Updated Find the cheapest broadband discussion thread

mije1983

£65 is the standard charge for a fault that is found your side of the master socket. Why should someone else pay for a fault that is caused by you?

It isn't unique to Sky. In fact, if they are offering to waive the charge in exchange for a new contract then they are doing much more than other ISPs do and I'd be snapping them up on that offer if I knew the fault was on my side! If the fault is on your side, then consumer or business line the fault is still going to be there and need rectifiying. Unless you move to Virgin.

Cheaper deals for new customers is also not unique to Sky!

sroebuck

My 18 month BB contract was just coming to an end (was £24.25/m including anytime calls and basic mobile sim which includes plenty of calls & texts + 500MB data, enough for me + a free PVR for the TV). I haggled and got them "down" to £25.50 for the same package. Asked about fibre as my BB is often v slow, despite being just outside London suburbs, and finally agreed £29.75/m with free router & setup. I'm happy with this as I don't have to change email addresses etc. & feel it reasonable. I don't use any paid-for TV items, just Youview.

afmfifgh

Change your email address to a generic provider such as gmail or hotmail, never use the one provided by the ISP, they use it to try and stop you leaving as you become tied to using their email and it becomes a hurdle to leave them.

jmpandap

Has anybody recently changed from Virgin Media to EE for their bundled Broadband, phone and TV. If so, what have been the pros and cons. Virgin are driving me nuts with their charges, but I worry about the leap into the unknown, since the Virgin service is actually quite good

anon_ymous

jmpandap wrote: »

Has anybody recently changed from Virgin Media to EE for their bundled Broadband, phone and TV. If so, what have been the pros and cons. Virgin are driving me nuts with their charges, but I worry about the leap into the unknown, since the Virgin service is actually quite good

What sorta speed are you getting now? Also check out https://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/broadband_speed_in_my_area_v2.aspx

It's not entirely accurate. I know that VM do at least 50Mb/s here, and I myself get 350Mb/s , which should push up the average in my postcode quite considerably, but it gives you some sort of idea.

keef-WhatStandards

Thanks to MSE the last few years have been cheaper broadband wise than basic line rental.

The offer from Plusnet resulted in a cost of about £12 a month and prior to that Sky provided a cheap reasonable service and even gave me a few quid back when I switched to Plusnet.

I see Talktalk are doing a deal atm, but not sure if the saving from say going back to Sky is worth the hassle I see a lot of folk have had with Talktalk?

keef-WhatStandards

I was very happy with Virgin Media for a number of years. In fact they took over from Bell Cable Media. I eventually moved from cable to ADSL and chose Plusnet as my provider. Quite a few "bumps" with them, but overall ISPs seem much alike, at least when you go for budget deals.

The only ISP I wouldn't wish on anyone was EE. Their accounts were unbelievable!

RandomQ

keef-WhatStandards wrote: »

Thanks to MSE the last few years have been cheaper broadband wise than basic line rental.

The offer from Plusnet resulted in a cost of about £12 a month and prior to that Sky provided a cheap reasonable service and even gave me a few quid back when I switched to Plusnet.

I see Talktalk are doing a deal atm, but not sure if the saving from say going back to Sky is worth the hassle I see a lot of folk have had with Talktalk?

I do not know how you can thank MSE

Before they used to get offers like the £5 a YEAR from Sky including line rental

Then we had £65 a year with £20 down, no extras

Then we had £100 for the year with £20 down, no extras

Now you have to prepay a year to get offered price, all kinds of terms that mean you have to pay huge extras.

I am not blaming MSE per se, the market is just not competitive.

I mean heard TT on radio offering 24 month contract at £18.95 saying price would not go up for 24 months of contract, they said they were the only ISP that can offer this.

Competitive to me is £5 a month for broadband

Competitive would be if all the mobile providers offered unlimited broadband but no CMA allowed them to merge.

Now we have TT being prepped for sale, so even less competition, Logic would be for Three mobile to get them.

The only way to win in this market is not to play.

keef-WhatStandards

RandomQ wrote: »

I do not know how you can thank MSE

Because I got the deal through clicking on the links on their website.


They might not be dirt cheap, but beat the ones on the comparison sites for example.

RandomQ

keef-WhatStandards wrote: »

Because I got the deal through clicking on the links on their website.


They might not be dirt cheap, but beat the ones on the comparison sites for example.

Clearly we have different budgets, MSE is a price comparison site and owned by a price comparison site (Money Supermarket).

There was a time when I were a lad when MSE got these really special deals, they used to split their affiliate commissions with their mail list.

These days it is "nuffin special" and best deals people mention seem to be topcashback et al.

The real problem is lack of competition and cartel like behaviour.

EE no longer interested in really competing since allowed to be acquired by CMA, they were the disruptor previously that made Sky put out decent offers. Before that TalkTalk were the disruptor but they gave up discounting several years ago, deciding to prep the company for sale and provide all their customer data to hackers and/or IT Engineers in India.

TT are believed to be the biggest source of personal data on Dark Web, used in things like replacement Sim Card banking hack, know of two cases which exceeded £20k stolen. If this were USA there would be a class action lawsuit.

Plusnet not particularly cheap, renowned for now paying out on those mastercards and for sticking it to you if you leave them.

Virgin has always been far too snobby to discount to serious level.

Vodafone, only interested in Fibre, which may be OK if you have £20 a month or so to throw away.

It is clear the Ofcom is about as useful as a fart in a hurricane, every time they put in things to make it easier for consumers the industry puts up prices and blames them.