I’m sure we’ve had this discussion recently, but the latest I can find is from 2017.
OpenReach have recently swapped my connection to the house from copper to fibre, so I can now shop around. I’m out of contract with BT and paying a stink.
I need:
1. Internet (currently 150MB/s, which is enough)
2. Landline (mobile reception here is poor, elderly parents, etc)
3. Two mobile SIMs (our maximum data use is 7GB per month)
I know they’re all awful, but who is least worst?
The Offsprings both have their mobile SIMs through Tesco Mobile and seem happy enough
Virgin Media can do all of the above.
1. The helpline experience is awful just like everyone else – make it difficult to ring them, ‘high call volumes’ wait times and upselling.
2. Having said that in Moseley their uptime is pretty good and speeds are fine for UHD streaming on the iplayer for example. Worth asking any neighbourhood whatsapp groups about local reliability.
3. They can do decent sims via their partnership with 02 – we are on 60 gb (double the o2 through the partnership for £10 a month.
Should add if you do need an engineer then they will eventually on the helpline book a visit, they update you via text, and engineers have been usually able to sort out whatever’s wrong.
I wouldn’t go anywhere near Virgin. Good luck.
Bit of a lottery with Virgin, it seems. There are horror stories aplenty but I’ve been with them for about 3 years now and have had no trouble at all throughout.
A good thing with Virgin is that they offer good deals on initial signup and once you’re with them you can nearly always get a very similar deal on renewal than the (ridiculous) one that they offer, by simply calling and threatening to go elsewhere. I’m currently on 250gb for £24 a month, doubled from 125gb because I’m also an O2 mobile customer.
Now with the rise in fibre-to-premises startups (for urban areas, you won’t find them out in the sticks yet) offering good sign-on deals, the market is really opening up. To our advantage as users.
For example, Hyperoptic, who are an established but new-in-my-immediate-area provider with a solid reputation. I was offered 1000gb upload and download speed with the first 3 months free and £28 thereafter, increasing to £31 in April ’27 and up to £300 allowance to pay off my current provider’s early termination fee thrown in.
I was sorely tempted, but I still have a long time to go on my Virgin contract and the £300 payout would not cover all of the termination fee I’d be liable for. One to keep in mind for later, I think.
I did some work there some years ago now but the staff there were all looking for another job due to the crappy sellotaped infrastructure and under investment. See also Talk Talk.
May have improved as they are still in business.
It’s a shame.
I’m with Twang.
We were with Virgin and gave up on them when we were the best part of 8 weeks without any service.
They insisted it was an area problem (if only I had known at the start that my neighbour was also a Virgin customer) and refused to send an engineer to the house.
The lies they told me about what the problem was, rather than send someone out, beggar belief.
Then there is a problem of getting refunds for their lack of service. The attitude was “What, you want us to refund you for our failure to provide a service? You’re lucky I’m even taking the time to talk to you.”
Think of a sentence that contains the words touch and bargepole.
I was with Virgin for many years fifteen plus? When I moved they tried to charge me for equipment(Virgin boxes/routers). Luckily enough I had kept them so sent them back. They tried to charge me a leaving fee too. It was only when I was able to prove that they couldn’t supply to my new address that they backed off. This was a very long winded saga as they made me go through their ‘chatroom’ which meant spending hours and hours being ‘nice’ to one after another contact in their chatroom who would ‘disappear’ and I’d have to start the process again. They were very good while you pay your sub and don’t have any problems and don’t try and leave……… I’ll never use them again.
I’ve found Virgin & O2 to be ok over the years. I will declare an interest, in that I do some work for them but Virgin have come around to the O2 culture of trying their best for both customers and their employees, your experience may vary but they do try and it’s been a huge task to integrate the two companies.
O2 still have extensive free roaming roaming and have separated hardware and airtime for years, meaning you don’t keep paying for a device indefinitely. The Priority app is occasionally useful for tickets and offers. They also own GiffGaff and provide the Tesco network if you’re watching the pennies.
I’ve found the call centres to be ok, O2 sold theirs to Capita some years back, don’t know who runs the Virgin ones.
One thing that pissed me off was that Virgin aren’t very good at flagging the end of contract price rise so having been caught out, I put the end date in my diary these days. I was going to change to Zen last time but inertia meant that I stayed put.
All in with Virgin – Broadband, TV, Mobile (through O2) – all works fine, very stable service and comparably good price for the package (just wish I didn’t have to have landline charge – which I don’t use, but if I take it out of the package, the price goes up (confusingly?).
Have looked at moving to Sky, BT, or other fibre to the house providers – just can’t get the full package I want so I’m sticking with Virgin.
Yes, the Customer Service can be infuriating but if you select “I’m thinking of leaving” they do answer quite quick, and (my experience) will do some fiddling to get the price down.
They hate the question “is there any reward for loyalty? cos new customers are getting the same (or better) deals than me”.
I’m sure they believe that no-one looks at special offers/introductory deals.
In summary: great package, even if it does take an annoying phone call every 18 months to wangle a cost comparison/adjustment.
Best deal is achieved by actually cancelling. Retentions will call the next day to try and change your mind. I have done this, just not last time as I was too busy.
Interesting thought – not had the balls to try that one
(but I might just give it a go next time)
Yes @davebigpicture that’s what I did last time. As soon as they received the request to transfer my landline number, they called with a much improved offer.
When we handed in our notice I got a call from Virgin asking why we were going.
The guy on the end got the full story, not the précis above.
When I’d finished, he said something like “Well I guess I can’t say anything that will stop you leaving”.
I have a mobile/broadband fibre deal with EE which is ok. I’ve had no technical issues at all actually. This included meshed WiFi, new router etc.
I can save £35 per month by switching from BT (out of contract) to EE (as a new customer). Or by telling BT I am a new customer. BT and EE are part of the same company.
If I log into my account, the BT price is significantly higher, because BT are robbing b@st@rds.
BT are indeed robbing b@st@rds, but I have been with them since telephones replaced tin cans on the end of a piece of string. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of times we have had connection issues, and have heard so many horror stories about other service providers that I’m ‘happy’ to pay the cost of a new kidney every 3 months to have a reliable link to the Afterword.
After decades with Sky, the full package of broadband, telly and landline, we were looking to change, thinking Virgin may have to be embraced, not realising EE could do all 3. It hasn’t been plain sailing, but, for an overall 1/3 of the price previously paid, we get all the above, and, as we were already EE for mobile, our 2 I-phones, were each upgraded, in the same price envelope.
If you are now on a fibre connection, why limit to 150MB/s – I thought that was the speed for the old copper connections. Surely with fibre, the basic speed offering should be much greater than that.
(Absolutely no use to you, but I have recently updated my plan as I was out of contract and the prices had dropped significantly – the SLOWEST plan I could choose was 3GB/s – my previous was 1GB/s – the current offerings are 3/5/10)
Yeah, the 150MB/s is what the double-speed copper connection was, and what OpenReach have matched when they installed fibre to the house.
We upgraded from 80MB/s to 160MB/s during the first lockdown, because all four of us at home doing meetings and lessons on Teams required more than 80MB/s. Since the end of two 2-year contracts, BT have removed the option to continue at 160MB/s, so we had to either pay full-whack out-of-contract price or drop down to 80MB/s.
BT/EE offer 350, 500 or 1000, all for less than we’re currently paying.
Seeing your comment above that you can save £35 per month switching – my 3GB/s plan is SGD 39 per month (that’s the list price before you factor in all the discounts for mobile/TV etc services) – about 22 of your English pounds. It certainly does look like BT are robbing b@st@rds !
Zen. Not the cheapest but when there is a problem, they answer the phone and, if needed, send somone out the next day.
I was just about to post that Zen are currently the top rated ISP with Which?, and I think have been for the last couple of years.
They get a 77% customer rating
The other two Recommended Providers are Plusnet at 73% followed by Utility Warehouse at 72%.
Community Fibre get a Great Value rating and score 71%.
Totally, like zen, man.
My old ISP went tits-up a few months back, having lost all credibility (No customer support. At all. Constant SMTP email server fall-overs. Accounts no longer showing on Companies House. No answers to emails. Published telephone number ‘cannot be recognised’ and so on), so I stopped the DD and the PayPal GoCardless payments – they were still taking money from me each month despite the above.
Switched to Zen. Easy-peasy on-boarding. Good quality router supplied. Great telephone customer support. Ten quid cheaper per month for the same level of broadband capability.
Rarely see the little pink circle on iPlayer these days, and the games downloads on Steam fairly whizz along.
Another vote for Zen here. I could save money and take Sky but Zen’s customer support has been great. Don’t know if they can do mobile however but I recently joined Lebara and for £5 a month the only thing I’m not getting is international text messages – and that’s only the case when I have no wi-fi.
