virgin media?

The Northern Monkey

Cleaning the flat up last week I noticed I have a virgin media hookup installed.

Checked the virgin site and they do a few "ok" deals.

Now I only want broadband. I don't want a phoneline.

If I go with 02, i get phone and broadband for £17 a month (8meg broadband) which is free for 3months.

If i go with virgin, I can have 10meg broadband only for £20 a month (£15 a month for the first 3 months).

Now heres the biggie...
I'm not sure if there is a BT line connected to the flat. IIRC its about £30 to get the phonline connected.

I know that the virgin media hookup is already installed so there should be no instalation fee's hopefully... however it does say there is a fee of £40 for setup which I'm assuming might not be needed if I already have the kit?

So what would you do?
I can't decide what would be the best way to go

Edit: the BT connection fee is £30 not £80

chedabob

Virgin Media are horrible. Steer clear. Horrible traffic management, and a CEO that is incredibly anti-consumer.

Kiblams

The service is great, have had them in 4 different places and the internet never misses a beat. Unfortunatly they seem to have gotten it into their heads recently that they need people to instlal phone lines to have their Boradband, which is daft and makes the sevice more expensive if you dont use a homephone.

They are likely to charge you the £40 for installation anyway for the guy to come out and hook up all the coaxial leads and activate it all with his laptop though.

Tartanyak

I've had problems with their TV, but never, ever their broadband once it was in.

But, getting it in - especially if they're a contractor and not an employee. They get paid by the number of angry customers they create I think. Don't let them leave until you've tested the internet connection.

Are you talking about cable or ADSL? If it's cable, then you most certainly don't need a BT line.

The Northern Monkey

Cable.

But I also have a land line installed. I really need to get hold of a phone so i can plug it in to see if it has a tone.

I was hoping I wouldn't have to pay the virgin instalation fee but if i do then I can't be arsed.

I don't want the tv and can only afford their 10meg broadband so i may as well go for the 02 package which works out cheaper.

thanks! lol

Kiblams

Just checked, yeah you can get it without the phone line, but they make it look cheaper to have the phone line installed too. But after reading it properly this time I can see that it's slightly cheaper without the phone line.

I have only ever had a few issues with access to the TV On Demand services, though they fixed it within a few hours.

The Northern Monkey

Yea I don't wanth much tv so sky/virgin are wasted... nice to know I can get it if needed I guess.. The GF can pay for it if she wants it

I just want the net for browsing/gaming!

whyamihere

BT won't charge for the line to be connected if you take out a contract for line rental with them.

The Northern Monkey

whyamihere wrote:

BT won't charge for the line to be connected if you take out a contract for line rental with them.

Yea but their contracts are sh!te!

Tartanyak

If you've got a choice between cable and ADSL, take the cable for broadband.

Kiblams

If the provision of the line goes without any issues and you live close to a telephone exchange (and you aren't on the ar$e end of the loop) ADSL broadband can actually be reletively good.

But that's 2 too many uncertaintaties for my liking.

The Northern Monkey

having never had cable... why?

Kiblams

The Northern Monkey wrote:

having never had cable... why?

Cable isn't a lottery on what speed you will receive like ADSL is, and unless something has gone horribly wrong you should always get very close to the quoted speed from a cable line(except for a slight dip at peak times)

The Northern Monkey

mhmmm. Still swayed by 02 becasue its cheaper. I'll have to think!

DCR00

I have had Virgin Media (fone and broadband) for over 6 years now. I cant fault either. NMever had a problem. Not the cheapest, but i would rather pay £2-£3 more per month and have no problems, than the alternative.

Price wise, you need to factor in the line rental you have to pay to BT as part of the O2 package. Is that included in the £17pm or on top ?

You will more than likely already have a BT line in there, as most places so, but they will charge you to reconnect.

IMO, service from BT is shocking if something goes wrong. Just trying to get an engineer to come out as arranged can be a nightmare. Perosnally, i would never go back to BT, no matter how cheap their line rental was.

Lastly, if you are unlucky location wise, then it doesnt matter what broadband package you take from BT as it will be super slow regardless

whyamihere

The Northern Monkey wrote:

whyamihere wrote:

BT won't charge for the line to be connected if you take out a contract for line rental with them.

Yea but their contracts are sh!te!

True enough. Unfortunately, I was forced into paying them for line rental to get my O2 Broadband set up. When I called them to do it, they did try to sell me broadband too. When I told them no, and what O2 offered as the standard package, I could almost feel the sales monkey's face dropping, as she said "Yeah... We can't get anywhere near that".

I would have preferred Virgin, and should have put my foot down really, slapped my housemates who were disagreeing and had it set up anyway. However, I didn't, so while the O2 Internet is fantastic, we're stuck with line rental on a landline we never use...

ol\'gregg

The Northern Monkey wrote:

mhmmm. Still swayed by 02 becasue its cheaper. I'll have to think!

I am just down the road from you in cardiff now and i have virgin, i'm on the 10meg and getting about 7 or 8 where i was with BT they offered 10 and i was getting 2meg. the service with BT round here was cack. and virgin are just down the road so if you need to you could cycle down and punch em yourself.

cooldad

Have Virgin broadband only as BT were dicks, wanted £160 to activate a line or something.
As far as I know there was no installation cost as cable was already installed,and I got a box of bits and did it myself.

