Should I leave sky for virgin?

[admin_exported]

Hey virgin have advised they have conf of all Sky HD movie channels in aug, but wether that was a sale ploy.

They offers XL and XXL 50M BB as follows

35.00 for 6 months and 85 there after, so works out 62.00 a month overall.

I am paying 72 with sky, but yes more HD channels.

That 50meg is really tempting, what would you do?

 

[John Duncan]

I'd get a Freeview HD box and a bluray player with Lovefilm on it.

 

[Anonymous]

JohnDuncan:I'd get a Freeview HD box and a bluray player with Lovefilm on it.

Not that much HD stuff on it, and love the HD movies.

Plus freeview do not offer BB and telephone. so that will be 40.00 p/m for the both

 

[Anonymous]

I would go virgin.It's cheaper and you don't give your money to [EDITED BY MODS] Rupert Murdoch

 

[daveh75]

Fraz1:I would go virgin.It's cheaper and you don't give your money to [EDITED BY MODS] Rupert MurdochExcept of course you still do, albeit indirectly!

 

[JoelSim]

£72 per month. Are you mad?

Having said that, if Virgin offer a similar service/product to NTL and Telewest used to then please please stay away. It will take 5 years off your life.

 

[Anonymous]

Which is why i would go freeview/freesat but he was asking about virgin or sky.I didnt want to get too preachy. I toned it down re murdoch too and it still got edited,lol.

 

[chebby]

I love Virgin Media cable broadband (rock solid for three years now) but there is no way I would pay anything but my license fee for television.

Why pay Virgin (or Sky) for the same as I can get on Freeview already plus another 50 channels of 'rubbish' that I will never watch?

I will have to wait until 2012 for Freeview HD in our area but I am not that bothered about it except for the convenience of BBC iPlayer through TV (and I have learnt today there is a £99 'fix' for that and it also comes with a good built in Blu-Ray player

)

 

[Anonymous]

Virgin are useless, awful broadband speeds, provided me with wrong equipment, overcharged me on numerous occasions, a sales rep that was confirmed to work on commission also signed me up to an extended 12 month contract without my knowledge, the customer service phones may as well be manned by chimpanzees and only a letter threatening legal action got rid of them and the hassle they bring.

Apart from all of the above Virgin are fine. I am glad I switched to Sky.

 

[JoelSim]

Daveee:
Virgin are useless, awful broadband speeds, provided me with wrong equipment, overcharged me on numerous occasions, a sales rep that was confirmed to work on commission also signed me up to an extended 12 month contract without my knowledge, the customer service phones may as well be manned by chimpanzees and only a letter threatening legal action got rid of them and the hassle they bring.

Apart from all of the above Virgin are fine. I am glad I switched to Sky.

I had the very worst customer service of my life from NTHell. The cable TV broke regularly and unfortunately Customer Services was manned by people with less intelligence or power than chimps. After my umpteenth call on hold for over an hour I finally wrote a letter to the CEO that was ahem, frank.

 

[Anonymous]

All things being equal, at least with cable you don't have a neighbourhood blighted by chavvy dishes pinned to the front of houses. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

 

[JoelSim]

SKY on the other hand always answered calls quickly and provided instant solutions that didn't mean you had to take a day off work to get the damn thing fixed.

I can honestly say I've never been as angry as I was with NTL. If I'd met the CEO at that time I would probably be in prison now. And that's from a pacifist.

 

[daveh75]

romseyraver:All things being equal, at least with cable you don't have a neighbourhood blighted by chavvy dishes pinned to the front of houses. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

 

[JoelSim]

daveh75:
romseyraver:All things being equal, at least with cable you don't have a neighbourhood blighted by chavvy dishes pinned to the front of houses. Nasty, nasty, nasty.

Was that taken whilst on holiday in Lanzagrotte?

 

[chebby]

Must be a different company.

Three years ago they arrived on time, had me connected to cable in about 25 minutes, refunded my installation fee without me asking (I still don't know why) and the only outages I have ever experienced were sorted out extremely efficiently by technical staff who knew their stuff (compared to previous ISPs) and didn't try to blame it on my printer (Tiscali) or the fact that I had a Mac (Tiscali again) or distance from the exchange (BT).

The one occasion an engineer was required, at the nearby cable box, he arrived within an hour and found the fault almost immediately. (A breaker had flipped when some work on a nearby lamp post had been done earlier in the day by council electricians.

I have not had to endure 'offshore' helpdesks (Tiscali and BT) either since moving across to cable. The Virgin Media technical support team is based in the Wirral. (And of course the calls are free rather than 'premium' rate like some others.)

Ooh forgot. Twice I have received £10 off my monthly fee after outages. (Again, unprompted.)

I would never have dreamt that working from home every day was possible with the other ISPs I have used in the past. In the three years using Virgin cable BB I have only had to go in to work on two occasions (due to broadband problems). Not bad out of about 1100 days so far.

 

[daveh75]

JoelSim:Was that taken whilst on holiday in Lanzagrotte?Not by me, but quite possibly.

 

[Messiah]

I have had both Sky and Virgin and overall I prefer Virgin.

Overall the services are very similar although some features such as Match Choice only work on Sky, whereas the 'On Demand' service from Virgin is very good.

I have found though that the picture quality on Virgin is better, especially with SD broadcasts.

The one downside I have come across with Virgin is that sometime you do end up speaking to an overseas call centre. I do find that calling during standard office hours prevents this from happening.

As Chebby has stated, when I have had to utilise them to fix any faults they do this very promptly. Its also nice to know that if my box develops a fault it will just be replaced.

However, for me it all boils down to customer service. Overall, Virgin are not bad. Not great but not too bad. Sky on the otherhand let me down big time on one occasion and I have not been with them since.

 

[hammill]

chebby:

Must be a different company.

Three years ago they arrived on time, had me connected to cable in about 25 minutes, refunded my installation fee without me asking (I still don't know why) and the only outages I have ever experienced were sorted out extremely efficiently by technical staff who knew their stuff (compared to previous ISPs) and didn't try to blame it on my printer (Tiscali) or the fact that I had a Mac (Tiscali again) or distance from the exchange (BT).

The one occasion an engineer was required, at the nearby cable box, he arrived within an hour and found the fault almost immediately. (A breaker had flipped when some work on a nearby lamp post had been done earlier in the day by council electricians.

I have not had to endure 'offshore' helpdesks (Tiscali and BT) either since moving across to cable. The Virgin Media technical support team is based in the Wirral. (And of course the calls are free rather than 'premium' rate like some others.)

Ooh forgot. Twice I have received £10 off my monthly fee after outages. (Again, unprompted.)

I would never have dreamt that working from home every day was possible with the other ISPs I have used in the past. In the three years using Virgin cable BB I have only had to go in to work on two occasions (due to broadband problems). Not bad out of about 1100 days so far.

My experience with Virgin is also favourable. I have been with them for 7 years and only had a couple of engineer visits, which were pretty prompt. Broadband occasionally drops out, but not for long. I also work from home and depend on my broadband completely.

 

[laserman16]

chebby:

Must be a different company.

Three years ago they arrived on time, had me connected to cable in about 25 minutes, refunded my installation fee without me asking (I still don't know why) and the only outages I have ever experienced were sorted out extremely efficiently by technical staff who knew their stuff (compared to previous ISPs) and didn't try to blame it on my printer (Tiscali) or the fact that I had a Mac (Tiscali again) or distance from the exchange (BT).

The one occasion an engineer was required, at the nearby cable box, he arrived within an hour and found the fault almost immediately. (A breaker had flipped when some work on a nearby lamp post had been done earlier in the day by council electricians.

I have not had to endure 'offshore' helpdesks (Tiscali and BT) either since moving across to cable. The Virgin Media technical support team is based in the Wirral. (And of course the calls are free rather than 'premium' rate like some others.)

Ooh forgot. Twice I have received £10 off my monthly fee after outages. (Again, unprompted.)

I would never have dreamt that working from home every day was possible with the other ISPs I have used in the past. In the three years using Virgin cable BB I have only had to go in to work on two occasions (due to broadband problems). Not bad out of about 1100 days so far.

Can only echo that, never really had a problem with cable. It always runs very stable and is there when I need/want it.

On the few occasions I have needed help Tech support have been great and sorted my problem quickly, from what I can remember all problems have actually been my end with the computer rather than the bb itself.