Broadband internet provider recomendation provider.

[devonwoody]

I have virginmedia fibre installed at present at 50mbs and service is ok but another price increase next month, somehow they have got me up from around £33 per month to £47.50 next month with telephone at 24/7 free over the past 3 years.
I use internet moderately these days mainly utube stuff, forum, and occasional humax tv internet offers like iplayer and the other channels .

talk talk offered me a deal at around £28 per month using above mentioned use but would I really suffer from the difference in speed. (dont watch films etc.)

They quoted speeds of 2 to 5mbs no fibre in Devon.

Your comments welcome

 

[Rorschach]

I have virginmedia fibre installed at present at 50mbs and service is ok but another price increase next month, somehow they have got me up from around £33 per month to £47.50 next month with telephone at 24/7 free over the past 3 years.
I use internet moderately these days mainly utube stuff, forum, and occasional humax tv internet offers like iplayer and the other channels .

talk talk offered me a deal at around £28 per month using above mentioned use but would I really suffer from the difference in speed. (dont watch films etc.)

They quoted speeds of 2 to 5mbs no fibre in Devon.

Your comments welcome

We have 75mbs through virgin cable at one property and about 12-14mbs through a sky telephone line connection. I wouldn't want any less than 10mbps personally unless you only do email and basic browsing. Any kind of video and you would suffer.

 

[NikNak]

Good morning devonwoody....

Well what a surprise.... we are also with Virgin... except our price is currently around £54 and going up again by £3.50 this month too.... except its not..!!

We finally bit the bullet and took an offer from Vodafone for their Superfast2 package.... 63mb b/band + phone... £23 p/m for 18 months with the 'warning' it will go up by £3 at the end of the 18months. Also included was a £100 gift voucher, you could choose from John Lewis, M&S, Currys or Amazon. PLUS... an Amazon Echo Dot as well :shock: :mrgreen: =D> =D> (however this deal finished on Tuesday... i'm sure another will be along soon tho :wink: )

So we signed up on Sunday. Rang Virgin on Monday, and was put on hold for 55 mins..!! The guy tried his best to make us stay.... "how about if we look at your package and see what we can do.?" no thanks.... we're leaving, and gave 30 days notice.

Tuesday evening my mobile rings.... "i recognise that number..." i says, its Virgin. Sure enough there was a very polite but rather difficult to understand (if you get my drift) lady offering an 'amazing' deal if we wanted to stay.... "no thanks.... you can even offer it for free and i still wont take it, if you cant treat old customers the same as you do new ones then we're leaving...."

So currently we are on 30 days notice with Virgin. We have Vodafone coming to install on 24th (i say Vodafone... it'll probably be BT Openreach), the b/b from Virgin will cease on 9th Oct so there will be a little bit of overlap. And we want V/fone to 'port over' our old landline number.

We change our car insurance every year.
We change our house insurance every year.
We change our contents insurance every year.
We change our travel insurance every year.
We check/change our energy supplier every year.
We constantly monitor our mobile/sim deal.
We even changed banks recently (went to M&S as theres a massive store just 20 mins walk from us and the bank in store is open during store hours 7 days a week, unlike the Halifax that was a 15 min drive away and only open during normal business hours)

So why oh why do we stick with the same b/b provider.? Because more people know our landline number than people who know our mobile number(?)

Bite the bullet.... do it....!!


Nick


Oh.... a friend has just done the same, except he went from Virgin to SSE, who even offered to pay his 'penalty' fee =D>

 

[Benchwayze]

The words 'shot' 'foot' and 'in' spring to mind. I am going to change from Virgin too. And to heck with people who have my email address.

I already have BT for phone, BB and TV, so no problem. I was going to stop BT as it was £50.00 monthly against Virgin £34.00, but a ten pounds hike just for BB? No way!

