I got out of Virgin who wanted to increase my bill (over 20 years with them) from £80 a month to £114. I switched to community fibre which offers the same for £50. I did everything right including packing up and returning their equipment and telling my bank to stop payments . Virgin are chasing me for money I don’t owe, you pay in advance and I stopped with them on January 8th. Did everything by the book and calendar too. Crap company, crap service, the only thing they do persistently is harass for money. If there is a call I insist that the call is being recorded, and mention that in subsequent interaction. Every time a phone person uses the word ‘obviously’ I question why something is obvious and dispute their assertion.
What do you get for £50? Trying to work out if that’s a good option to look in to
Have a look at CityFibre. Some of the companies in my area offer 1gb for about 30 a month.
City Fibre or Openreach are not available in my road. All that currently is available is a phone line connection from a telegraph pole in the road. Currently I have Sky billing me for that. True fibre is only going to be available through this new initiative. I don’t want a Virgin Media package. Just broadband.
I've been with Virgin for about 3 years, without any problems and just have the 250mb broadband at £36 per month.
I have Sky T.V.Broadband I also still use my Landline(do have a mobile but hardly use it).I was thinking about enquireing about Fiber.All the cables have been laid in the road
two years ago.But I did read that are problems such as bad connections,no dialing out to make calls also not very clear. Any advice or experience.
As I posted earlier I did a speed check on my current Sky broadband this morning and it’s at 29.6 mb/s at the hub. Is there a big difference in this speed once it reaches various rooms and how can I measure this room by room ?
Virgin blurb says that on their 1Gb/s fibre package they guarantee 30mb/s in every room but does that sound extraordinarily low if the hub speed is 1Gb/s ? I understand that the WiFi is impacted by walls etc but it just sounds an enormous discrepancy to me. Does 30mb/s sound adequate?
Do many of you people still use landlines or is a age thing?
Up until about a year ago I had no option other than to use BT Broadband with a land line (and I got a massive 3Mb/s!). Since we've had Airband FTTP using their own infrastructure I've had no need to have a landline and once I was happy with Airband reliability I told BT where to go!
I now have on average 600-900 Mb/s download and 250 Mb/s upload and use wifi calling on my mobile.
I'm 66 so not sure it's an age thing, but I suppose for many it will be. Most of my circle of friends do not now have landlines.
Besides, landlines as we know them are going next year.
As I posted earlier I did a speed check on my current Sky broadband this morning and it’s at 29.6 mb/s at the hub. Is there a big difference in this speed once it reaches various rooms and how can I measure this room by room ?
Virgin blurb says that on their 1Gb/s fibre package they guarantee 30mb/s in every room but does that sound extraordinarily low if the hub speed is 1Gb/s ? I understand that the WiFi is impacted by walls etc but it just sounds an enormous discrepancy to me. Does 30mb/s sound adequate?
Download Ookla Speedtest app and check in various rooms.
You're very unlikely to get 1gb over wifi with Virgin even if sat next to your router. 30mb is probably their worse case. If its a big house with brick walls then could easily happen.
Done a test in mine where signal at its worse. 1gb virgin, on my 2ghz network I get 45mb. On the 5ghz its 175mb. Next to the router on 5ghz I'm getting 900mbs.
@ShootersHillGuru have you looked at the mobile hubs as an alternative?
these can produce higher speeds than traditional copper wire broadband
i believe that Three do a 5g home hub and Vodafone also have a product
obviously only work if you have good mobile coverage from a mask but give the advantage that you can move them about the home for better coverage compared to traditional router
I got out of Virgin who wanted to increase my bill (over 20 years with them) from £80 a month to £114. I switched to community fibre which offers the same for £50. I did everything right including packing up and returning their equipment and telling my bank to stop payments . Virgin are chasing me for money I don’t owe, you pay in advance and I stopped with them on January 8th. Did everything by the book and calendar too. Crap company, crap service, the only thing they do persistently is harass for money. If there is a call I insist that the call is being recorded, and mention that in subsequent interaction. Every time a phone person uses the word ‘obviously’ I question why something is obvious and dispute their assertion.
What do you get for £50? Trying to work out if that’s a good option to look in to
Home landline, broadband and TV…but not all the TV channels routinely available before (I have never had a sky paid package). Don’t especially miss those channels.
@ShootersHillGuru have you looked at the mobile hubs as an alternative?
these can produce higher speeds than traditional copper wire broadband
i believe that Three do a 5g home hub and Vodafone also have a product
obviously only work if you have good mobile coverage from a mask but give the advantage that you can move them about the home for better coverage compared to traditional router
As I posted earlier I did a speed check on my current Sky broadband this morning and it’s at 29.6 mb/s at the hub. Is there a big difference in this speed once it reaches various rooms and how can I measure this room by room ?
