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Hi,

Bron and I have been happy cable customers for over 25 years; firstly with NTL and currently with Virgin Media who took NTL over. I use my computer a lot and also hook the TV up to the computer downloading lots of movies and music videos. We've just received a free upgrade regarding broadband speed as seen in the picture below; our current bill is only £44 but we seldom use the phone so given the huge amount of downloading I do it's good value even if the price is shortly to increase by a small amount

The cable service is excellent and over such a long period we have suffered few problems. Are you happy with your supplier?

Kind regards, Col.

Retired wrote:Hi,

Bron and I have been happy cable customers for over 25 years; firstly with NTL and currently with Virgin Media who took NTL over. I use my computer a lot and also hook the TV up to the computer downloading lots of movies and music videos. We've just received a free upgrade regarding broadband speed as seen in the picture below; our current bill is only £44 but we seldom use the phone so given the huge amount of downloading I do it's good value even if the price is shortly to increase by a small amount

The cable service is excellent and over such a long period we have suffered few problems. Are you happy with your supplier?

Kind regards, Col.

Speed..JPG

£44? What does that include Col, sounds a lot for a renewal on their bottom tier.

I'm with Plusnet on their "fibre" broadband. I get 76mb download and 20mb upload, which I love.

I have a phone line that I've never used, but need for my connection.

I also have Plusnet TV with all the channels, including the HD channels.

I just signed a new 18 month contract last week and I'm paying £26.98 for the whole contract. It's sad that rewards and loyalty to existing customers doesn't pay if you stick with them.

BG

What DO you have Colin?

I've looked at the packages and even 200mb broadband for a 12 month contract is 1 quid less than you are paying!!! No phone line, but if you don't need it.......

BG

Hi,

Thanks for asking and for your information BG.

Our package is;

SuperFibre 70

TV M

Phone L

I've not checked this for a long time and it looks like the phone could be reduced also the TV? The only problem I do have in contacting Virgin Media is that the Virgin staff I speak to don't appear to come from Yorkshire?

We aren't bothered about switching to save a few quid because we do use the broadband a great deal with unlimited downloads; I'm just curious as to what other members regard as value for money?

Kind regards, Col.

I'm with Plusnet as well.

I have the basic phone line for £133 per year (or what ever their annual line rental is now), and unlimited 70mb fibre for £19.99 a month.

Oh and I suppose one would have to add my Sky package at £87/month.

My bt unlimited broadband is 5 quid a month but with the dreaded 17 quid line rental. I haggle like mad with them even tho I've not other option as I'm not in a cabled area. I get around 8meg on average which is as good as anyone in my town,we hope to have fibre within months.

I do the same threaten to leave haggle with sky tv every year and currently pay 28 quid a month for their full tv package,sports,movies the lot. They gave me 60% discount and 50 quid towards my bill if I signed up for another year.

That's a great deal for the Sky full package

gas4you wrote:That's a great deal for the Sky full package

I've never paid any more than 50% since I had sky installed 5 years ago. 11 months in I give them 30 days notice and they always offer a deal to stay.....except this year,the guy wouldn't play ball so I cancelled which he said would take 30 days. I was given a link by a mate and went online literally 2 minutes later and a kind Indian gentleman offered a 60% discount and 50 quid towards my bills

I'll post the link up here if I can find it,it's good if you are out of contract and want to cancel.

Edit. Here's the link.

https://secure.sky.com/mysky-extras/stay-with-sky

I'm like you Stevie, small monthly payment with BT for a crap 4Mb down, 0.5Mb up and no immediate prospect of change

We're 'supposed' to be getting some local financial recompense for the wind farms that have sprouted up around us and collectively agreed to put this towards the bill to run fibre to our local cabinet - some £250,000 they want

No mobile phone signal here either.....

Hi,

Thanks for your replies and commiserations to you who do not have cable laid on.

Out of curiosity I browsed the Plusnet site and the broadband speed quoted for my area was very low indeed although the price matched this. I didn't spend much time on the Plusnet site due to tea being ready. We sat down to tea and a guy from Plusnet phoned to ask if he could speak to me; this only a few minutes after I had visited their website? Top marks Plusnet for rapidly chasing new customers?

Now I'm back on the computer I searched for Plusnet customer reviews and WOW what dreadful reviews jumped out at me;

http://www.broadband.co.uk/broadband/pr ... /page:all/

A sample picture of the reviews is below. I've not checked Virgin Media reviews.

Our complete package is £43.88 per month; this includes the phone line which we must agree to and we are under no contract having been customers for over 25 years so I believe we could opt out without difficulty from Virgin Media but it would take a lot to convince me to do so given the excellent service we receive from Virgin Media; sometimes better the devil you know? For around £11 per week we enjoy unlimited YouTube access allowing us to pick and choose our TV viewing which we take great advantage of; there is very little buffering on movies or music videos; we do occasionally suffer from loss of picture (an error has occurred) meaning I need to set everything up again but compared to normal rubbish TV Bron and I don't mind paying even if it does cost more at Virgin Media. I could contact Virgin Media and haggle but I play fair and we are happy to pay this amount each month which after all is what I agreed to.