 

[RogerS]

I have virginmedia fibre installed at present at 50mbs and service is ok but another price increase next month, somehow they have got me up from around £33 per month to £47.50 next month with telephone at 24/7 free over the past 3 years.
I use internet moderately these days mainly utube stuff, forum, and occasional humax tv internet offers like iplayer and the other channels .

talk talk offered me a deal at around £28 per month using above mentioned use but would I really suffer from the difference in speed. (dont watch films etc.)

They quoted speeds of 2 to 5mbs no fibre in Devon.

Your comments welcome

We have 75mbs through virgin cable at one property and about 12-14mbs through a sky telephone line connection. I wouldn't want any less than 10mbps personally unless you only do email and basic browsing. Any kind of video and you would suffer.

I disagree. We had 2Mbps and that was fine for streaming SD video. You only need around 5Mbps for HD.

DW....there is only one provider IMO and that is Zen. Not the cheapest but you get what you pay for. Their tech support is excellent.

 

[John Brown]

Check out these people:
https://www.thephone.coop/
They may or may not operate in your area, but they claim to be "ethical", and part of that claim is that they don't try to bump the price up every year, forcing you to threaten to switch suppliers.
We're with them(only for a month so far).

 

[RogerS]

Check out these people:
https://www.thephone.coop/
They may or may not operate in your area, but they claim to be "ethical", and part of that claim is that they don't try to bump the price up every year, forcing you to threaten to switch suppliers.
We're with them(only for a month so far).

Good point, John and I forgot to say that Zen will freeze the price at the going rate whenever you join.

 

[RogerS]

.....
We change our car insurance every year.
We change our house insurance every year.
We change our contents insurance every year.
We change our travel insurance every year.
We check/change our energy supplier every year.
We constantly monitor our mobile/sim deal.
We even changed banks recently (went to M&S as theres a massive store just 20 mins walk from us and the bank in store is open during store hours 7 days a week, unlike the Halifax that was a 15 min drive away and only open during normal business hours)
....

Interesting, Nick.

We check all of the above each year and for the last couple of years, our existing providers for the top five in your list were still the cheapest.

As far as mobiles go, we're driven to a certain extent by network coverage (or lack of). We were with Three. Brilliant customer service. Not a bad price but coverage a bit iffy. With the impending 'You MUST have a mobile if you want to shop online edict from the EU law' we decided to go with Vodafone as the coverage was a bit more stable. What a mistake. They will rip you off at every opportunity. Their customer service is one of the worst I've ever encountered. Please...please...please reconsider, Nick. Vodafone redefine Not Fit For Purpose.

Hardly ever visit a bank and so I'm happy with the three or four online accounts I've acquired over the years. Several are 'mobile' and I will swap them whenever a good incentive comes along to switch.

 

[gregmcateer]

Also, whatever you do, start by saying b****** off to virgin and they'll immediately reduce the charge. Just check out carefully, off the phone, in peace and quiet to ensure you get what you want.

 

[Rorschach]

.....
We change our car insurance every year.
We change our house insurance every year.
We change our contents insurance every year.
We change our travel insurance every year.
We check/change our energy supplier every year.
We constantly monitor our mobile/sim deal.
We even changed banks recently (went to M&S as theres a massive store just 20 mins walk from us and the bank in store is open during store hours 7 days a week, unlike the Halifax that was a 15 min drive away and only open during normal business hours)
....

Interesting, Nick.

We check all of the above each year and for the last couple of years, our existing providers for the top five in your list were still the cheapest.

As far as mobiles go, we're driven to a certain extent by network coverage (or lack of). We were with Three. Brilliant customer service. Not a bad price but coverage a bit iffy. With the impending 'You MUST have a mobile if you want to shop online edict from the EU law' we decided to go with Vodafone as the coverage was a bit more stable. What a mistake. They will rip you off at every opportunity. Their customer service is one of the worst I've ever encountered. Please...please...please reconsider, Nick. Vodafone redefine Not Fit For Purpose.

Hardly ever visit a bank and so I'm happy with the three or four online accounts I've acquired over the years. Several are 'mobile' and I will swap them whenever a good incentive comes along to switch.

