How good are virgin

shirty666

im in a cable area and are thinking of getting virgin to supply my phone, tv and broadband. On there site it will cost me £20 a month including the line rental which i think is a good deal. This entitles me to upto 2mb broadband unlimited, Unlimited local and national calls at weekends and tv a bit like freeview. If i bought them seperatly it would cost a lot more and sky are pricey and according to posts rubbish, are virgin any better please advise

duchy

I have had Virgin since they merged with Telewest and have had no major issues with them at all. Speed is a but iffy at times but as I don't do a huge amount of downloading from the net it rarely impacts on me.
I'd definitely seriously consider them in your situation especially as the price is so good.

spud17

I just have the BB, and since it was installed in May07 the speed, reliability have been 100%.
I'm not a big downloader and 2mb is adequate.
All speed tests have shown a very consistent 2070kb/s.
Only glitch was when downloading 2 Linux distros and ran into the peak time and they cut my speed in half. But this is stated in their T&C.

Be careful if you take the phone option as you will not be able to use services such as https://www.18185.co.uk to call mobiles. Check VM charges to call mobiles.
Also if you decide to leave in the future it will cost to get your BT line reconnected.
I get free evening and weekend calls by using Primus and the ability to use 18185 all for free.
See link below

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showpost.html?p=1598074&postcount=4

BexTech

Broadband is usually pretty good.

Though they do place restrictions during the hours of 16:00 - 21:00

See: http://stm.brion.me.uk

Their phone service though is the dearest around.

You can use Call 18185, however you won't get the same low rates you would from a BT line and have to dial an 0808 x xxx xxx number and not the short-code 18185.

For example from a BT line 18185 charge 5p per call for UK 01/02 numbers for as long as you like, via their cable access number it's 1p/min + 4p

Daytime calls to mobiles on 18185 via BT line is 6p/min + 5p connection over a cable line with 18185 it's 10p/min + 4p connection.

OK using 18185 for mobile and international is still cheaper than what VM charge, but not as cheap as it would be if from a BT line.

Reliability on the cable phone network isn't as good as BT's, they have a lot of equipment failures, but hopefully now that BT are going to be looking after that part it might improve.

You might find that the cheaper overall cost of the package out-weighs the higher call charges, if you do decide to take their phone line, then only use them for the inclusive calls and calls to freephone numbers, you really do need to sign up to 18185 to make the call costs bearable.

Also sweet-talk them into letting you have caller display for free too, tell them as BT offer it for free, you'd like it too and if they aren't playing ball, tell them it's what's going to make you sign up, though you do get £10 discount for each service you take if you sign - up online, so you might need to sign-up and then call them up later to put pressure on them.

Also check the package you are after, they no longer offer the 3 service for £20 - That was phone M for £10, broadband for £10 and M TV free.

Though they do have a better offer of 3 for £30, where you get phone M, broadband M and TV XL.

Sky is much much superior than Virgin. Better picture quality, better range of channels, better equipment, as long as your dish is installed correctly not have any issues, where as with cable you'll often have issues. At least with satellite there's over 100 free channels if you decide you no longer want to subscribe.