What's the cheapest way to get Virgin Media Broadband?

weegie.geek

I'm about to become a customer, and I'm going to go for broadband-only, the fastest package. That's £30/month for the first 3 months, then £35 a month for the other 9 months of the 1 year contract. There's also a £50 setup fee.

That comes to £455.

Then there's £38 Quidco, so that takes it down to £417.

Alternatively, I could get someone to refer me, which gives me free install by way of a £50 credit, and a £50 credit for them.

That makes it £405, assuming the introductory 3 month £5 off offer still applies, and no messing around waiting on Quidco.


Are there cheaper methods?

Tigsteroonie

I have to ask - Do you have someone lined up to refer you? 'Cos I'd be happy to do so

weegie.geek

I don't at the moment, but I'm sure I'll have friends who are with VM. Can't blame you for trying though!

Buzby

BB on its own is quite expensive. Number crunch a few additional service and watch the Cashback rate soar. Taking the (unrequired) phone line and the annual line rental advance payment makes it virtually FoC.

weegie.geek

Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't get the price down by all that much.

Taking phone and BB, and using Connect Friend, brings the average monthly price to £34.38, up from £33.75 for just BB with Connect Friend.

Swapping Connect Friend for Quidco brings it to £33.20/month.

I can get it to £29.87/month with Line Rental Discount and Quidco. A saving of just under £4 a month, but with the disadvantage of an 18 month contract. There's the possibility of Quidco not tracking, of course, so worse case it'll be £33.83/month.

There's the possibility of adding M+ TV to the package as well. I can get that down to £36.86/month using LRD and Quidco, but again it's the 18 month contract. Again, with Quidco not being guaranteed, there's a risk of it being £45.83/month.

Roland_Sausage

Bear in mind that if you take the phone it is an 18 month contract instead of 12, but how does this look?

Take the 30Mb broadband and phone and you get:

Broadband £0 for first 6 months
Broadband £14.50 for next 12 months

Phone £14.99 for first 6 months. After 6 months call up and get line rental saver...
Phone £10 per month for next 12 months

Quidco £71.25

Total cost £312.69 for the 18 months or £17.37 per month

Edit: Just re-read and saw that you are wanting the top broadband package, but is it really necessary? I am a pretty heavy downloader and can honestly say that the 30Mb package is more than sufficient. It almost always hits the full 30Mbps when I do a speedtest.

Also factor into the cost a router as the supplied superhub is known to be pretty poor for wireless. It is best put into modem mode and then you can supply your own router.

And don't make calls using the phone as they are hideously expensive. If you must make calls use the 18185.co.uk 0808 number.

weegie.geek

the top package is best for us. I work from home, so the upload speed will help things a lot. We're also big streamers.

I've got a router in mind, yep. Any calls we make right now are via our mobiles. We literally don't even have a phone plugged into the BT socket. I doubt that'll change once we get VM.

Roland_Sausage

In that case, in my calculations assuming Quidco tracks ok, £29.87 per month over 18 months is probably the best you will do at the moment (Broadband + Phone, with line rental saver for months 7 to 18 and Quidco).

weegie.geek

Why line rental saver for months 7 to 18, specifically?

I got the same, yep. £29.87 for broadband and phone over 18 months.

Interestingly, it's only £36.86/month over 18 months for BB+Phone+TV M+.

I'm not particularly interested in their TV offerings, but it's not that much more, and our Freeview reception is pretty bad on the HD mux. Communal aerial, so there's not much I can do about it unfortunately. Just not sure if it's worth the extra £7 a month for the main terrestrial channels in HD, and a few other channels I'll rarely ever watch. There's the on demand stuff, I guess. Decisions!

Roland_Sausage

weegie.geek wrote: »

Why line rental saver for months 7 to 18, specifically?

They won't allow you to have the line rental saver at the same time as another promotion, i.e the discounted broadband which you will get for the first 6 months of the contract.

Certainly that is what happened in my experience. I called to pay it at the start of the contract and they wouldn't allow it and told me to call back once my broadband promo period was over.

However saying that, the small print only states that it can't be used with other line rental offers and makes no mention of broadband, so maybe they will allow it now (or maybe even the CS agent I got at the time was incorrect).

weegie.geek

Ah, that makes sense. I didn't think about it like that. Now I have to decide when to go for it. Quidco's rates for VM are changing in 5 days now, but will they go up or down, I wonder?

Makes me wonder if there's any site that tracks historical quidco offers, to see if there's any pattern in their numbers. Off to google for me.