Cancel Virgin before booking Sky? 16 April 2021 at 1:37PM in Phones & TV 3 replies 112 views

Sue_S

Hi, I'm currently out of contract with Virgin and due to have a big increase in June.  I want to move to Sky but I want to use Quidco as there's excellent cashback.  My query is, should I cancel Virgin before booking Sky or the other way around?  I don't really want to have to pay both providers at once and if Sky install early then I'd still be within my one-month cancellation period with Virgin...  Any suggestions?  

The reason I mention Quidco is because I don't want to speak to anyone at Sky and thereby mess up my chances of getting the cashback.

I'm currently with Virgin on FTTP and this is also available with Sky but I don't have a BT line.

JJ_Egan

Virgin are a totally separate network /cabling  to BT Open Reach that Sky use.

It will be a case of cancelling when you get an install date from Sky to avoid downtime .

BT line may need to be installed or not , time on this unknown .

I take it you have standard VM coaxial cabling to the premises not optical FTTP .

flea72

We have recently swapped from virgin to sky.  It took over 3m for openreach to install a bt line, so im thankful that i didnt cancel the virgin, until sky was up and running.

As sky tv and broadband are billed separately, then we were able to use the tv via the virgin broadband and werent billed for the sky broadband until it was finally up and running

 However as we had a bundled package with virgin, we couldnt cancel any of it, because any change results in a new contract.  So if i removed the virgin tv, i would create a new broadband only contract, so was stuck paying for my full virgin package and the skytv for 3m.  I was given automatic compensation from sky for the delay in installation, but this is in the form of a credit to my sky account, not cash in my pocket

matelodave

If you need a new line from SKY then you dont know how long it's going to take to do the installation as they will be using theOpenReach infrastructure.There may be a waiting list, the cabinet might be full and there might be a lot of work involved if you've had Virgin for quite some time. Likewise you might find that the speeds that are available might not be anywhere near as good as Virgin (something you wont acyually know until the line is in an working)

Whether its FTTP, FTTC or anything lese, they wont be using the Virgin wiring so you really need to wait to ensure that your SKY is up and running before shutting down your Virgin account (unless you are happy to spend possibly several months without a broadband or phone line)

Even when I swapped from SKY to a BT FTTP connection I lost both my phone and broadband for a month (mainly due to a !!!!!!-up but nevertheless, it was a major irritation and I had to get a 4G modem to tide me over)