Broadband help! Stuck with 1mb speed or £44 fibre

Matthague

Hi,
Apologies if my title sounds a bit dramatic, not sure how to squeeze all the info into a short space!
Basically last April after having Sky broadband at our property for 2yrs on a standard phone line, they put prices up to £26. Double our previous price. They couldn't go much cheaper as they're new basic package at that time was a faster speed than their previous lowest despite the fact they'd only guarantee 1mb.
All other options at the time were offering a similar price but for the basic 1mb  

Due to lockdown (more people in house to use it) we opted to get Virgin as for the same price we would get a better speed and value for the money we'd have to pay anyway.

Email drops saying its now £44 for their 50 speed, despite their website offering 100 (Their new minimum) for £28.

Called the cancellation team and the best he offered was £43. No matter how much I said we couldn't spend that much and even asked if they'd price match the website offer at 100 or even 50 (although if they dont do 50 I'm confused how they'd want £44 for it...?), he wouldn't budge and basically said I'm paying for the best there is and the best comes with a price.  

So now I'm stuck. Do I go with a myriad of suppliers that use our phone line but offer the slow speed for around the £20 mark or just pay the fibre fee?  Tried comparison sites but as soon as the postcode goes in, the speed drops.

Can't seem to find anyone but Virgin that can give us anything but the 1mb guarantee but I'm not wanting to renew at £44

Anyone have any ideas? Happy to go fibre again if theres a similarly priced option 😐 but struggling to see where to go from here
Thanks

Cisco001

How good is your mobile broadband speed?
Three or vodafone unlimited data is cheaper than £43.
Personally won't go back to 1mb no matter the cost...

flashg67

I've moved to a house that only has 2mb speed and no Virgin, so I got some free 4g sims and tested the local 4g speeds using my phone. Vodafone 4g gives me 40mb+ so I use Lebara at £25 for unlimited data. if you're lucky enough to get a decent signal from 3 mobile, you can get unlimited data for even less. Couple this sim with a 4g router (£50 to £100 ) and you're good to go. Worth checking out, but don't just take the online coverage checkers as correct, try an actual sim before committing. 

Matthague

This is the info we can find regarding our line... 
Interestingly, Talk talk say on their website our address can get between 13-20 but when we called they said we're stuck with 1ish so I don't know if the info above is right, or not.

matelodave

What they say and what they can actually achieve might be two different things. All suppliers except Virgin use the OpenReach infrastructure so it pretty unlikely that TT can do any better. So you either put up with a slow networks, stay with Virgin or as said above there's the possibilty of 4G but only if you've got a decent 4G service where you live - see what speeds you can get if you use your mobile phone as a hotspot.

You might need to try a couple of PayGo sim cars from all the suppliers to see if 4g is a viable alternative where you live (do speed tests at differentt times of the day, especially peak times - 4pm to 10pm). If it looks ok then you can see what deals are around - have a shufti here https://www.4g.co.uk/, & here https://www.4g.co.uk/home-broadband/

Rodders53

Looking at that there's two possibles:
1)  No Fibre to the Cabinet FTTC in your bit of Barnsley.  Fast broadband is Virgin or Mobile Phone Data.  (My son has moved to an area of Wakefield that is like that).

2) No capacity on the FTTC that you connect to...  You can go on a 'waiting list' possibly if that's the case?

BUT checking son's address gets a very similar output to your address. 
I'm fairly sure when there was a capacity issue they still provided VDSL speed estimates and 'not available' in the column.  So I'm suspecting number 1) applies.
Check out 3's home broadband offering http://www.three.co.uk/store/broadband/home-broadband
{Both my son's and my address says NO for 3 - which means data congestion would be an issue with heavy use.}

brewerdave

Rodders53 said:

2) No capacity on the FTTC that you connect to...  You can go on a 'waiting list' possibly if that's the case?

My exchange/local cab. which has FTTC, actually shows the expected FTTC speed with a note of "waiting list"
Virgin presumably know that there is no fixed line viable alternative, so won't haggle.

jon81uk

In terms of the Virgin pricing, their site is showing £44 for 100Mb, or £51 for internet and phone. the £27.99 is first 18 months only new customers only. You could try and at least get them up to 100Mb for the current £44 price.
They won't match the £27.99 as that is a first 18month only offer.

100Mb fibre to the home with BT is £35 after any initial discount. So Virgin is a bit more.

Swoosh84

matelodave offers some sound advice here, try disconnecting your phone from the wifi, run a speed test and see what comes out. If its fast enough you could use 4g, at least in the short term. 
If you can use the 4g for a short period this puts the power back in your hands as you can cancel Virgin, this may prompt their retentions team to offer a better deal. Worst case scenario you can sign up as a new customer in a couple of months.

SweetPotatoPie

Somethings not adding up. I’m with Virgin and it’s 200mb for 44, not 100mb? 

I rang to cancel today as it’s end of my contract and they wanted to change my bill from 38 to 44. I told them to sling it so they’ve now put me on a new contract and I’m now paying 37 a month for 200mb broadband. Try ringing and speaking to someone different as it doesn’t sound right at all. 

Matthague

SweetPotatoPie said:

Somethings not adding up. I’m with Virgin and it’s 200mb for 44, not 100mb? 

I rang to cancel today as it’s end of my contract and they wanted to change my bill from 38 to 44. I told them to sling it so they’ve now put me on a new contract and I’m now paying 37 a month for 200mb broadband. Try ringing and speaking to someone different as it doesn’t sound right at all. 

I called again as we were just going to sell the cancellation process going and got a call centre (last time it was a UK person with a clear phone line against this which was all crackle.)
She offered 40, 38 and 36 and when i said no transferred me to someone else (UK based I assume) that offered me 28 straight out for 50mb
I did ask why the dont offer 50 anymore and they can carry it on for existing but not offer it to new ones. Could maybe have pushed for the 100 but as we're ok with 50 I didn't bother, just shocked he offered it me straight out and the other bloke flatly refused to drop it more than a few pound.