Virgin blurb says that on their 1Gb/s fibre package they guarantee 30mb/s in every room but does that sound extraordinarily low if the hub speed is 1Gb/s ? I understand that the WiFi is impacted by walls etc but it just sounds an enormous discrepancy to me. Does 30mb/s sound adequate?
Generally the provided wifi routers by the likes of Sky, Virgin etc aren't great.
I'm with sky, no full fibre in my road yet but I get the max 74gb they state. However as my house it quite large and a L shape wifi dropped off at at the other end of the house, I was getting maximum 25gb. I simply installed a couple of wired access points and now get the full 74gb everywhere on wifi.
I got out of Virgin who wanted to increase my bill (over 20 years with them) from £80 a month to £114. I switched to community fibre which offers the same for £50. I did everything right including packing up and returning their equipment and telling my bank to stop payments . Virgin are chasing me for money I don’t owe, you pay in advance and I stopped with them on January 8th. Did everything by the book and calendar too. Crap company, crap service, the only thing they do persistently is harass for money. If there is a call I insist that the call is being recorded, and mention that in subsequent interaction. Every time a phone person uses the word ‘obviously’ I question why something is obvious and dispute their assertion.
What do you get for £50? Trying to work out if that’s a good option to look in to
Home landline, broadband and TV…but not all the TV channels routinely available before (I have never had a sky paid package). Don’t especially miss those channels.
So what TV channels does that give that is not on Freeview? Do you mean its the likes of Netflix but not the Sky channels?
I got out of Virgin who wanted to increase my bill (over 20 years with them) from £80 a month to £114. I switched to community fibre which offers the same for £50. I did everything right including packing up and returning their equipment and telling my bank to stop payments . Virgin are chasing me for money I don’t owe, you pay in advance and I stopped with them on January 8th. Did everything by the book and calendar too. Crap company, crap service, the only thing they do persistently is harass for money. If there is a call I insist that the call is being recorded, and mention that in subsequent interaction. Every time a phone person uses the word ‘obviously’ I question why something is obvious and dispute their assertion.
What do you get for £50? Trying to work out if that’s a good option to look in to
Home landline, broadband and TV…but not all the TV channels routinely available before (I have never had a sky paid package). Don’t especially miss those channels.
So what TV channels does that give that is not on Freeview? Do you mean its the likes of Netflix but not the Sky channels?
Don't know the answer to that. There are so many iterations of channels and packages and whatnot I have no real idea how one compares to another.
Traditional phones lines (PSTN) are slowly being fazed out, before to get broadband from BT ETC you would need a telephone line and the broadband service is an add-on on top of the line. SOGEA is broadband without a telephone line service, so that's your FTTC like service.
If you have a fibre service from VM or another FTTP provider, your telephone service will be digital.
My contract with Virgin is due for renewal in January. I was very unhappy with the internet speeds to the point of having to complain and it regularly dropped off to boot. Their customer support is generally awful but they have a small number of excellent ones. I spoke to one of these in relation to getting sky sports plus after being told by another that my current system could do it, it couldnt. They sorted me out with a new 360 box as well as a £10 refund for the game I had to buy due to the wrong info.
Since then, my speeds have been fine and I really like the 360 box. I love the voice function where I can say a tv series, like say Joe 90 and it instantly comes up. So from a position of definitely leaving a few months back, I wouldn't mind renewing now. I didn't think I would be saying that. Can anybody advise when the best time to make that call is. I am paying £84 a month for 250 mbps and have the standard tv package with Sky Sports and TNT. I don't want Movies as when I had it we never watched any of them. I am thinking that I would be happy to pay that, even slightly more but when is the best time to start negotiating? I need time to find an alternative if they can't offer me a deal I like, is the time now? I know I have to give a months notice but would like more than a month to consider the options. Any reccomendations for options other than Sky also?
Was on Virgin for TV, landline and broadband for years. No Sky. They were charging me around £80, but then wanted to hike the price to £115 per month. I now get TV, broadband and landline from Community Fibre for £50 a month. Less TV channels but I don’t miss anything I want to see as I hardly trawled the channels anyway. Since being with Community Fibre there has been the odd five minutes of lost connection, when with Virgin it was frequent and would usually last half a day. Anyway £65 cheaper with community fibre makes up for missing the odd shopping channel.
