. Does anybody else have trouble getting text - they have sent him another box v+( I think) and that doesn't do text either and they took his money !! He is hard of hearing and has spent so much time on the phone and writing/emailing to try and resolve it. Not impressed with Virgin Media at all. They have now told him the boxes no longer do text?? We have the original style box and can go on to interactive and get news.weather/sport etc. Anybody got any suggestions for him??

This was initially tempting from the OPs post, but as suggested here I think i'll try tivo in a virgin media shop first just in case...

I wonder if this will affect my loyalty discount?

Virgin have the worst customer service ever, make sure you RECORD your conversations with them and tell they you are doing so, also note the time and their name. They will 'record' the ones they have with you incorrectly and try to change the terms, or convieniently lose important information regarding their offer to you without your aggreement.

I have experienced this with them more times than I care to count. But having said that, if you control them and prove them wrong they will give you free credit.

Sky sucks...I ordered sky with friends and family 6 months ago online. They where offering £50 M & S vouchers at the time I rang them up yesturday that I have not received them they told me because u have friends and family discount already, but it did not state anywhere that u can not get the vouchers if you are on friends and family..still waiting for reply.

Tag, thanks op.

Looks like quite a few things on Virgin are going up in price from 1 April:
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tech/news/a363768/virgin-media-customers-angry-over-price-hike.html

Sounds like my V+ box too :confused:
Some of the Tivo comments do sound ominous, but there are good reviews too.
Here's hoping VM iron-out the software bugs and it's a user-friendly experience. :man:

I'll give this a go, although I'm half way through a contract so not sure where I'll stand

Thanks for this. Just got free Tivo and installation, didn't push for anything else.

Cheers danno but will stil give it a go (he who dares) but thx for the feedback

I think TiVo shows decent promise but is pants at the minute;

Guide used to be slow but an update sorted it out but and here's the clever part it screwed up loads of other things;

It added loads of radio programmes to the catch up on demand menu, meaning you have to page through an absolute ton of stuff to browse for things in that section, there also seems to be a limit to the amount of times you can page down so by adding all this stuff you now can't see all the tv catchup content for most days. If you search, yeah you can get it but otherwise it's annoying.

BBC iplayer used to be great, v+ choose what you want hit play it loads job done. TiVo used to be like this before the update now it loads a front end for BBC Iplayer which has taken anywhere from 40s to 15 mins to load, after which the programmes are lower quality and suffer from audio and stuttering problems.

I now have to record all BBC programmes I used to enjoy from the catch up section.

YouTube app was broken by the update for me and went from a quick useable format to something barely acceptable, some searches return incorrect results etc. it's just plain weird.
Apart from that not too bad.

I did exactly this in December.

Basically I was told new customers were treated the same way so when I questioned the activation fee for existing customers I was offered the same so paid neither fee.

Secondly I had my BB upgraded for free and as I had an additional STB upstairs in the bedroom which I paid £6.50 a month for, this was swapped for my old V+ STB which was downstairs and the £6.50 charge was removed and replaced with the £3 Tivo charge which meant I actually saved an additional £3.50! I was very happy with this deal and I must say Tivo is AMAZING! Streets ahead of V+ and any Sky STB! :0D

Yeah has been listed a number of times. i upgraded in Nov after seeing others got it free on here. I have been really impressed with the Tivo features over the v+ box. Both can be slow through the menus but in my experience the Tivo is quicker and doesn't crash like the v+ used to. Also got it free and the new router for no extra cost. Couldn't blag the v+ in another room though. I tried.

As for sky I used to get 0.346mb bb for 3 yrs in my area. Now get a consistent 9.9mb to be doubled in a few mths. No arguing with those stats.

Thanks OP, it helped me, my hubby now very happy to be having his TIVO box delivered on Wednesday next week. The installation and activation fee has been putting us off since before Christmas as we didn't want to pay it! We don't want to go to Sky as they are so much more expensive for multi-room and our kids love having the plus boxes to record their own stuff.

I did post this over 2 weeks ago!!!

http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/virgin-media-tivo-box-free-instalation-activation-only-3-month-1118619

not for me mate, ive had an engineer come out, replace my super hub and after a couple of hours/days at 30mb wireless it mysteriously dropped to 0.1 mb. wired it still gets 30 mb but wireless shlt. gna ring them now and il see what they can do

I very much doubt it to be honest, Your first Tivo is free activation, but additional outlets have a 49.95 activation fee, and you'd need another install fee of 49.95 waived, so thats nearly £100 credit to get it done... If your in contract, then no chance, but iif your contract is up, Give it a shot!

IAlso, you will have another £3 monthly charge applied, as this applies to each box

Good Luck :sunglasses:

Hey I just did this they do it after the usual ive got to speak to my manager fob off yey tivo box and installation for free ????
also if you speed test your broadband and your not getting what you pay for ring them up and give em what for they will sort it out and you will constantly get the speed you pay for :smile:


go fot it

just to add, i phoned yesterday to ask about this, Sharon at retentions (as i am already on a deal retentions have to deal with changes) said as i already pay for a 2nd box upgrading to TIVO would save me £3 a month as there is no 2nd box charge with there current deal offsetting the £6.50 against the TIVO £3 per month.

on top of this is your 2nd box is a standard box you can have that upgraded to TIVO and keep the V+ HD with all the features.

just remember to put the box you want rid of where the TIVO will go.

she also pointed out that the yearly price increase is due so i would only end up 50p better off in a couple of months.

Danno17 do you think i will get this done for the bedroom aswell?

I can confirm I did this 4 months ago when it wasn't even available for existing customers and it worked!

we did the same thing Tivo and they fitted the older box in another room free..all for 30p a month less.

Many Tivo users like myself do not get 'stunning HD channels' as per Virgin's promotional statements. Be careful what you wish for! The Tivo picture in SD sucks even more and apparently little can be done as all settings are automated.Great functionality but the picture quality could be much better and I think the V+ box I had previously was much better.

Virgin do offer some very good loyalty offers once you say you are leaving. Got a great deal last time my 12 month contract was up

:smile:

TBH their tivo box is ok however their internet is shocking as is thier customer services, only time you speak to someone english in their team is when you want to join and when you want to leave :neutral_face:

With that sort of incisive intellect you will fit right in :smile:

I'd like free Tivo but Virgin aren't in my area... in fact I've never lived in an area that cable services has been available!

Are your thoughts on imminent employment a reflection of Virgin's quality or Sky's, I wonder? :man:

Glad to hear it. Im thinking about working for them :smiley:

I rang recently to cancel as I genuinely wanted to join Sky and take advantage of Quidco & unlimited broadband. By the end of the call to VM I had a free Tivo box being installed (tomorrow) upgraded to XL TV & broadband (from M+ & L) for £6 extra a month for 2 years, providing I signed up for a another 12 months. Snapped his hand off!

looks good

Hi all

I work for VM, and they have told us that the Tivo monthly charge is going upto £5 pm from 1st April, But for new connections only...

So if you are thinking of getting Tivo, do it now, as the price will stay at £3 for existing subsriptions