Virgin Media staves off cable punter seepage
14,700 subscribers fled, sales still above £1bn in Q2
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Virgin Media told the City this morning that it lost 14,700 cable punters during its second quarter ended 30 June.
But the telco said this figure is far fewer than 36,000 customers who scarpered from the company in the same three-month period a year ago.
All of which means that Virgin Media is pleased with itself.
The ISP added that revenues for the quarter were up 4.2 per cent on the same period last year, as more of its customers - 459,800 in total - opted to sign up for its faster broadband offering. The telco said it now has 1.3 million customers on the higher speed package, who make up 31 per cent of the overall broadband customer base.
Sales topped the £1bn mark in the three months, and operating income was £179.6m - up from 2011 Q2's £134.9m.
The company said customer churn was 1.4 per cent during the second quarter, up from 1.2 per cent in the first three months of this year.
Meanwhile, the likes of Stephen Fry and David Tennant appearing on adverts punting VM's internet-based TiVo service managed to push the number of online TV customers on its books beyond 1 million this week. It said 261,700 subscribers were added to TiVo during its Q2 results.
Year-on-year, VM's overall cable customer base remained flat at 4.8 million subs. ®
COMMENTS
if it wasn't for the hassle of...changing our emails
This is why you NEVER use an service provider email or web hosting service.
"But the telco said this figure is far fewer than 36,000 customers who scarpered from the company in the same three-month period a year ago"
The spokesperson went on to explain "We did this by tricking helping our customers by telling them they could have a free HD box, and then once they'd received their box and started using it pointing out that the terms and conditions say that the 'HD activation' actually tied them into another 12 month contract", before commencing an extended bout of diabolical laughter.
However when asked, the spokesman was less convinced about Virgin's current strategy being viable in the near future. "I think we might need to scam encourage our customers to take out 18 or 24 month contracts in the future, by bumping the price of the 12 month contracts well up. This should help with customer retentions for the next couple of years at least."
"We might also be able to pull a fast one by changing the price of the contract mid term, citing some crap about inflation" they added thoughfully.
Re: The next quarter will be worse
No, the complaint is (and this happened to me) is when threatening to leave, or rather just stating that you wish to terminate your contract, VM used the double speed as a carrot. In my case, they told me this was happening in July 2012. I have now checked the status to see what is happening and it has been put back to December 2012 - May 2013.
I don't care which rule book you go by, that's a bit underhand.
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