Updated Find the cheapest broadband discussion thread

Brand

DavidP24 wrote: »

I second that, ring in a grumpy way, you will not believe what they offered me and I was already on half price!

This is a good point. as a plusnet bb customer, I rang plusnet saying I was going to leave, and I got offered the best affiliate deal. When I rang a month later saying I just wanted to change package, I again was offered a v good deal, but not the best affiliate deal.
I rang BT,who I pay for line rental, in a nice quiet way, and was offered a good deal. I got the feeling BT had more room to negotiate than plusnet, but that they'd never match the best plusnet deal.

By the way, I found the detail of everything confusing, For someone who wants a copper deal, already has a BT line and broadband set up, the general thought was that if sport, smartphone calls, or wifi are high priorities, then it must be BT of course. if cheap unlimited broadband is priority, then plusnet, If anytime calls and caller display is priority, then you can probably ring BT for a v good deal.

PS do you need really unlimited broadband? I thought I was near limit each month, and was puzzled why, as rarely. It turns out plusnet usage gauge enlarges only the latest 100 Mb and so I was still way way way way off of 10 Gb allowance, which does not display on the gauge. The distorted gauge makes it look I was consuming allowance like crazy, and so I was not reading the gauge right. Doh!
I mention only BT and plusnet, but hope this helps a little anyone like me, baffled by the choices.

Brand

DavidP24 wrote: »

Well I think I got a good deal, I now pay £1.75 a month and I get a Boost included.

Yes well done David. That's what I mean; sadly the more you say you are going to leave and the more grumpy you sound, the better the offer, I wasn't in the mood at the time, and so ended up with a deal not as good as it might have been and barely cheaper than bt.

eljmayes

Gazza1964 wrote: »

I was speaking to them today and they told me the best they could do was two months half price then 19.99 for the rest of my contract - if it had been six months I would have taken it as I have my phone with them aswell and pay up front line rental I was a bit disappointed at their offer - currently looking at the EE cashback offer, shame Plusnet give me a good service.

Sorry just realised that post was quite old.

I was offered the same today on a one year deal- I don't wish to sign up for a two year deal. Plusnet do seem to be a lot tighter on the offers front now.

rae23

I've just gone on to the BT site through the Martin Lewis web page. I wanted to sign up for their whole bundle with vouchers. It clearly states that for their TV essential and Unlimited broadband a £30 activation fee but when you go to checkout it goes up to £35 activation fee.
I've just contacted BT who couldn't seem to understand what i was saying at first, however i eventually got them to understand but all they've done is say it's an error and will be rectified.
Surely they should offer to honor the price they are clearly advertising it at and i'm also wondering how many other people they have duped by this and how many people they will be refunding the extra £5 to plus interest?
Is this something trading standards would be interested in? It must be false/misleading advertising etc.....?
I'm now having second thoughts about signing up with them.

Skeenfleent

twells83 wrote: »

Virgin offer works out at £15.83! for Fibre optic 30Mbs for their Broadband only package!

MSE Coupon £55 cashback
Nectar Points through nectar e-shop £22.50 (4500 points)
Virgin own cash back £25.00

Package - (22.50*12)+(11.25*6) 18 month contract
Installation Fee £49.95

Total £385.45

Deductions -£55 (MSE) -£25 (Virgin) - £22.50 (Nectar)

£284.95 Divide that by your 18 Month contract and hey presto the cheapest Fibre I have seen around for this duration of time!

BARGAIN £15.83pcm, that if you reuse your nectar points as cash!

Oscar Wilde — 'Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.'

Virgin are an awful ISP with their own dedicated hate websites /forums.

Utterly no point in it being 100Mb or 50Mb or 30Mb if it simply doesn't get your computer reliably and consistently connected from point A to point B (which even a humble 1Mb connection if run by a competent ISP can do).

See here for a competent ISP (unbiased site, no affiliation with myself):


http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps.html

My ISP costs me ~£12 pcm INCLUDING BT Line. Since I use a decent ISP (the now-defunct Be) who actually invested real money in their network, decades ago, it simply WORKS.
I've had to call tech support just three times in five years, including the initial self-install call - and never to complain that the broadband was down, EVER. Which is how it should be!