It must be about three years ago I had a serious run in with Virgin Media. I have a £5 mobile phone and it broke my heart and pocket to put £10 credit onto it this being a pay as you go Nokia bought through eBay. It took a lot for me to buy this phone but I did so in order to phone home to Bron to say once a month I'm on my way home from Rufforth Auto Jumble and I think there is still around £8 credit on the thing? One Saturday morning at Rufforth I phoned home but didn't get a reply which was strange because Bron was definitely home so I tried and tried but without success; I don't like mobile phones and don't even fully understand how to use this cheap one I have but it was ringing OK as it had done previously so I became anxious thinking Bron might be in some kind of trouble?

To cut a long story short when I arrived home Bron too was upset not having heard from me so I tried using the mobile whilst standing in our front room; the mobile was ringing OK but our landline proved to have died? Anyway I contacted the service and an engineer came out but couldn't fix the landline so a while later another engineer arrived and he too couldn't fix the line but this engineer informed us we could be without landline for three weeks because the street had to come up? This was just ridiculous to us so a friend in the know kindly gave me the email address of the CEO in charge of these services and I sent off a polite email expressing my disdain at being without landline for three weeks due to the street having to be dug up just to re-connect our phone?

Boy this did the trick; in no time at all a delightful lady contacted me by email being the personal assistant of the CEO; she was full of apologies and already had appointed a manager to sit on our case until Bron and I were fully satisfied. An appointment was made for another engineer to visit us and he quickly arrived bang on the agreed time; this engineer was the supervisor who knew his job; he introduced himself saying he would look at the "Slave" box located near the end of our driveway which he did returning in a few minutes; he was amazed that we had been informed the street would have to come up and he apologized saying he would need to leave us for a few minutes to visit the master box down the lane. As promised he quickly returned and went to the slave box; two minutes later our landline burst into action taking us by surprise; the engineer was just checking the line and said he would finish off in the slave box then he would come to see us.

The engineer asked if I would open the garage so that he could check the equipment on our property; the equipment was outdated so he quickly upgraded the lot including the router and gave us a free upgrade as compensation together with more apologies for us being messed around by the two previous engineers. Whilst the engineer was sitting in his van doing the paperwork the phone rang again and it was the lovely lady enquiring if everything was now to our satisfaction and of course it was. What happened to the other two engineers once we were sorted out?

Virgin Media has been fine ever since even if it does cost more so I think you'll understand why we would be reluctant to change supplier? Money is only part of the bigger picture?

Many thanks so far for your interesting replies; it appears the only thing which could be improved is to lower the monthly cost but we are using the service which is proving very reliable and enjoy huge amounts of downloads.

Kind regards, Col.

Colin,if I could have virgin media I'd drop bt like a sack of spuds. I had virgin in my last house as it was a cable area and it was like night and day compared to bt. I never ever had an issue with them,always had exceptional speed with the broadband and they always gave me a good deal with some friendly haggling.
BT is waaaaay slower,all copper broadband is. Virgin are the only company who give you fibre optic right to your home too.BT's customer service and connectivity has been fine but I have 2 boys who use the broadband online and also me and the wife on our iPads so it's pretty slow to say the least and that's my gripe with them.

steviejoiner74 wrote:Colin,if I could have virgin media I'd drop bt like a sack of spuds. I had virgin in my last house as it was a cable area and it was like night and day compared to bt. I never ever had an issue with them,always had exceptional speed with the broadband and they always gave me a good deal with some friendly haggling.
BT is waaaaay slower,all copper broadband is. Virgin are the only company who give you fibre optic right to your home too.BT's customer service and connectivity has been fine but I have 2 boys who use the broadband online and also me and the wife on our iPads so it's pretty slow to say the least and that's my gripe with them.

Noooooooooooooooooooooo

Virgin deliver via coax! Fibre goes to a node, similar to fttc on BT and other resellers.

They use a hybrid DOCSIS network.

At least BT have some fibre to the home deployments (or other providers do).

BG

I've just upgraded to Sky Fibre 40mb a month although it's dropped down to 36mb. I'm happy with that.

I had Virgin a few years back and dropped them for a couple of reasons. First one is they traffic shape from about 4pm until 11pm so the speed advertised is drastically slowed down between these hours. The only way you get those speeds is if you're a nighthawk. Secondly their TV is absolute gash and not a patch on Sky.

The area I stayed in,in fact the region had a massive project that ran for years and(I wrongly assumed!!) installed what I thought was fibre optic cabling underground to every house hold. The only bt lines that ran into the houses were on telegraph poles with the old copper wires.
BT can't even come close to the speeds of virgin in my old neck of the woods,even with the fibre service the offer.
Virgin have fibre optic splattered all over their vans which is a bit misleading as well!!

Why the ASA didn't nip all this fibre in the bud is beyond me.

There ARE companies, BT is just one, who deploy fibre to the premises (FTTH) but the majority (SKY, talk talk, virgin) use a hybrid of fibre local and then last mile is copper.

Most people think they have fibre, when they don't. I think it unfairly disadvantages those who do have a true fibre offering. Really annoys me.

It's a bit like saying my car has Ferrari performance, but what they mean is "this engine goes forwards and backwards and makes noise".

BG