Virgin Media TV/Phone/Broadband - whats not to love?
The price?
We had it until we moved to a non-Virgin area or we'd still have it. Reliable, fast, no CS problems
i have it. i keep thinking there is a better way of getting tv/broadband.
tivo box is slow and the search/borwsing is crap the colours make it hard to read etc etc. you dont get all the shows through the OD services you do through the internet.
you can record stuff and pause tv which is useful at times though.
It's Ok. We went down to the minimum TV package as it was disproportionately expensive for the small amount of normal (shit) TV we watch. Internet is good (cable) and we don't have the phone.
The customer service. Was legendarily bad, to the extent that there was a nthell site to moan about customer service set up by disgruntled customers. Site was bought out by NTL/Virgin a while ago.
Having said that I have their broadband and basic TV. Broadband is good - fast and reliable. Never use their TV; FreeView on a smart TV has a much better interface.
They once broke my internet service by upgrading it, and then telling me my box didn't support the upgrade. Down for several days, and then two engineers turned up on the same day (who I couldn't fault at all, good guys who knew their stuff). Haven't called them for a while though.
the price is cheaper than Sky and if they give me a better service on broadband they can be slightly more money and I wont mind.
I found it cheaper to get a deal through the local area rep, rather than the website or high street store.
Only have the internet package and can't fault it, paid line rental upfront for a year and at the moment its £5 a month
It's Ok. We went down to the minimum TV package as it was disproportionately expensive for the small amount of normal (shit) TV we watch. Internet is good (cable) and we don't have the phone.
Did it make much difference to the price by not having the phone? When I looked in to this the difference was negligible.
Really can't fault virgins service, I don't think t'internets been down for longer than a few hours (Was a telewest customer before that and a Yorkshire cable customer before them) for 15 yrs.
My broadbands doubling to 200mb soon for nought as well.
Just make sure you phone up every year or two and haggle the price down, if you don't, they just keep increasing it.
Is there an option to have broadband without a phone line? I thought the two were mutually inclusive. It might be useful for me, we never use our housephone.
Well since you ask:
Tivo box is rubbish, slow, clunky and inferior to Freeview, I only keep it because it makes the package cheaper
Broadband OK now after three months of hopeless service following my 'free upgrade' from 30 to 50 MB
Email - now approaching three weeks of hopeless service, about to kill all the accounts and abandon them
Tivo box is rubbish, slow, clunky and inferior to Freeview,
This will be a clincher for Mrs K...
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I think it's excellent, I've had it for years, the above was taken moments ago so pretty much peak time although it's supposed to be 100 down 5 up.
Cheers.
Is there an option to have broadband without a phone line? I thought the two were mutually inclusive. It might be useful for me, we never use our housephone.
we had it, then cancelled it. don't pay line rental either. It might be because telewest (IIRC) installed fibre/cable all around the area years ago.
Get it cheap and just let DD pay and in 5 years time it will be dead cheap compared to a new contract.
The ongoing service / product is great. Their call centre support, is awful, I know standards in this area are low due to the job being crap but they are on another level. I missed my install appointment and nobody knew how to rebook it. On one call I was transferred 6 times to different depts in at least 2 counties!
Nightmare customer support, useless engineers, antiquated cable network in areas based on 70s/80s technology trying to shoehorn broadband down it but the infrastructure is fundamentally not fit for purpose. Network issues caused by unterminated connections in your neighbourhood (the stuff to the house is basically same as old thick/thin Ethernet cables, if you remember how much of a nightmare they were in corporate networks).
Went through hell with them. Yes, was on nthellworld. They couldn't deliver a reliable connection over years of trying and wasting my time with engineer call outs and not turning up when scheduled. Quit and went BT and then PlusNet. Been fine with them. 76 down, 20 up.
I had nothing but amazing service from Virgin in the last few years of being with them. Mega fast BB that never failed once in 5 years, or slowed down. 1TB TiVo box was fast, easy to use and miles better than a Sky HD box I tried.
I had 2 new TiVo boxes during that time replaced FOC - they were fixed next day after I called, once on a Bank Holiday for no extra charge. We are living at a friends house so we had to have it disconnected but even that was painless, got a £15 refund cheque through today.
Our next house has to have Virgin fibre or we won't be moving there!
After 3 years with virgin media I now split my services across sky and Virgin.
Broadband - with virgin media. Very reliable and quick. Weirdly it was cheaper for me to have the line rental as well, rather than just broadband alone.
Tv - this is with sky. I pay £16.50 a month for all channels without sports and movies though. I moved cause virgin kept putting the price up and wouldn't do a deal at the end of my contract. So after three years moved. I have to say though the sky user interface is far better the virgin TiVo box is poorly designed in comparison, it's a bit like apple v android I suppose, content is better (box sets etc) on sky, has sky Atlantic and the picture is better on sky. At the time virgin's output was in 720p whereas sky is 1080 (depending on the programme).
Rubbish catch-up TV - only keeps a week of shows, not months, like Sky. Internet up and down like a sailors trousers. Non-existent customer service. Poor selection of channels.
I'd still be with Sky if I had the option.
Broadband-fine. Actually for us where we live its the fastest and most reliable we have ever had.
Phone- fine but check call rates for non 'standard landline' numbers eg ringing a mobile from house phone is like phone bills from the 80's again. Also depending on local network you might only be able to have four rings maximum before your voicemail cuts in. Hard to believe on such a fancy network but nevertheless is the case where we live!
Tivo box -was great at first (especially after they removed the comedy timpani 'boing' sound effect, but definitely getting slower and slower the older it gets on anything that is not basic 'channel up/down' ie all the menus for everything. This does not seem to change depending on how full or empty the hard drive is. And the number/symbols rub off the remote control rather quickly. And the remote control doesn't lke our tv (umc) so depsite this being known about by virgin and threads on the internet dating back years, we still have to use 2 remotes for everything.
It seems to me from several forums, that
a) Sky's TV interface is better
b) Virgins Fibre broadband can be faster
c) Both are equally guilting of creeping prices
Probably a combo of a & b is the best way to go (if you aren't a firestick geek).
Tivo used to be good, but that's not a Virgin creation. It's a US DVR box and used to be available generally here (I've still got my old one), but then Virgin did a deal for a custom version and they became exclusive to them. Would have been better if they'd come out with a general one with a satellite input for Freesat, plus Freeview etc.
They've lagged behind though what with Sky HD's excellent downloadable selection and numerous Internet services like Smart TV, Amazon Fire etc, and then Amazon Prime and Netflix.
Best thing about Tivo was the Suggestions feature which recorded what you think you wanted to watch. That was fine before on demand downloads, but it's largely redundant now.
