Broadband. Who's the Cheapest? Article Discussion Area

pingu

theloft wrote:

The CarPhone Warehouse offer is a seriously tempting deal. You have to sign for 18 months, but for that you get
unlimited UK landline calls, also international calls to 28 countries, including the EU, Oz, NZ & USA. Free Broadband
for £20.99 per month including line rental. I might wait until the "price war" starts but it is a very good offer.

never thought i would hear that from you!!!

hotbod

thanks thats what ive joined up to find out :T

mrJ_5

interesting offer by CPW... but you do need to be at a special exchange to get the low price, or its an extra £9.99 a month - i am sure other isp's will start making better offers over the next month

kippax1966

Can't see this anywhere else, apologies if it is.....

I'm with NTL, and heard (from the Rpoints forum) that they were offering to meet/beat the Talk Talk deal, also for £20.99. It's for 2MB broadband, line rental and it's 24 unlimited call plan. I called 0800 183 0123, and after a bit of discussion with the lady, was put through to their retentions department (not sure of their direct number, I'm afraid), who offered me the above with very little fuss.

Maybe worth a phone call for someone.......

hotdog

I'm already a CPW TT customer - we have their Talk 1 (basic package - free), landline and pay £14.99 for 1Mb broadband - that's all we can get from our exchange.

At the moment we get free calls to other TalkTalk customers only - which is good as most of our family and friends are on TalkTalk so that saves us a fair bit.

Given that we already pay CPW for landline and the Talk3 Internation package (that you need to get free BB) is £9.99 and you get all the other free calls plus free BB, then we're onto a winner - as they are letting existing customers transfer to the new promotion without waiting for the end of their contract - our BB contract only started 3 months ago. I was expecting to have to wait for another 9 months to be able to take advantage.

I was told by the customer service guy this morning that there is an 18 month contract on this - but then I'd expect that anyway - our current BB is 12 months.

Has anyone got any major concerns? At the very least this will save me £5 a month just on BB - and then I get all the extra free calls. I don't use the pre-dial numbers to get cheaper calls anyway - though my mother in law has used her CPW landline to call abroad using Phonebird and it worked fine.

hethmar

Strangely enough, just last week I decided to dump wanadoo and go with Talk Talk. We are already on Option 3 phone calls - free national calls 24/7.

So I already have a MAC number for a transfer. Ive just been on there site and it seems we arent one of their 70% customers (?) who can benefit from free broadband and would have to pay the tenner on top - this brings the total cost to £31 for all calls including international plus line rental and broadband. (I rang them and they assured me that as soon as my area has the facilities I would be upgraded to free broadband and £10 a month taken off my bill).

Im currently paying £29 a month to wanadoo just for broadband connection (highest rate due to sons downloading/gaming). Talk Talk assure me the 40 mgs download will still be sufficient for these activities. So I could save about £216 a year.

Im just a bit concerned that they are going to handle so many more customers and also whether the service will be as good as wanadoo and whether in two months time we will all be on here bemoaning our rush to join them

hotdog

From my experience it's been good so far. We had one problem when we without service for about 3 days when, apparently, BT were upgrading our exchange - it would have been nice to have been told about this outage ahead of time - but, I guess it would have affected all broadband customers irrespective of who you were with. Whether this was true or not, I don't know and CPW did offer to refund the money for the time that I was without service - I didn't bother claiming as it would have been more hassle that it was worth.

I would have thought that 40GB - not MB (that would be awfully small) - would be fine for online gaming. Gaming uses minimal bandwith to enable fast transfer of data between players to make the game very responsive. I don't know what your son's games requirements are but, given that most BB providers only provide ~4GB included, I would have thought that 40 should be more than enough.

I'm hoping that the service won't degrade after all this. Customer service is free for the first x days - about 14ish I think - so I'm out of that now - though if service is down, I'm certainly going to refuse to pay the higher rate support charges - again, the same will probably apply to all providers.

hotdog

Strangely enough - I just went back the the talktalk web site and entered my phone number and post code and it came back telling me that I had to pay the £10 per month - earlier today it said it was okay - and, anyway, I've already got BB through CPW.

I got on the phone and whilst waiting, I continued to try to query the phone number and address page and it came up saying I was okay for free broadband.

I'm confused - but apparently it's free, for me anyway - maybe if you pester the web server enough it'll let you have it.

iAdore

I checked my post-code and found that I was not entitled to 'free' broadband but did get the £10 a month offer if I also upgraded my Talk 1 package to Talk 3 for another £10 a month. HOWEVER there is a £29.99 one off charge for taking broadband and I got an email from them today confirming that the charge is the same whether the broadband is 'free' or for £10. In addition the 18 month contract is a problem as I am planning to move next Summer and may incur cancellation charges [see their T&Cs].

I didn't get a response as to whether the £10 a month charge would change to 'free' if my exchange gets upgraded within the 18 months. Or what the cancellation charge would be on the 'free' package.

So on balance the broadband works out the same as Tiscali for the first 6 months £14.99 if you allow for the one-off charge but also you have the Talk 3 package costs on top. If you use the landline a lot and can get the 'free' broadband then it is certainly a great deal. If you don't use the landline much [like me] then it is still a good deal. But if you fall into the £10 a month category then it needs careful consideration.

I'm hoping that the TalkTalk deal will filter through the market within the next few weeks, giving more options to consider .... and that Martin will update the Broadband section [even with a temporary cautionary note] shortly!

Edinburghlass_2

Please see Martin's post regarding the TalkTalk/CFW offer

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=1981716&postcount=150