Always fast, never drops the connection, no complaints.

Never had to call the helpline though - but aren't they all useless?

The Big Cheese

chedabob wrote:

Virgin Media are horrible. Steer clear. Horrible traffic management, and a CEO that is incredibly anti-consumer.

+ a gazillllion.

Went over to sky and have never looked back, jeebus, if you think sky are bad, the best of luck with Virgin media

chedabob

The Big Cheese wrote:

chedabob wrote:

Virgin Media are horrible. Steer clear. Horrible traffic management, and a CEO that is incredibly anti-consumer.

+ a gazillllion.

Went over to sky and have never looked back, jeebus, if you think sky are bad, the best of luck with Virgin media

I won't switch to Sky out of principle because their adverts are so dishonest.

If you've got a good phone line, go for BE.

Daz555

chedabob wrote:

Virgin Media are horrible. Steer clear. Horrible traffic management, and a CEO that is incredibly anti-consumer.

Disagreee entirely. I have been with Virgin (previously Telewest/Blueyonder) for about 10 years and my service has been exceptional. My broadband has not been down once in all that time - ever. Packet loss is none existent and my pings are rock solid and typically the lowest on any game server I play on.

The traffic management/throttling does not cause me any issues either. Even on the rare occasion it kicks in I don't find being knocked back to 'only' 5Mbps for a few hours causes me any grief at all.

redvee

VM traffic management can be PITA if you're unaware of the limits and times but as long as you're sensible then you can surf to your hearts content with a little help from a Traffic Monitor program, so far ths month I've shifted 29Gb.

chedabob

You can surf around it, but they keep changing the times. I wouldn't be so annoyed if 50mbit was traffic managed as well, and if they didn't give you loads of stuff to download through V+ which contributes to the cap. If I wanted a 2.5mbit connection, I'd pay for one.

Daz555

When my connection drops out, an engineer comes around, fobs me off that there's problems with the network (which oddly nobody else in the surrounding houses is experiencing) and then leaves. Twice it's turned out that the nonce that fitted the coaxial cable put it over a gripper-rod under the carpet and the connection has been speared.

CraigXXL

I've been with VirginMedia since it was NTL from 12 years ago. My download speeds have been within 10% of whats quoted. I only had one problem with their broadband which took a few weeks to resolve as it was an intermittent fault which turned out to be their cable modem which I'd had for 8 years. If they are bad according to others then the overs must be faultless.
They are slightly more expensive than ADSL but at least with cable you don't have the massive contention ratio of a degrading bandwidth.

Daz555

chedabob wrote:

You can surf around it, but they keep changing the times. I wouldn't be so annoyed if 50mbit was traffic managed as well, and if they didn't give you loads of stuff to download through V+ which contributes to the cap. If I wanted a 2.5mbit connection, I'd pay for one.

V+ on demand content contributes to the cap? First I've heard of it. It makes no sense - for a start you can have V+ without having broadband so how can they throttle something you don't have?

Got a source for that info?

chedabob

Daz555 wrote:

chedabob wrote:

You can surf around it, but they keep changing the times. I wouldn't be so annoyed if 50mbit was traffic managed as well, and if they didn't give you loads of stuff to download through V+ which contributes to the cap. If I wanted a 2.5mbit connection, I'd pay for one.

V+ on demand content contributes to the cap? First I've heard of it. It makes no sense - for a start you can have V+ without having broadband so how can they throttle something you don't have?

Got a source for that info?

My mistake, I meant V Stuff (formerly Broadband Plus), which they've now removed most of the good stuff from.

Chronicbint

Virgin 50 meg connection is the dogs danglies, no traffic management, no limits, full speed 24/7. Gaming pings are superb, consistently faster than most other people. Been with Virgin now for about 7 years and would not switch. (I would not go back to the pikey connections though as they are traffic managed )

The Northern Monkey

Bah... i'm going with 02... its just so much cheaper.

Never had problems with ADSL before so I don't see the point in changing if its going to cost me more for the same thing. :?

PamPen25

I have a Virgin Media for T.V, phone and broadband.

There customer service is absolute rubbish, never spoken to such idiots and most of them are from india I think. Spoke to some scottish bird once, rudist person I've ever known!!! If you do decide to go with them, don't take any prisoners.

My T.V has gone down a couple of times, but I've never had a problem with the internet and where I live it's quite fast.

As for deals, all companies change them every 5 minutes so as soon as you see a deal you want, get it quick.

redvee

Ben with VM, as it is today, since they brought out 512mb Broadband which was a big step from a 56k dial-up modem. Never had any issues with drop outs other than me beiong greedy and taking too much traffic at peak time. Now on 20mb to get the wifi thingy which means my netbook can surf from the kitchen worktop, across the room and my iPod can control iTunes like a remote control via an iTunes app.

Kiblams

redvee wrote:

Now on 20mb to get the wifi thingy which means my netbook can surf from the kitchen worktop, across the room and my iPod can control iTunes like a remote control via an iTunes app.

Awww that is soooo cute!