Virgin Media? Down twice per week on average! That's when I even noticed if I was away from home - it was probably down more often than that.

1) When things go wrong, Virgin's customer service is one of the worst I have ever used. I may even still take them to court.

Why? Well, not just because of their over-sold, under-provisioned network (bad enough, and a criminal offence if they were selling something they definitely should have known they couldn't provide as they have real-time network equipment generating statistics about the area being over-congested).

2) I'd sue them for my time wasted on the phone and waiting for their 'engineers' (under-paid, under-trained). 'Engineers' who couldn't even look at a Windows XP screen and tell whether the connection was wireless or wired (takes no specialist knowledge and only 5 seconds literally).
'Engineers' who Virgin spent MY money on sending out, only to find that the problem was as I knew - not something on my end, but Virgin's under-investment in network capacity and quality. Engineers who were late, but who I would have had to pay for if *I* were late or not in when they arrived.

3) A LOT of wasted time, as their call centres except between 9am-5pm are INDIAN - and cheap ones at that! Even THEN - they are closed-by-10pm, and stocked with rubbish, script-reading chancers. I gave them a chance and a half (being in IT makes one very tolerant!)

4) For my tens of hours of professional-grade troubleshooting time as an IT technician (whilst being lied to about the real cause by Virgin Media which would have saved me bothering).

5) Virgin Media are just NTL with a different rebrand.

NTL also had their own dedicated hate website(s) NTHell et al.
Why? Poor customer service far beyond the norm.
Good companies NEVER annoy enough people in such ways as to have hate websites.

6) Whilst stating that ~70% satisfaction of Virgin customers (try 95% for a guide). Moneysavingexpert do not quote the source of their customer satisfaction survey statistics, but use said statistics when trying to flog these 'deals'.

This is the kind of integrity-bereft unethical action you'd expect from some dodgy, unnecessary middle-man site. Not from a respected institution. Correct me if I'm wrong, but don't censor it, like a coward, MSE. Thieves are the ones who make money by hoodwinking people, it doesn't matter if they are robbing face-to-face or by deception...

7) If you want more hard facts and less b.s. try this:
Note how Virgin Media get just TWO out of five stars? Funny, that.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/isps.html

The people who contribute to the above Thinkbroadband statistics and survey, are often IT professionals. Meaning the statistics are actually valid for a (non-Virgin), hassle-free, WELL-PERFORMING internet connection - unlike commercial / biased sites.
I have no affiliation with the site apart from using it for me and mine's ISP purchasing decisions, ever since I had the Virgin hassle.


You want 'fibre' broadband that is no more 'fibre' than any other (the cable coming in my property is made of copper - you want photos?) ? That the ASA have constantly ruled against the company for lying in their adverts?

- Then pick Virgin Media.

You want your broadband to go down at 10:05pm - just after Virgin's support call centre has closed - when you're about to bag that bargain flight?

- Then pick Virgin Media.
Want to ring up to report it, thinking there'll be 24/7 support - then find that you can't even REPORT the issue until 8am the next morning (by which time at a competent ISP, it should have been fixed, not still 24-hours from being booked-in for a fix - and sometimes literally MONTHS from actually getting fixed like Virgin do).
Then the next day, after tens of minutes waiting on hold - on a chargeable number, not 0800 or geographical - be told it's your own computer, fobbed-off that it's NOT a network fault in the area, fobbed-off that it's not a lack of capacity so utterly bad that it is no different from having no broadband connection, in effect?

- Then pick Virgin Media.

Want to be told that they won't respect it as a genuine fault until SEVEN other people report it? Even though you can quote all the steps you took to troubleshoot and they should be able to see the statistics from their own equipment?

- Then pick Virgin Media.

Want a suspiciously-long 18-month contract and not even cheaply when you break-down the myriad confusing figures? (Any decent company has no need to lock their customers in, at least not after 12 months - as they stand by the quality of their product and know their customers won't even want to leave)

-Then pick Virgin Media.

