Virgin Broadband & other providers

[hippy-chick]

I'm after some advice about what is good value and good service with broadband.

At the moment I am with Tiscali
I signed up for 12 month contract at £18 for broadband with free calls anytime of the day and maintained my BT line and pay them for line rental.

Anyhow, my contract rang out a year ago, and have been happy with the service for the past 2 years.

but, they've joined up with Talk Talk and I can keep my existing package albeit more expensive as they've deemed to raise the charges by £1 although they are offering new clients the same package at £7 per month.

So, theres a deal with Virgin for the same price that I am paying now but you get TV channels added like Sky and Discovery.

My questions are:

who is happy with there provider and what do you get?

To be honest, I have been totally satisfied with Tiscali, but it gets my goat that I've been a customer for 2 years and getting charged more, and new clients are paying a lot less.

I really hope that you take the time to answer this one.

 

[Ruth Mills]

If the Virgin offer is for cable broadband (as opposed to ADSL over a bog standard BT phone line), then it's technically superior and should theoretically give you faster speeds and far greater reliability than ADSL (although this would also be dependent on which package you go for, and how many people you end up sharing the available bandwidth with).

That's because the ADSL signal degrades the further away you are from the telephone exchange and is sensitive to things like electrical interference - whereas Virgin cable broadband is fibre-optic and doesn't suffer from anywhere near as much signal degradation as ADSL.

 

[leonnib]

I regret changing from b.t and sky to virgin biggest mistake I made and waiting to change back when my contract ends
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[hippy-chick]

I regret changing from b.t and sky to virgin biggest mistake I made and waiting to change back when my contract ends
Posted via Mobile Device

but why? could you explain why please?
I have heard some bad things about Virgin and thats why I've posted this to see what the exisitng status is.

 

[kennedia]

I hated virgin when I was with them. Poor speed, unreliable and shockingly bad customer service; however ...... that was several years ago so things may be different now.

 

[leonnib]

They have really bad customer service. I thought I was getting a better deal but my bill ends up almost twice as much as before. They charge an arm and a leg to call 0845 etc where bT always charges a lot less.they bombard me with advertising calls early in the morning from 8aM. The internet plays up sometimes also. The thing I hated with bt was you could be on hold for ages to speak to someone but I never had to call anyway really. I only changed Coz I moved house last year.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[~Jenny~]

We recently changed from bt and sky to virgin and we love, love, love it!!
We pay the same as we paid before but we get a lot more for our money.
We haven't had any problems whatsoever so will be sticking with virgin!

My sister in law was on virgin but changed because her mum was changing, she is not happy at all and will be switching back to virgin as soon as she can.

xx

 

[Sassy32]

I have been with TalkTalk for about 2yrs and fingers crossed all has been well!!! I pay about £22 a month which includes....Line Rental, Unlimited calls day/evening/weekends, broadband, as well as Caller Display & Call Divert. And I don't pay anything to BT as my line rental is included hth x

 

[tog]

I was with Virgin when they took over from another company (NTL or something??) and I'm now with BT.

I vowed always to stay with BT. Usually I'm the kind of person who would shop around eg for banks/utility providers etc - BUT - I think BT's customer service is streets ahead of all the others. Virgin were useless when I had a problem with my broadband, and again when I was moving house. I was hanging on the phone, losing the will to live trying to even speak to someone at Virgin.
My Dad went with Pipex, similar problems, and is glad to be back with BT.
Maybe it's just me though. . .

 

[LoUiSe_EvE]

We've been with virgin for ages even way back when they were telewest. I've always been more than happy with them and their service.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[leonnib]

Definitely bt have a better customer service imo. Virgin tend to do pass the parcel between departments and I hate that.
Posted via Mobile Device

 

[bombini]

Have you tried negotiating a dicount with them ?

I was with tiscali up until last year and had been with them for about 4/5 years everytime I called up threatening to leave my bill was reduced and my usage increased so was paying about 9.99 in the end for the highest usuage, not that we got a high speed in our area anyway.

I changed to Sky in May as we moved house and wanted Sky TV so at the time of joining it was £16.50 per month for the tv, calls & broadband. We still pay our line rental to BT but when that runs out in May I think I will swap it over to sky as their line rental is about £10 I think.

I do find it expensive to call 0870 numbers from sky although I have an app on the iphone that converts them into local numbers so have managed to cut costs there !

 

[fozzyo]

Love Virgin! It rocks, and as well as the Sky and stuff you also get On-Demand stuff - like BBC iPlayer and Catch Up TV which is awesome!

The other advantage is that you don't own the box like you do with sky. So if there is a fault with the TV box they just send an engineer to fix it or replace it - no fee.

Don't forget you will always find people who have a nightmare experience ... it's just based on the numbers. Any company with that many customers will always regrettably have people who it just doesn't work out for.

But for us they have been ace.

Mat

 

[Blue Rose]

I'm another Virgin fan.

Last year our rabbits chewed through the cables at the back of the telly so had no cable TV or broadband (was a scary day or so having no internet connection, I can tell you, lol!)

An engineer was sent out within 24 hrs & because it wasn't a fault on their behalf I should have paid £99 + vat for a new cable . But, the bloke just put in his notes that it was an unspecified fault so I didn't have to pay a fee.

When I've wanted to change my tariffs I've been able to do so without a problem.

But as already mentioned, I'd phone them up for a better tariff if you don't want to change providers.

 

[hippy-chick]

thanks everyone.
I have spoken to tiscali today saying that I am not happy with the tariff and they've sorted me a new one with 5 months free so am reasonably happy with the outcome.

 

[Lynne Baker]

I'm too scared to change from BT!

 

[Blue Rose]

thanks everyone.
I have spoken to tiscali today saying that I am not happy with the tariff and they've sorted me a new one with 5 months free so am reasonably happy with the outcome.

Well done Ann

 

[hippy-chick]

I'm too scared to change from BT!

oh lol! thats me! I'm like that with everything, hate change!