Broadband: Which providers have the best deals?

Due to the architecture of the Virgin network congestion is much more localised than with FTTC or ADSL providers.

You’re generally sharing a pipe with everyone else on your street (maybe more) and Virgin can often run this part of their network quite hot due to the cost of adding capacity to these areas. Therefore whether Virgin is any good or not depends on the type of customers your street attracts, if they’re all torrenting 24/7 you’ll have a bad time.

For FTTC or ADSL connections there’s generally little contention in the backhaul these days and congestion is more likely to be in the ISPs core network.

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You’ve handed your notice in… now you wait! They’ll call you back, when they do, this is the team that have the power to offer you the best discounts.

All aboard the Virgin Media train here. They are the only ones providing decent speeds where I am.

I’m supposed to get 200MB but I don’t. I actually used to, but then due to their terrible Superhub 2 disconnecting my WiFi all the time I ended up buying a separate router and putting the hub into bridge mode, which seems to have throttled my connection - I am pretty sure the router supports higher speeds so I am not sure what exactly happened.

Anyway…I plan on calling them up and getting them to upgrade me to some new equipment soon, just haven’t had the time.

Still, be glad we have options. My cousin works for Google, literally lives in central Mountain View, 5 minutes from the Googleplex, and still has to have Comcast at home as they basically have a monopoly. They’re notorious for pretty much having the worst customer support of all time.

I’ve just left and haven’t been charged any fees?

I had 80mb down and 20mb up with mine, which nor BT, Sky or TalkTalk were offering.

Because you’ve gone to another internet povider that uses Openreach, I suspect?

If you cancel the FTTC service to move to Virgin or HyperOptic, you’ll be charged the cessation fee.

That is one thing I have some grumbles about… :angry:

I believe this should be illegal as it is discourages switching, I think it has been historically ‘ok’ in the UK, because most providers give you service over the phone line (hello BT/Openreach monopoly :phone: ).

However, given that now there are more and more broadband services such as HyperOptic, GigaClear, B4RN, Kcom, etc. that give you ultimately superior alternatives, I think this is something that potentially needs a bit more of regulation.

:monzo: If Monzo or your legacy bank was to impose £40 switching away through CASS fee, you’d probably think twice before hopping on the switcharoo train, wouldn’t you… :broken_heart:

Also quickly on my past experience with Virgin from when I was based up north - pretty terrible, pretty congested, exceptionally bad customer service and ultimately unreliable. In fact i was infinitely more happy with BT’s service, and that speak itself a ton. That said I do have loads of friends that have used them and some of them with mostly positive experience, so it does seem to be a bit of a postcode lottery as well and if you happen to be in a congested area - well, you are screwed.

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Ah yeah, there’s no alternatives available :frowning:

Ultimately though the broadband provider is just passing on the BT Openreach charge. Someone at BTOR has to physically do something to end the connection.

I use Virgin, get their 100Mbps package and the connection is pretty good. I live in an old NTL area so we have had fibre for a long time now. Their customer service is good if you get through to someone in the UK (often have to ask to cancel to get through to them) as their outsourced call centres have a really rigid script that they stick too.

I had the same issues as you @simonb with the superhub 2, they sent an engineer out and fitted the superhub 3 and the speed issues got better for me! So fingers crossed they do for you as well

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Virgin crack me up… :rofl: called back again today… new person… feeds me the same info as the person yesterday… I said fine, I’m giving you 30 days notice and go to someone else… he goes oh wait… I’ve just found a discount code… £30 a month?

So basically what I’ve been asking for all along and said they couldn’t do… has been done… ha :rofl:

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Should call back and say you have found better and get more out of them :man_cartwheeling:

EDIT:

For real use this as an example from uSwitch to get 100MB on it’s own

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I got the exact same ‘oh look what I’ve just found’ story with my ISP after a good 45 minutes on hold/negotiating. I think the outcome is hugely dependent on the person dealing with your call. You’re at the mercy of their mood on the day!

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Cost of acquisition is normally greater than the cost of retention.

They’ll depend upon the intertia of those paying handsomely for the service and (eventually) entertain the disgruntled with a slightly better deal.

Going to throw my cap in for hyperoptic. I’ve had two service outages in 3 years. (Unfortunately both were for days which was annoying). Used to have the 1Gb service, recently downgraded. Do notice a difference; I now need to sit and wait for things to download. No download limits with hyperoptic though there’s a very vague sentence in the contract about doing something in the event your usage affects other customers.

All being said think they’re very good. Virgin I would not touch with a barge pole after years of shoddy service with them throttling speeds during peak hours.

Happy Virgin Media customer here. Pay for 200Mbps, always get over that. Have no physical connection to BT so it’s a good job I’m a satisfied cable customer.

Having said that, TV and Internet has been down for 36 hours. Mildly annoying, and customer services were offshore, scripted and automatically gave me an engineer appointment whilst I would’ve been at work. Luckily this was cancelled by text message when they finally found a fault in my area. But it’s the first time I’ve had a major service problem, and the first need to call CS for years, so all in all I’d recommend.

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Ok… started World War 3 with Virgin…

So… I called up 1 month ago… told them my contract runs out this month (7th) and that I didn’t use the TV/Phone and didn’t want it anymore just wanted Broadband… the bloke on the phone said “Oh your in contract until 7th Feb… you’ll need to call back then to change your plan”… ok… ill do that…

Do anyway called up the other day and got the package I wanted… got an email today saying because I didn’t give them 30 days notice they would charge me £48.88 next month… WOW WOW HOLD ON!

So… I promptly called them up to complain… where I was told it was all correct because I didn’t give them 30 days notice… I said I called up 30 days ago and told you I didn’t want it… No… no… you didn’t…

So now I have to wait 24 hours for a manager to listen back to all my calls I’ve made to see I told them… Honestly, this company’s customer services is shocking! They follow a script… put you on hold every 5 seconds because what I’m saying isn’t in their script… then just tell me the same thing they’ve said 17 times that isn’t true…

Now I have to wait for a manager to listen to the call and phone me back… Oh and my copy of the phone call will take 45 days to arrive!!! Shame I’m not paying my bill until then…

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A colleague had this issue and it was actually because they had oversubscribed before upgrading the areas capability. If you contact them and complain you may get some discounts until they get you back up to the promised 200mb.

They’ll never call you back… VM never do.

Personally I’d be surprised if a ‘manager’ has done anything at all and the next time you call there will be nothing in your notes & you’ll be back to square 1 (been there…)

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Good luck with sorting this. Virgin aren’t a company I have confidence in unfortunately :frowning:

If you complain to an isp always ask for the gc14 reference number. ISP’s are obliged to handle complaints responsibly. General condition 14 if the specific rule that mandates complaint handling.