Sky or Virgin??

crazycatlady1984

Hi all,

Just wondering if anybody has any experience of Virgin media for broadband and TV?

I have been with Sky for about 6years, but since moving house a few months ago, they have just been rubbish, getting set up was awful, they just kept screwing it up, internet access was really intermittent until about 3weeks ago when it just stopped altogether, and they just dont seem to care, they just keep passing the buck, putting me through to other departments etc etc.

Eventually they said a few days ago "ok, we've tested your line and there is a fault, will send an engineer out". So, after 2days, engineer came (who is not even from sky, some 3rd party company) who said the line was fine, and that "they sometimes just say that on the phone to pass the buck" :mad:and that is problem with router, and sky will replace it.

Sky are saying I have to pay for new router (£40) which I dont really want to do as a) I have no confidence that it will even fix the problem and b) I've had the router since I've been with Sky, about 6years, feel like I'm being penalised for being a long term customer and having wear and tear on the equipment, which I think is reasonable and that they should replace it.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that I have now been waiting since yesterday morning for a manager to call me back, pretty tempted to call up and just cancel and go with virgin, but I suspect that if I do that they will say they will pay for the router just to keep me as customer, but I've kind of had enough and am seriously considering going with Virgin, getting the engineer out, get it all sorted, done and dusted in one day, instead of this constant @rsing about with Sky.

Also - Virgin is £20 p/m for pretty much the same package with Sky which I pay £37 for, plus virgin offering 3months free.

(big inconvenience would be losing my sky email address, but would just have to deal with that!)

Any advice would be appreciated!:)

chanz4

Virgin are just as bad, very poor on the billingside we found

spike7451

Sky,like all ISP's except VM,don't have any engineers that work on the phonelines,these third party engineers you speak of are actually BT Openreach engineers.Problem is in 80% of cases,the engineer that comes out has nothing to do with broadband & is only a phone engineer.I take it he didn't do any tests?
When I was with Sky,if the router was faulty we used to send one out for free.As to chanz4's comment,I was a NTL/VM engineer since 1998 & can assure you that in the majority of cases,the engineers are very good &,with the exception of about 80% of the installers,work directly for VM.The installers mentioned are subbies.

Mark_In_Hampshire

The problem you're getting with Sky is similar to that which many customers get from their ISP because the ISP cannot actually do anything about the problem, it is within their area of responsibility, but they have to use BT Openreach to get things done, so whatever it is, it will have to wait for them. The advantage with VM cable is that it's all in-house. The other advantage is that the broadband is partly fibre optic and so unless you happen to live right on top of the phone exchange and so have a very short phone line in good condition, even the base cable 10Mbps package is likely to be faster.

As far as the router is concerned I thought Sky and VM were both special cases. VM supply the router as a managed service and replace it if it goes wrong, Sky supply it when you join, and people have had problems using routers other than Sky supplied ones. So I guess if it breaks, unless you know how to get the connection to work on any other router as a trial to see if it's that which is faulty you're a bit stuck.

Buzby

You really need to differentiate as to which Virgin service you want to compare with. If Virgin National, then like Sky and all the ADSL ISP's it is BT providing the local loop, and you'll be carried along with all the other similarly-branded services on BT's infrastructure.

If Virgin CABLE, then it's a no-brainer - you have a Fibre-to-cabinet, then Coax to Router, providing the most robust internet connection, as well as the fastest speeds, and lowest number of subscribers sharing the same channel.

Anyone who has access to cable, yet selects ADSL over the phoneline is purposely taking an inferior connection. Even if VM was the worst company on the planet (and to some, it is) it is worth the effort to only take BB, and no other service can compare to the resilience - after 12 years of using both, ADSL is a kludge and should be viewed only as a fall-back.

visidigi

crazycatlady1984 wrote: »

Also - Virgin is £20 p/m for pretty much the same package with Sky which I pay £37 for, plus virgin offering 3months free.

I would guess the £20 is plus line rental at £13.90 a month as well...

So the cost difference isnt as much as you at first think...

celtus

Sky definitely 100%...ive been with virgin media for around 2 years before we ditched them and went back to sky. We moved from virgin for 2 main reasons, they were taking monies from my bank 7 days before the due paymemnt date, this made us go into our overdraft and pay bank fees ect. When i complained, i was met with rude, unhelpfull, arrogant staff who claimed they could take payment 7 days before the stated direct debit date that was on my contract.

Sky customer services on the other hand have been fantastic with any queries i have thrown at them, always very polite, extremely helpfull, and give the impression that they actually value you as a customer ( we were given 1/2 price tv for 6 months ) as our phone was 'acidently cut off' there fault).

I'm sure others will say negative storys about sky, but i can only speak as i find...:T

skintandscared_2

Go Freesat. It's brilliant. We've got a recordable box so exactly the same features as Sky+. Saves a fortune.

crazycatlady1984

Hi all, thanks for your comments.

A lot of stuff in there that I wasn't aware of, so I guess I will need to look into it a bit more, which is annoying as my main objective of possibly switching was just to get someone out asap to get this sorted so I don't have to put any more time and effort into this than I already have

(on internet using one of those wee dongle things just now which is irritating)

Regarding the comment about the £13.90 line rental; thanks, you are right, Virgin told me this when phoned up to ask about the £20 package. Money wise, it will still be a bit cheaper, as I currently pay £37 to Sky plus £12 for BT line rental, so virgin would then be £33 as opposed to £49 all in for Sky. However, virgin have advised that I *have* to take the line rental with them, does anybody know if this is correct? Is it somethign to do with the connection being different to the way to Sky do it (sorry, this is what I mean when I say I don't know much about it and need to look into it a bit more )

Would that mean that my phone number would change? Can't really be bothered with hassle of all that tbh, but I guess it would mean one less direct debit if it was all paid together!

spike7451

crazycatlady1984,is it CABLE broadband or Virgin NATIONAL broadband (Latter comes over the phoneline same as Sky does.the former comes over a COAX cable along with the VM TV service)

crazycatlady1984

spike7451 wrote: »

crazycatlady1984,is it CABLE broadband or Virgin NATIONAL broadband (Latter comes over the phoneline same as Sky does.the former comes over a COAX cable along with the VM TV service)

Hey Spike, thanks for the above and your previous post.

I am not sure to be honest

This is the link to the deal, it is the £20 I am thinking of getting; I think it is cable?

http://shop.virginmedia.com/digital-tv/special_offer.html