It seems thats not assured success now sadly.
When I rang to cancel, I got an offshore centre which was odd in itself given retentions are effectively sales, and the guy couldnt even match the automated email offer, the offer was hideous.
I have seen 4 posts today where people got personalised offers of the following for gig1.
£35 - after they quoted a CF package. prior to that his offer was quite bad, they said was impossible to budge etc, but then by magic dropped it after he quoted a cityfibre price.
£37
£42
£35
None of these were volt, they were all flat gig1.
Also someone was offered this on volt.
£36 (500mb and then boosted to gig1 via sim, sim cost would be on top of this).
My offer was after a fair amount of haggling £55 (£26 worse than current package). My sim increases to a little under £18 this month, so the offer was basically £73. My offer is by the far worst I have seen anyone post.
On top of this, I cancelled on Monday, and got no attempt from outbound retentions, everyone who posted they got the outbound call, it was within 48 hours.
Interestingly someone posted, that this offshore retentions call centre isnt proper retentions but more like a tier 1, their advice was to hang up if these guys ever answer the call, wish I knew this when I rang.
I dont think I am being unreasonable expecting to pay the going rate of what is offered to other customers. I would tolerate a few pounds, but not nearly 40 quid.
When I quoted the CF price to the retentions I was talking to, there was absolutely no attempt to even get close to it, he simply changed tact to that VM is better quality and that I would have to pay install fee's to change ISP.
There really shouldnt be a lottery on a broadband package, keep it simple and charge everyone the same price. At the very least if you going to have retention deals at least make them consistent with each other.
I wonder how much money is wasted by me having to send the equipment back, cancel the contract, someone else signing up for activation day soon after cut off date, and then them sending me brand new equipment and the arrangement of new contract.