I’ve been with Zen for, I dunno, 15 years? Never had any problems at all, responsive customer service, no outages. Not the cheapest, but worth it. They win best ISP every year – I don’t understand why anybody would go anywhere else.
I think that’s doing Zen a bit of a downer. They might not be the cheapest but there’s really not much in it.
I’m going to 500Mb/s fibre + landline (‘free’ calls)
Zen = £39.00 + £7.50 (calls) + one-off £15 for the router.
EE = £32.99 (rises to £36.99 next March) + £18 (calls).
For new BT customers it is the same as EE.
For existing BT customers, double the number you first thought of.
Over 24 months, it works out as
Zen = £47.12
EE/BT = £52.99
So, despite the upfront fee, Zen is actually £5 a month cheaper.
I’m surprised anyone uses, let alone pays for, a landline these days.
I live in the sticks where mobile coverage is, shall we say, poor. If I go upstairs and lean out of a window holding the phone at arm’s length, I can get a couple of bars but have to shout at the phone.
Plus: elderly parents.
You’ll be able to use wifi calling with your spiffy new service.
We do because I can hear better on a landline than a mobile and it also means I can’t be contacted when I’m out, to the chagrin of quite a few people.
I had been paying £67 a month for BT fibre, essentially being penalised for being their customer for decades We moved a few months ago to a village where thankfully they didn’t provide it so had to release me from the contract. The people we bought the house from were with WeFibre and were very happy with them so we went with them. It’s £25 a month, they were really good when we moved in and set up an account and we have not had any issues so far.
I think it was put in the village as part of the government’s rural broadband scheme but they seem to supply it generally so worth a look.
We were with Vodafone for a while but found them generally poor and ended up moving to Plusnet who – touch wood – have been much better
I’ve been with Plusnet for years and never had a problem with them. The few occasions where I’ve needed to contact them they’ve answered promptly and sorted out the issue with alacrity. Everytime my contract enters into it’s remaining couple of months they invariably contact me and offer me a better deal that usually entails more bandwidth for slightly less or the same cost.
I don’t have any add-ons and I don’t use a landline. It keeps things simple which is my preference.
Just by the by I had Plusnet for my mum and they were excellent. Superb service and if you phone someone in Yorkshire picks up the phone. Good straightforward service. Hopefully not a requirement but when she died they handled everything better than every other utility, bank, effing probate office.
I’ll give a thumbs up for Sky. We have 900mb fibre, a couple of phones/SIMs and have never had a problem. Prices are good although we have been Sky customers for, many, many years which probably helps and have had to announce leaving a couple of times but they always cave and give you the best possible deal when you do that.
Customer Service has been good and easy to access when we’ve needed it.
My brother has the absolutely everything package from Sky. No problems but every year when the contract is up for renewal they tell him it is going up by a huge amount and every time he rings up and tells them he isn’t paying it and to cancel it. Every time they give him a deal to stay, usually the same or less than he was paying before.
Yes that’s what I do here with Rogers. They always cave
Thanks, all.
Updates so far:
I’ll probably transfer our two mobile SIMs to Tesco, increasing our contract from 2 to 4 (which offers further discounts.)
Utility Warehouse can’t offer me anything (fibre to the house was only installed a couple of weeks ago, I assume their database hasn’t updated).
Plusnet can’t offer me a voice over IP phone line.
WeFibre don’t cover my postcode.
Sky and Zen can both offer 500MB/s broadband and VOIP for a couple of quid per month less than BT/EE. Given the choice, I’d rather Zen than Sky. I have zero need for Sky sports/movies/etc.
BT have been in touch to say they’re sorry to hear I’m considering leaving and sent me a phone number to ring. Inertia means I might stay with them if they can offer me their new customer deal.
BT just rang. They offered me a deal which is £16 per month cheaper than their new customer price. They really are a bunch of robbing b@st@rds.
Even with switching two mobile SIMs to Tesco, I’m going to save about 50 quid a month.
All I had to do was enter my details into the Zen website and answer the phone.
When I called BT back to accept their £24.99 a month offer (I couldn’t do it when they called, as I had to transfer two mobiles to Tesco first), they told me they couldn’t offer that, and that £36.99 was the cheapest they could do.
My FB feed has since been flooded with £25.99 BT new customer deals.
BT really are robbing b@st@rds.
So, this morning, I’ve signed up to Zen. Switchover happens in two weeks.