One of the tricks when being a Virgin customer is to call retentions team about 6 weeks before your contract expires and recontract. Typically you see a massive price rise when your contract ends as all the discounts you haggled also expire. A call to the retention team often results in getting a good deal, but to need to make sure you call them in good time before your current contract expires.
That said, I’ve occasionally considered leaving them to get a better deal. However, one of the main reasons I decide to stay with Virgin is because I sadly used their email service when I joined yonks back. Many online accounts we then have set up use our email addresses as our login id. Changing all my accounts to use a different login id/username would be a huge pain, so I’ve stuck with them until I can be arsed to sort them out…… when you leave Virgin you cannot retain your email address.
One of the tricks when being a Virgin customer is to call retentions team about 6 weeks before your contract expires and recontract. Typically you see a massive price rise when your contract ends as all the discounts you haggled also expire. A call to the retention team often results in getting a good deal, but to need to make sure you call them in good time before your current contract expires.
That said, I’ve occasionally considered leaving them to get a better deal. However, one of the main reasons I decide to stay with Virgin is because I sadly used their email service when I joined yonks back. Many online accounts we then have set up use our email addresses as our login id. Changing all my accounts to use a different login id/username would be a huge pain, so I’ve stuck with them until I can be arsed to sort them out…… when you leave Virgin you cannot retain your email address.
Thanks, that is what I was looking for. I will give them a ring next week a try it. My mother has Sky Q and I must say I prefer my Virgin 360 box. Not enough to accept a massive rise in my bill though. An advantage with Sky is you can use an additional box without the need for it to be wired. We have freeview with a HD box with hard drive in our bedroom and it suits our needs but if I move to sky, I will proboably get an extra box.
Was on Virgin for TV, landline and broadband for years. No Sky. They were charging me around £80, but then wanted to hike the price to £115 per month. I now get TV, broadband and landline from Community Fibre for £50 a month. Less TV channels but I don’t miss anything I want to see as I hardly trawled the channels anyway. Since being with Community Fibre there has been the odd five minutes of lost connection, when with Virgin it was frequent and would usually last half a day. Anyway £65 cheaper with community fibre makes up for missing the odd shopping channel.
One of those strange coincidences. I'd never heard of Community Fibre until today, when I met their CIO.
They look very competitive. We don't watch many TV channels but take 1Gb and two boxes from Virgin, which is 84/month. Unfortunately, they're not in my street in Lee.
Hyperoptic are apparently available but there's a glitch in their marketing offer right now, so can't seem to get the right pricing. Should be 22/month for two years for 1Gb (6 months free and 30/mth). If they sort that, I'll be switching.
I've been with Virgin for 19 years but we have had issues with service outage and I don't think the TV service is quite as good as Sky's.
For those looking to haggle with Virgin, someone today was telling me they've just installed a new AI call handling app that detects people who are at high risk of leaving and re-directing them to their best retention people. But to warn you, that's to try to avoid just giving away long term, large discounts, so haggle!
On a similar note, a lot of banks now have the sentiment AI stuff running on calls, so if the 'voice recognition bot' is driving you up the wall, just swear at it a couple of times and it should route you to a person pretty quickly.
Rang them, Got offered a package £86 pm (just a couple of quid more than I currently pay) with Sky Movies in addition (Which we don't watch) but not TNT which we do. I told them that I don't care about Sky Movies but I want TNT (What I am getting now basically) and I don't want to pay more for it. I quite like the 250 mbps broadband with them. The Virgin person was helpful but said They can't offer TNT (I think they have raised their prices) but can do it for an extra £10. I asked him to keep the offer on hold whist I shop around which he agreed to do.
Spoke to EE who I have a contract with for my wife's mobile and they have offered £64.99 for Sky sports (with red button) and TNT, and a discount for my wife's contract, £13 pm for unlimited instead of current £25.90. The problem was internet speed is a lot less up to 70 mbps. The sky bloke annoyed me. I told him what I wanted and he offered me something I didn't. When I got the specs on track, he offered £83 for Sky sports and TNT sports and TV but the internet was as bad as EEs. I told him I have been with Virgin/NTL for 25 years and thought he might have tried harder to get me on board. If he had given me a decent deal I would have jumped. I'll give Virgin a few more days as my contact doesn't expire until January.
Having said that would I notice such a drop in internet speeds? I don't want my wife and son having a go at me if the internet is crap! EE still a possibility, Sky can do one.
