virgin phone and TV package

lindos90

Hi, Just wanting some advice. Im just about to set up a phone and Tv package deal for my mum. (XL phone, 'free anytime', M tv, 'V+ HD box')

It looks like a really good deal at the moment,
£11 phone line rental
£7.50 for free unlimited calls
£75 TV box instalation, with free access to 40 channels
£5 for the V+ box (to record programmes, up to two at once, even while watching a third)
£1.75 for caller ID, and free 1471 and voicemail

=£26 a month

Can someone confirm that the major problems with virgin media seem to be with their broadband, and that their phone service and TV setup is generally OK?

Does anyone have any experience with Virgin TV and phone?

Im just hesitant as we have sky, and know very little about virgin, apart from some reviews Ive seen online, but they are mainly moaning about virgin broadband.

Are there any pitfalls ive not realised, are there hidden charges? is there something ive missed or overlooked? Are these prices an introductory carrot and somewhere in the small print they will double the prices in 2009?

At £26 its currently cheaper than her phone bill with BT (her DD is £30 with BT) and on top of that she will be getting all the TV Stuff as well from Virgin.

It seems like a good deal, but the old saying 'if something looks to good to be true, it probably is' keeps going through my mind, so I thought I would just check with my savvy MSE friends first before applying!!;)

Schekelfuchser

Hi, I'm with Virgin (phone with unlimited calls, TV (no V+ box) and broadband). If you want 100% reliability of service, BT is probably the better option, but I remember the BT customer support being horrible. It took us sometimes up to an hour to get an answer to simple questions from them and I don't like wasting my time with waiting while being put on hold for ages by BT call center staff. Virgin is much better in terms of dealing with problems.

I don't regret the switch to Virgin, but I remember that very few times we had no phone line for a couple of hours. The TV service has always been up and running, but sometimes their on demand stuff didn't work (movies on demand, catch up TV) and few times we didn't have programme information (the TV listing with description of the shows and movies).

If your mum only calls UK landline numbers she should be fine with the service of Virgin. Calls to mobiles and international numbers can be more expensive than with BT and Virgin recently doubled their call rates to many 0844 numbers:
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1304691

Still, I wouldn't go back to BT. When we considered switching from BT to Sky we were put off by the fact that you still need to pay BT for the line rental (not sure whether that's still the case), which made their offer too expensive compared to Virgin.