TV, broadband and phone deals

[Ian Price]

I'm looking to save a bit of cash and switch around my providers for the above. I was due to switch to Virgin Media a week or so ago but have nothing but incompetence from them since I logged a call about the installation team not turning up on the day they were supposed to.

I pay about £70 a month (no movies or sports, unlimited broadband and sky talk unlimited). Currently I use Sky for everything - just wondering who others use and if there are any recommendations.

[Roobubba]

Shame you've not had good service from Virgin. I have been very happy with them for some time now.
I wouldn't know who else to recommend I'm afraid!

Roo

[Ian Price]

Shame you've not had good service from Virgin. I have been very happy with them for some time now.
I wouldn't know who else to recommend I'm afraid!

Roo

Cheers Roo. The service complaint is very annoying as lots of people have said Virgin are good VFM and have not had any problems with them.

I think before writing them off as an option I will put my complaint in writing and see what they come back with. Having to explain the situation to everyone I have spoken to at Virgin is one factor of this (and I've spoken to 6 different people!).

[Philly Q]

I saw the title and thought this must be one of those spam threads!   :lol:

Can't help I'm afraid, I don't pay for a TV package, I just have Freeview.  I have been slightly tempted to get Virgin Media, I know it's available in my area, but you've put me off now.... 

And I won't have Sky on principle, due to Mr Murdoch (which is a bit like a throwback to my student days, when you weren't supposed to bank with Barclays because they had investments in apartheid-era South Africa).

[Ian Price]

I saw the title and thought this must be one of those spam threads!   :lol:

Can't help I'm afraid, I don't pay for a TV package, I just have Freeview.  I have been slightly tempted to get Virgin Media, I know it's available in my area, but you've put me off now....  

And I won't have Sky on principle, due to Mr Murdoch (which is a bit like a throwback to my student days, when you weren't supposed to bank with Barclays because they had investments in apartheid-era South Africa).

Spam? From me? I feel insulted!

What channels do you get on freeview? I might be interested in this - I don't have sports or movies but do enjoy Sky One, Sky Atlantic, E4 etc etc.

Also, don't let the fact that Virgin Media didn't know what paperwork to send me (and wanted to send on a neighbour consent form to me for them to sign) to sort out the installation put you off! Actually, that's probably unfair and maybe my complaint is not representative of their usual standard of service. The last person I spoke to (Carol in the 'way leave' team - I think that's the right spelling of her team name) was very very good and probably stopped me cancelling the whole thing there and then.

I'm thinking now I should take the moral high ground and cancel Sky. Who knows how many of his cronies are listening to my calls.

[Philly Q]

Spam? From me? I feel insulted!

I saw the title before I saw your name!  :lol:

On Freeview I have your basic 5 channels of course, then:

BBC3 and 4, BBC News Channel, BBC Parliament, CBBC, Cbeebies
ITV2, 3 and 4 (and all the +1s)
E4 and More 4 (and all the +1s)
Fiver and Five USA (or whatever they're called now)
Pick TV (which used to be Sky 3 I think?)
Dave, various music channels, QVC, Price Drop, Bid Up, Ideal World etc
Film 4
Four HD channels (on Freeview HD)
Lots of other cr@p (history channels etc).

None of your "main" Sky channels though.  No SyFy or Horror Channel (unfortunately).  Certainly no sports or film channels.  And no UK Gold or UKTV Food etc.

It's plenty for me, but you might miss your Sky One, Sky Atlantic etc.

[FELINEGUITARS]

I'm glad I only have Freeview as I'd never get anything done if I had more channels
As it is my CSI/Law and Oder addiction can get fed too well already just on Freeview

My g/f had sky and was hooked on Syfy and old movies which was fun for her but TV was at risk of taking over.

I do want to get a better broadband than I am getting with BT - or cheaper at least.

[Ian Price]

I'm glad I only have Freeview as I'd never get anything done if I had more channels
As it is my CSI/Law and Oder addiction can get fed too well already just on Freeview

My g/f had sky and was hooked on Syfy and old movies which was fun for her but TV was at risk of taking over.

I do want to get a better broadband than I am getting with BT - or cheaper at least.

Yeah - agree with that. We spend way too much time watching TV, some of it absolute tosh. Well, we watch it until we realise it is tosh anyway. It just eats time for me and takes me away from playing as well as my tele build.

[Transcend]

I pay £35 a month with BT for te phone line and up to 16mb broadband and i actually get 19mb also with bt vision with the film, children and something pack i cant remember as i only use the film section.

but it also has all the on demand stuff including iplayer,itv player 4od etc and they also have a large catalogue of films (more than love film) at reasonable prices per film or you cna get a bundle where its unlimited.

I have had virgin in the past and would be with them now if i could get it where i am.