Rang them, Got offered a package £86 pm (just a couple of quid more than I currently pay) with Sky Movies in addition (Which we don't watch) but not TNT which we do. I told them that I don't care about Sky Movies but I want TNT (What I am getting now basically) and I don't want to pay more for it. I quite like the 250 mbps broadband with them. The Virgin person was helpful but said They can't offer TNT (I think they have raised their prices) but can do it for an extra £10. I asked him to keep the offer on hold whist I shop around which he agreed to do.
Spoke to EE who I have a contract with for my wife's mobile and they have offered £64.99 for Sky sports (with red button) and TNT, and a discount for my wife's contract, £13 pm for unlimited instead of current £25.90. The problem was internet speed is a lot less up to 70 mbps. The sky bloke annoyed me. I told him what I wanted and he offered me something I didn't. When I got the specs on track, he offered £83 for Sky sports and TNT sports and TV but the internet was as bad as EEs. I told him I have been with Virgin/NTL for 25 years and thought he might have tried harder to get me on board. If he had given me a decent deal I would have jumped. I'll give Virgin a few more days as my contact doesn't expire until January.
Having said that would I notice such a drop in internet speeds? I don't want my wife and son having a go at me if the internet is crap! EE still a possibility, Sky can do one.
70mbps is something you won't ever notice on browsing if it is consistent, only on big heavy downloads (not streaming), so downloading games, full films etc.
Rang them, Got offered a package £86 pm (just a couple of quid more than I currently pay) with Sky Movies in addition (Which we don't watch) but not TNT which we do. I told them that I don't care about Sky Movies but I want TNT (What I am getting now basically) and I don't want to pay more for it. I quite like the 250 mbps broadband with them. The Virgin person was helpful but said They can't offer TNT (I think they have raised their prices) but can do it for an extra £10. I asked him to keep the offer on hold whist I shop around which he agreed to do.
Spoke to EE who I have a contract with for my wife's mobile and they have offered £64.99 for Sky sports (with red button) and TNT, and a discount for my wife's contract, £13 pm for unlimited instead of current £25.90. The problem was internet speed is a lot less up to 70 mbps. The sky bloke annoyed me. I told him what I wanted and he offered me something I didn't. When I got the specs on track, he offered £83 for Sky sports and TNT sports and TV but the internet was as bad as EEs. I told him I have been with Virgin/NTL for 25 years and thought he might have tried harder to get me on board. If he had given me a decent deal I would have jumped. I'll give Virgin a few more days as my contact doesn't expire until January.
Having said that would I notice such a drop in internet speeds? I don't want my wife and son having a go at me if the internet is crap! EE still a possibility, Sky can do one.
70mbps is something you won't ever notice on browsing if it is consistent, only on big heavy downloads (not streaming), so downloading games, full films etc.
It was 50 to 70. I don't download films or games but stream Charlton TV. My son may download games, I'll need to check. The EE lady was so much nicer and helpful than the Sky bloke. I really like the Virgin 360 box though. It is better than Sky Q wich my mum has. I will save a lot of money with EE so need to think hard about it.
Rang them, Got offered a package £86 pm (just a couple of quid more than I currently pay) with Sky Movies in addition (Which we don't watch) but not TNT which we do. I told them that I don't care about Sky Movies but I want TNT (What I am getting now basically) and I don't want to pay more for it. I quite like the 250 mbps broadband with them. The Virgin person was helpful but said They can't offer TNT (I think they have raised their prices) but can do it for an extra £10. I asked him to keep the offer on hold whist I shop around which he agreed to do.
Spoke to EE who I have a contract with for my wife's mobile and they have offered £64.99 for Sky sports (with red button) and TNT, and a discount for my wife's contract, £13 pm for unlimited instead of current £25.90. The problem was internet speed is a lot less up to 70 mbps. The sky bloke annoyed me. I told him what I wanted and he offered me something I didn't. When I got the specs on track, he offered £83 for Sky sports and TNT sports and TV but the internet was as bad as EEs. I told him I have been with Virgin/NTL for 25 years and thought he might have tried harder to get me on board. If he had given me a decent deal I would have jumped. I'll give Virgin a few more days as my contact doesn't expire until January.
Having said that would I notice such a drop in internet speeds? I don't want my wife and son having a go at me if the internet is crap! EE still a possibility, Sky can do one.
70mbps is something you won't ever notice on browsing if it is consistent, only on big heavy downloads (not streaming), so downloading games, full films etc.
It was 50 to 70. I don't download films or games but stream Charlton TV. My son may download games, I'll need to check. The EE lady was so much nicer and helpful than the Sky bloke. I really like the Virgin 360 box though. It is better than Sky Q wich my mum has. I will save a lot of money with EE so need to think hard about it.
All it means is that it might take 10 minutes to download a game rather than 2 minutes. 30mb/s is in reality gone for 99% of people.
I say this as someone on 350mb/s. It's a nice to have but not a necessity
Comments
You're very unlikely to get 1gb over wifi with Virgin even if sat next to your router. 30mb is probably their worse case. If its a big house with brick walls then could easily happen.
Done a test in mine where signal at its worse. 1gb virgin, on my 2ghz network I get 45mb. On the 5ghz its 175mb. Next to the router on 5ghz I'm getting 900mbs.
these can produce higher speeds than traditional copper wire broadband
i believe that Three do a 5g home hub and Vodafone also have a product
obviously only work if you have good mobile coverage from a mask but give the advantage that you can move them about the home for better coverage compared to traditional router
I'm with sky, no full fibre in my road yet but I get the max 74gb they state. However as my house it quite large and a L shape wifi dropped off at at the other end of the house, I was getting maximum 25gb. I simply installed a couple of wired access points and now get the full 74gb everywhere on wifi.
Broadband Installation, M250 Fibre Broadband, Virgin TV 360, TV Essentials, Phone Line Rental, Weekend chatter.
If you have a fibre service from VM or another FTTP provider, your telephone service will be digital.
I do not have a phone line service here.
Since then, my speeds have been fine and I really like the 360 box. I love the voice function where I can say a tv series, like say Joe 90 and it instantly comes up. So from a position of definitely leaving a few months back, I wouldn't mind renewing now. I didn't think I would be saying that. Can anybody advise when the best time to make that call is. I am paying £84 a month for 250 mbps and have the standard tv package with Sky Sports and TNT. I don't want Movies as when I had it we never watched any of them. I am thinking that I would be happy to pay that, even slightly more but when is the best time to start negotiating? I need time to find an alternative if they can't offer me a deal I like, is the time now? I know I have to give a months notice but would like more than a month to consider the options. Any reccomendations for options other than Sky also?
They were charging me around £80, but then wanted to hike the price to £115 per month.
I now get TV, broadband and landline from Community Fibre for £50 a month. Less TV channels but I don’t miss anything I want to see as I hardly trawled the channels anyway.
Since being with Community Fibre there has been the odd five minutes of lost connection, when with Virgin it was frequent and would usually last half a day.
Anyway £65 cheaper with community fibre makes up for missing the odd shopping channel.
That said, I’ve occasionally considered leaving them to get a better deal. However, one of the main reasons I decide to stay with Virgin is because I sadly used their email service when I joined yonks back. Many online accounts we then have set up use our email addresses as our login id. Changing all my accounts to use a different login id/username would be a huge pain, so I’ve stuck with them until I can be arsed to sort them out…… when you leave Virgin you cannot retain your email address.
They look very competitive. We don't watch many TV channels but take 1Gb and two boxes from Virgin, which is 84/month. Unfortunately, they're not in my street in Lee.
Hyperoptic are apparently available but there's a glitch in their marketing offer right now, so can't seem to get the right pricing. Should be 22/month for two years for 1Gb (6 months free and 30/mth). If they sort that, I'll be switching.
I've been with Virgin for 19 years but we have had issues with service outage and I don't think the TV service is quite as good as Sky's.
For those looking to haggle with Virgin, someone today was telling me they've just installed a new AI call handling app that detects people who are at high risk of leaving and re-directing them to their best retention people. But to warn you, that's to try to avoid just giving away long term, large discounts, so haggle!
On a similar note, a lot of banks now have the sentiment AI stuff running on calls, so if the 'voice recognition bot' is driving you up the wall, just swear at it a couple of times and it should route you to a person pretty quickly.
Spoke to EE who I have a contract with for my wife's mobile and they have offered £64.99 for Sky sports (with red button) and TNT, and a discount for my wife's contract, £13 pm for unlimited instead of current £25.90. The problem was internet speed is a lot less up to 70 mbps. The sky bloke annoyed me. I told him what I wanted and he offered me something I didn't. When I got the specs on track, he offered £83 for Sky sports and TNT sports and TV but the internet was as bad as EEs. I told him I have been with Virgin/NTL for 25 years and thought he might have tried harder to get me on board. If he had given me a decent deal I would have jumped. I'll give Virgin a few more days as my contact doesn't expire until January.
Having said that would I notice such a drop in internet speeds? I don't want my wife and son having a go at me if the internet is crap! EE still a possibility, Sky can do one.
I say this as someone on 350mb/s. It's a nice to have but not a necessity