back to article Virgin Media suffers growing pains as Cable Cowboy daddy settles in

Virgin Media reported flat sales and an operating loss to the City this morning as the telco adjusts to living under the roof of cable giant Liberty Global. It said revenue stood at £1.02bn during the company's third quarter ended 30 September 2013, while restructuring costs relating to Liberty's summer takeover of Virgin …

COMMENTS

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  1. jonathanb Silver badge

    Cost saving idea

    Here's a cost saving idea for anyone at Virgin Media who wants to listen

    Either

    1. Stop bombarding my street with junk mail advertising your products

    or

    2. Put some actual cables along the street so that people who want your products can actually sign up for them.

    What the point of advertising to people who can't buy your product because you won't sell it to them? I just don't get it.

    1. ed2020

      Re: Cost saving idea

      And a third suggestion:

      Stop bombarding me with junk mail advertising your products when I already have them!

      1. John G Imrie

        Re: Cost saving idea

        And a fourth suggestion.

        Tell the person who you employ in the afternoon not to bother as I got one form the person in the morning.

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Cost saving idea

        Junk mail is one thing, it's when they keep phoning you up that is the problem.

        I wrote to complain and got them to stop calling.

    2. Wardy01

      Re: Cost saving idea

      What he said

  2. paulc

    What this really means...

    Is that they'll never post a profit in this country any more purely for tax reasons... they'll just be paying interest on a loan from the parent company or else pay stupid fees to licence their own intellectual property

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: What this really means...

      I think that looks likely: "Operating income for Q3 has also been affected by higher depreciation and amortisation costs, higher stock-based compensation expense, and the impairment of certain network assets."

      Funny how all the non-cash costs have gone up, based on the company's decision, resulting in a nice little loss. Whether in our vastly complex tax code such shenanigans will translate to a lower tax liability would remain to be seen as "the computation" is not directly linked to the statutory accounts.

      So in theory not, but in practice HMRC seem incompetent at getting multinationals to pay tax. If there's any doubt it'll be easy to ship the transactions off shore to somewhere that will permit any form of cowboy accounting.

      1. jonathanb Silver badge

        Re: What this really means...

        Depreciation and amortisation are not allowable expenses for tax purposes. Instead you get capital allowances and an annual investment allowance.

        Share based payments are not allowable for tax purposes except in circumstances where they are taxable income in the hands of the recipient - http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/budget2013/ct-relief-employee-shares.pdf

        Virgin Media has massive historical losses going back to the NTL days. These can be carried forward and set off against future profits, so they are not going to be paying any tax any time soon. Any company that makes those sorts of losses and somehow manages to survive gets the same benefits.

  3. Bladeforce

    Here's another idea Virgin, STOP USING TRAFFIC MANAGEMENT POLICIES WHEN ADVERTISING YOUR PRODUCT AS UNLIMITED

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Untrue

      It is unlimited, when your not getting throttled.

  4. bigtimehustler

    I agree with the people saying stop sending useless marketing. "Your street is ready..." blah blah, No, my street is not ready, I live in an apartment block which is not cable fitted (it is sky only), all your doing by sending these advertisements to addresses which are not ready (when your saying they are) is making yourselves look stupid.

  5. El Presidente

    The 'cable cowboy' needs to get the metre eaters out to lay some more ducting in previously unprofitable areas and it really should increase the number of UBRs. Tenfold in some areas.

    The more a service provider needs to spend on fault handling and call centre drones is correlated to the performance of the service they provide.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I was a customer

    After ten years of using Virgin Media in (very) Central London - I got a letter in the post telling me that in 3 months they would stop serving cable my area. Strange but true. I went from 50MB cable to 12mb ADSL on BT.

    :(

  7. Rol

    Price transparency

    I am willing to bet that no two customers with exactly the same package paying the exact same amount exists in this country. (ignoring promotional offers for new customers, that is)

    Once your contract is run it is down to your skills in brinkmanship, whether you get a decent price to remain a customer and even then you'll not be ready for the obligatory inflation busting price rise a month later which strangely enough affects you and only you.

    My tip for the day-

    If you are going from cable to copper, or the other way round, tell the engineer not to tear out the original connection, as you will continue using it. They will always rip out the old connection to make it more convenient for themselves, but more to make sure it will be another huge connection fee to swap back.

    1. cosymart
      WTF?

      Re: Rip Out....

      I have never known any of the providers rip out the previous connections or indeed their own when swapping over tenants / owners. Witness the masses of redundant co-ax cable from both Virgin and Sky strewn around the door frames and skirting boards of most flats.

    2. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
      Thumb Down

      Re: Price transparency

      "If you are going from cable to copper, or the other way round, tell the engineer not to tear out the original connection,"

      They never do that. That would be interfering with property owned by a different company, whether it be BT or VM. No installer is going to risk his job by ripping out the competitions wiring, equipment or wall points, The householder doesn't own that stuff.

  8. Mr Fuzzy

    Paraphrase

    Can we take "higher stock-based compensation expense," to mean "we have decided that our stockholders didn't pay attention to Aesop and would rather sacrifice long term gains for a nice crispy goose dinner on Tuesday?"

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Told you so

    "Stock based compensation expenses" mean accounting fiddle to an offshore company.

    So when is the next price rise coming?

    Didnt I tell you so?

  10. Jas 1

    Bye Bye VM in MK

    They've finally decided to abandon the analogue cable service in Milton Keynes

    Had the letter the other day that the service is ending this month, They suggested I look into freeview, freesat or even Sky.

    TBH i've not used it much for the past few years, and should have just canceled it, but now they've saved me the bother.

    One less box under the TV.

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