You want nasty traffic-shaping (throttling) instead of complete freedom to use your own internet connection as you see fit? You want nasty content-caching on Virgin's servers so they can seem like they're providing a reasonable speed - instead of providing a full-speed, full-capacity 'pipe' to the rest of the internet?

-Then pick Virgin Media.

So, why on earth would you want to pick Virgin Media?? If you have fallen for their marketing, which is constantly-derided by professionals? So you can tell your mates that you have a piece of paper (contract) stating you have 'up to 100Mb, or 50Mb, or 30Mb Broadband'? Whilst the small-print has no assurances of speed?

I prefer a working internet connection, reliability over speed. You do too, whether you're aware of it or not - and preying on this lack of awareness is Virgin Media's M.O.

Thinkbroadband is run by independent professionals. Their collected ISP-connection-quality/speed statistics are the most respected on the net (along with speedtest.net)

Such people can tell the difference between a properly-functional, never-slows-down internet connection and a barely-functional, unreliable highly-marketed, over-sold bad joke.
The ignorant average consumer cannot, often. Especially when lied-to about the cause of the problem! As an institutional way of operating, throughout Virgin Media (with a very small minority of exceptions, to be fair - UK call centres CAN be better but are still hampered by the Virgin system and anti-customer M.O.).

Last time I field-tested Virgin, and this was on the other side of town, not the same network as my area - their network was losing the connection constantly. So even in the intervening years since I was with them - they haven't changed. You have to force companies into respecting you, don't fall for their marketing. Virgin spend money on marketing and not the network that they are selling. Lots of money. Our money. What would you rather have it spent on?

We obviously get the world we tolerate when it comes to corporations. 'Rip-Off Britain' is a reality that needs to be carefully avoided.

Why tolerate Virgin's abuse of your hard-earned? Or their post-code lottery of areas that they deem 'worthy' of decent service and others they leave to rot?

:mad:

tomloaf

Why is the Post office phone and broard band not anywhere here. I am with them with unlimited internet and evening and weekend calls including line rental for £26.67 a month and have been for a few years now. I would try someone else if they were cheaper but everyone else is more expensive for the same product

slaterio

Thanks Martin and the team for the half price codes for Sky, worked a treat. I now am getting my line rental and unlimited broadband for £12.50/ month plus one off £7.18 (£5) credit on 1st bill. I hope this is a little bit better than Everything Everywhere (how ironic)!

Patr100

DavidP24 wrote: »

I got rid of Sky a while back, just could not justify the price, I mean I now pay £1.75 a month for my 9mb broadband and around £9 a month for line rental with free international calls.

You missed out telling us who you are with to get this sort of deal.

Alan23451

Then ring Sky for a MacCode. I got £7.50 / month for unlimited broadband and weekend calls INCLUDING line rental plus £40 credit. (12 month contract)

Jo4

Apologies in advance for the long post!

Plusnet contacted me almost three weeks before my broadband only contract was due to expire and said they could offer me unlimited broadband at just under £15 a month for 12 months or £0.50 less a month if I took an 18 month contract. I said I was getting a better deal else where (I was with the Post Office) so she said they didn't have the same awards etc. that Plusnet did. Anyway she said that was the best price so I said I wouldn't accept her offer.

Mean while I seen Martin :money: online and his enthusiasm for saving money so I thought nothing ventured nothing gained. I had been paying Plusnet £8.50 a month for 12 months which was half price ( I reside in a remote area so not everyone provides broadband here). Sky would only offer fibre broadband at £10 for 6 months and £20 for the remaining 6 months of a 12 month contract but they wanted me to change my line rental to them too. I signed in to my Plusnet account and they were going to debit £16.99 from my bank account for the first month I was out of contract so I contacted Plusnet the day before my broadband payment email was due and requested my MAC. The lady said she could offer me a 24 month unlimited contract for £6.50 a month for all 24 months so I accepted!!

I was going to be charged £16.99 amonth if I had done nothing so I have saved £251.76 over two years on my broadband. :eek: :j :beer: :money: :T

Thanks Martin!! :beer: