virgin

fedupnow

I am looking to switch from bt...... it is shamefully expensive. I have been paying £62.50 a month but am still left owing about £200 at the end of each payment period.

I am now in a position to switch and pay off what I owe. Couple of questions.

Can I keep my bt e mail ad with a new provider?

Is Virgin a good option? I have done a search and note they have the odd e mail outage but other than that? Should anybody here be a virgin customer I would appreciate them sharing.

We don't have sky just a freeview box so I'm not particularly fussed on the tv channels. I just want cheap calls and unlimited broadband.

FYI I am leaning towards Virgin because, although Tiscali and Talk Talk may appear cheaper, I like and need reliability and being a bit of a noo noo at techie stuff I want good support. I am a bit scared of getting stuck with another duff provider. Should anybody strongly suspect I am leaning into dangerous territory please tell.

I feel ripped off by bt and want to get the next move right. AOL were equally hideous (for me).

Thanks in advance

TomsMom

We have been with Virgin since February this year - not cable so we only have broadband and telephone and have a good package for the first 12 months.

Since February I think I can remember 2 or 3 problems with e-mails, the most recent just a few days ago and it was sorted in a couple of days but I could access my e-mails through webmail.

We've had no real problems with them and nothing that makes me want to run a mile so hopefully they will come up with a good package when our first 12 months is up. However, they did charge us a connection/set up charge of £15 which they never informed us about in advance. It took quite a few e-mails, and we were beginning to run out of patience, but we did manage to get it sorted and eventually get it refunded. Our bills otherwise have always been correct.

Our bundle includes free evening and weekend calls so we use Virgin for that. However, we use 18185 for daytime calls (5p connection charge, 0p per minute) to keep our telephone bill as low as possible. I believe Virgin's call charges have just increased "in line with the competition"!!! We have to pay BT for line rental as there is no cable round here.

However, saying all that, if I were you I would do a search on the "Internet Access" forum or a general search as I seem to remember a lot of unhappy people posting about Virgin in the past. Maybe even ask for recommendations of good providers.

As for keeping your BT e-mail addy, I don't know but I doubt it. I had to lose my old server's addy yonks ago (when Freeserve was around and we moved). You would get a new addy with your new provider or you could go for something like gmail.

Marty999

We were with Virgin but switched to Sky simply to get Sky One. We had no problems with Virgin in the 9 years we had it but I am told their phone call charges are not cheap. We are very pleased with Sky too, by the way, and feel we are getting good value with them.

As for your BT email address, I am sure you would have to give this up if you switch to another ISP. Best plan long term is to get a generic email address (Googlemail, Yahoo etc) and then you can take this with you if you change ISP again in the future, or else register your own domain name.

aliEnRIK

Ive been with Virgin (well blueyonder as it was then) for over 4 years. The actual broadband is first rate. If you pay for 10 meg you actually get exactly that (unlike all the BT line providers)
They are currently updating their service throughout the uk though so dependant on wether or not they have been in your area yet or not I cannot say. When they upgraded round here (only a couple of weeks ago) it effected some MAJOR unit and the whole area was up and down for nigh on a week.But that could happen to any 'provider' and to be fair its one of only 2 instances I recall in the last 4 years (The other only lasted less than a day).
What they HAVE brought in though (which kind of baffles me as what they say doesnt ring true) is a 'broadband use' watch. But basically if you do excessive downloading (that should really say, if you use a lot of bandwidth) they will slow the speeds down between (they quote but the times have varied massively for me) 10am and 9pm
Without a doubt though ive had full speed from midnight onwards uptill at least 11am
The speeds effected are as follows ~

20 Mb down to 5Mb
10Mb down to 2.5Mb
2Mb down to 1Mb

I personally have the 10Mb broadband and im really very happy with it. No caps on the downloads either (which I think there is with the 2Mb one)

As for email problems ~ I dont recall anytime I couldnt access them (bar obviously when the whole net was down)
And I doubt you can bring the BT email over with you ~ but I wouldnt swear to it
I highly recommend just using a googlemail account (free). That way you can sign in using any computer and it doesnt matter WHICH provider you switch to

odowdchr

fedupnow wrote: »

I am looking to switch from bt...... it is shamefully expensive. I have been paying £62.50 a month but am still left owing about £200 at the end of each payment period.
I am now in a position to switch and pay off what I owe. Couple of questions.
Can I keep my bt e mail ad with a new provider?
Is Virgin a good option? I have done a search and note they have the odd e mail outage but other than that? Should anybody here be a virgin customer I would appreciate them sharing.
We don't have sky just a freeview box so I'm not particularly fussed on the tv channels. I just want cheap calls and unlimited broadband.
FYI I am leaning towards Virgin because, although Tiscali and Talk Talk may appear cheaper, I like and need reliability and being a bit of a noo noo at techie stuff I want good support. I am a bit scared of getting stuck with another duff provider. Should anybody strongly suspect I am leaning into dangerous territory please tell.

I feel ripped off by bt and want to get the next move right. AOL were equally hideous (for me).

Thanks in advance

You're talking about Virginmedia cable broadband yes, and not Virgin ADSL through your existing phoneline? Cable is the one to go for if you can get it.

Don't be fooled by the Virgin name for customer support. It's not great if you get put through to India with a technical problem.
Also...when you've agreed a 12month package/ deal, make them put the details in writing and send them to you. Might come in handy if the price mysteriously rises in the future.

benjus

fedupnow wrote: »

Can I keep my bt e mail ad with a new provider?

This is just a thought, and I'm not sure if it would work... but maybe if instead of cancelling the BT package you downgraded it to pay-as-you-go dial-up internet they may keep your email address active. You would need to check that you can access the BT email servers while connected through a non-BT provider.

Having said that, I would recommend changing to an email address that is not tied to your ISP if at all possible.