I have had a lot of grief with sky with them billing me for a previous acount 6 months after it had been cancelled and everytime i called them up they said it was an error and to ignore it then slapped me with a default. It took me over a year to get it removed and some compensation for it... a whole £37 for the phone calls....

[mikeluke]

Ian

Don't cancel Sky just yet... you could end up with no service

My advice for dealing with Virgin Media is to call them back and tell them that you've changed your mind and that you want to cancel your order. Someone within VM will be measured on this and you should get them to leap into action to sort you out. At the moment you are an unhappy customer, not lost business!

[Ian Price]

Ian

Don't cancel Sky just yet... you could end up with no service

My advice for dealing with Virgin Media is to call them back and tell them that you've changed your mind and that you want to cancel your order. Someone within VM will be measured on this and you should get them to leap into action to sort you out. At the moment you are an unhappy customer, not lost business!

Yeah - Sky not yet cancelled although this is one of my reasons for complaint! Basically VM had told Sky (without my authorisation) that they would be taking the phone line over on 22nd Sept. Sky put the cancellation through which resulted in me not being able to get the technical support I needed before the 22nd.

It's a long story but basically Virgin knew they wouldn't be able to install on the 22nd (a local engineer had done a pre-visit to my road and advised there might be a cabling issue) but still called me on the 21st stating, via recorded message, that the installation was still on for the 22nd. I took a day off of work (my last days holiday as well) fully expecting the installation to happen and when it got round to 18:50 lost patience and phoned them to ask what had happened. After talking to two people and holding for over an hour the guy I spoke to said there was no note of the message confirming the installation that I had received the previous day - basically he said I had never received it. This annoyed me as I had just listened to it before calling them! He also said that someone had called me at 11:40 the previous day and stated what the issue was and that the install couldn't happen on 22nd. This struck me as odd as I had no missed calls that day and nothing on my answerphone. I asked him to read back my contact details and he got them right.

After this there was a week long period of wait where they were supposed to send me some paperwork. When it didn't arrive I chased and was told to wait. A few days later I chased again and was told to phone another department. Eventually I got through to someone helpful and she said that the people I had spoken to had got it completely wrong and the forms they mentioned should not have been sent to me (even though I hadn't received them). I've now moved it on a bit and am writing a complaint letter clearly spelling out all of the contact I have had with them and where I feel they have let me down (and I'm not even a fully signed up customer yet!).

There are more details to it than this and I am aware that this is a long rant. It is just so frustrating that a company can get service so wrong - particularly with all of the technology available to them. It also appears that no call notes were taken from the calls I had made between the 22nd and end of last week. Shocking.

The final straw was that I had to phone Sky to get them to reinstate my contract whilst VM were sorting themselves out. At the very least VM should really have done this and explained the issue. I'm not sure I would have trusted them to get this right though.

Rant over (and I'm not expecting anyone to read all of this - just good to get the rant out!).

[JDC]

I feel Virgin Media's service isn't as good as when they were telewest but as their broadband is provided via fibre optic cable the speed you pay for is pretty much the speed you get.

Everyone else provides broadband over ADSL which uses BT lines and is very depend on how far you are from the exchange aka if the line only does 4mbps, that's all you get no matter how much you pay them. As you're currently on sky you can test what you get via http://speedtest.net/ (test a few different places as some are rubbish)

Basicially Virgin Media = broadband monopoly if you care about speed.

Also tisicalli/talktalk = absolute shitee

[Roobubba]

I think the virgin installation team gets measured on number/speed of installs and doesn't actually care about getting it right. At their pre-visit, I got them to leave some cable and underground trunking (I was having front of the house paved and extending the garage forward a bit, and I wanted the media in-point at the back of the house). I then got the builders to lay the trunking and feed the wire through from the front of the property to where the first box on the front goes, then feed another wire under the new fascia boards around to the back of the house. Then when the install team came round, they had no choice but to lay everything properly. I must admit, I have seen some shocking installs up the road, wires popping up from the ground at the front of the house and just trailing along the driveway - for this I blame the targets put on the installation team! Having been forewarned about this by one of the sales reps I spoke to on the phone around the time I ordered, I got everything fixed up ready and planned prior to the install team even seeing my house, that way I have it done properly, how I want.
Once it's in, the service is great (for me).
Though I keep meaning to call up and get the upgrade from 20MBit to 30MBit...

Roo

[Ian Price]

Cheers Roo - very usweful to know that. Another thing that concerned me is that the woman I spoke to suggested that a cable may need to be run across the top of a fence to get to my house. This surprised me a little - I'll check that aspect out with them again just to make sure I heard right.

[richard]

Similar experience for me - I put of with some real bulls*it from Virgin prior to the installation but, once up and running, it's pretty good.