Slightly off topic I know but with regard to mobile I took a 2 pronged approach (I have a phone that run 2 sim cards, very common these days).
I have 1 account with 1p mobile, this is my main account for calls, internet and texts, I have a second account PAYG with O2 on their basic cheap tariff.
1p Mobile uses EE who have good coverage in town, O2 have good coverage almost everywhere. I am never without phone signal no matter what my location. In 1 year I have spent less than 30pence on the O2 account as it's back up only.

 

[devonwoody]

Thanks all for those replies, I shall have to do something after reading those helpful comments.

so its talk talk, Zen or vodaphone?
anyone got a better view of vodaphone?

 

[Dibs-h]

DW - i went thru something similar, Virgin slowly increasing it's prices till they clearly taking the Michael. £50 odd quid in the end.

So I switched to Virgin Business broadband in the end - you actually don't need to be a business. :lol: Just say you work from home - self employed or something. They don't ask for proof. That got me 50Mb down and 5Mb up for £22+vat a month on a 2 yr contract with a £50 install fee.

For a "landline" I bought a little Cisco\Linksys gadget for VOIP and signed up with a provider. Plugged the cordless phone into that - got a local number for £3 month and call charges way under BT's - and the Mrs has no idea that it's not BT supplying the landline.

HIH

Dibs

 

[RogerS]

Thanks all for those replies, I shall have to do something after reading those helpful comments.

so its talk talk, Zen or vodaphone?
anyone got a better view of vodaphone?

Talk talk ? You must be joking. Do you not remember how they got hacked very very badly a few years ago. That the CEO hadn't got a clue about her business or the issues surrounding the hack? (I think they got rid of her in the end).

Vodafone. Don't be silly.

DW ...look at the one that consistently gets accolades and awards. The one with a UK tech support centre. It's a no-brainer. Zen.

 

[John Brown]

Thanks all for those replies, I shall have to do something after reading those helpful comments.

so its talk talk, Zen or vodaphone?
anyone got a better view of vodaphone?

Don't rule out the phone coop. We get around 25Mb/s for £28 per month(includes land line, and they provided two Tenda mesh boxes, which are fancy WiFi extenders).

 

[RogerS]

Thanks all for those replies, I shall have to do something after reading those helpful comments.

so its talk talk, Zen or vodaphone?
anyone got a better view of vodaphone?

Don't rule out the phone coop. We get around 25Mb/s for £28 per month(includes land line, and they provided two Tenda mesh boxes, which are fancy WiFi extenders).

They have more negative reviews on Trustpilot than good ones. Something for dw to bear in mind. And, no, I don't have shares in Zen :lol:

 

[AndyT]

The words 'shot' 'foot' and 'in' spring to mind. I am going to change from Virgin too. And to heck with people who have my email address.

You can almost certainly carry on using a virgin email address after you change ISP, if you want to.
I've still got a working virgin email address from way back in the penny a minute dialup days - I've never used them for anything else.

 

[John Brown]

Fair enough.. I didn't read that before. They were recommended by the people we bought the house from. So far I have no complaints.

 

[Rorschach]

You can almost certainly carry on using a virgin email address after you change ISP, if you want to.
I've still got a working virgin email address from way back in the penny a minute dialup days - I've never used them for anything else.

Not according to what I have seen on forums, you will get a limited period and then they will cut off your email address.
Not really a big deal, changing your email address with companies is easy.

 

[heronviewer]

Nobody has mentioned Plusnet. Usually good reviews and call centre in Yorkshire.
I'm too far from the connecting box to get fibre and am on ADSL+2. £13.99 a month and no download limits. I normally get 2.3Mb/s down and 0.3Mb/s down. Perfectly OK for youtube videos and BBC programmes but I don't bother with films.

 

[Simon_M]

changing your email address with companies is easy.

I have never seen the "attraction" for having a internet provider email address. Far easier to signup with someone else e.g. I have a gmail address. Can buy internet from anyone in the future without needing to tell anyone.