Fed up with Virgin TV .. want to chenge

Grumpy_chap

facade said:

Virgin offer the same broadband, a fabulous TV package and a phone, which is normally £100, but give you a £65 discount, so it is only £35 for loads more (just look at the extra value for only £5 more...).

Come April they increase the price of the £100 package by £20, but they don't increase the £65 discount, and you are suddenly paying £55 for the rest of the 18 month contract.

AIUI, the rules (set by the Regulator - is it OFCOM?) are that inflation rises are inflation % + 3.9 % (which seems wrong in itself).
The average consumer with a £35 contract would expect that to be inflation % + 3.9 % of £35.
I can believe your way of saying this is worked out by the service providers.  I cannot believe that is what the Regulator envisaged when setting the rule.

facade

Grumpy_chap said:

facade said:

Virgin offer the same broadband, a fabulous TV package and a phone, which is normally £100, but give you a £65 discount, so it is only £35 for loads more (just look at the extra value for only £5 more...).

Come April they increase the price of the £100 package by £20, but they don't increase the £65 discount, and you are suddenly paying £55 for the rest of the 18 month contract.

AIUI, the rules (set by the Regulator - is it OFCOM?) are that inflation rises are inflation % + 3.9 % (which seems wrong in itself).
The average consumer with a £35 contract would expect that to be inflation % + 3.9 % of £35.
I can believe your way of saying this is worked out by the service providers.  I cannot believe that is what the Regulator envisaged when setting the rule.

No, the contract is for the full un-discounted price,  £100 in my example, not £35, so with galloping inflation they get a very hefty price rise, also the discount is discretionary and time limited- if you don't arrange another one the price reverts to full. They do give a countdown on the discount period on the bills- which is nice of them.....

(This is why I left, I got caught by the 10.9% inflation plus 3.9% causing me to have a 40% rise)

Mobile providers like EE pull the same trick. If you look at your bill it is for the un-discounted price, less a discount to arrive at the final cost.

RumRat

For the last 3 rises I've negotiated a neutral position so my cost has remained the same for that period. Virgin ran with no competition when it came to speed for many years, now they know if you say you are leaving many more can tempt you in.
Personally I've never had any problem with Virgin but would leave tomorrow if they got too greedy. Which may happen when I change this time...

Grumpy_chap

facade said:

Grumpy_chap said:

facade said:

Virgin offer the same broadband, a fabulous TV package and a phone, which is normally £100, but give you a £65 discount, so it is only £35 for loads more (just look at the extra value for only £5 more...).

Come April they increase the price of the £100 package by £20, but they don't increase the £65 discount, and you are suddenly paying £55 for the rest of the 18 month contract.

AIUI, the rules (set by the Regulator - is it OFCOM?) are that inflation rises are inflation % + 3.9 % (which seems wrong in itself).
The average consumer with a £35 contract would expect that to be inflation % + 3.9 % of £35.
I can believe your way of saying this is worked out by the service providers.  I cannot believe that is what the Regulator envisaged when setting the rule.

No, the contract is for the full un-discounted price,  £100 in my example, not £35, so with galloping inflation they get a very hefty price rise, also the discount is discretionary and time limited- if you don't arrange another one the price reverts to full. They do give a countdown on the discount period on the bills- which is nice of them.....

(This is why I left, I got caught by the 10.9% inflation plus 3.9% causing me to have a 40% rise)

Mobile providers like EE pull the same trick. If you look at your bill it is for the un-discounted price, less a discount to arrive at the final cost.

You are likely correct.
It seems an underhand way of operating to me.

I still think the average consumer paying £35 per month would expect the inflation % plus 3.9 % to be calculated on what is actually being paid, not some far higher figure.
Assume inflation % is 10.1 plus 3.9% equals 14% total.
The average consumer paying £35 would expect the increase to be 14% of £35 so £40.
Not an increase of 14% of £100 so £49.
I cannot imagine that OFCOM would have expected the inflationary uplifts to work in the way you describe.
I can imagine that the way you describe is how the companies are operating, which I consider is abusing the rules.

RichardD1970

I ditched my "getting more and more expensive" VM package a few months ago. I kept just the broadband, cancelled TV and Landline. I'm paying £34.39 for M350 Fibre. 
I went with a Sky Go puck, ad skipping (£5) and Netflix (£8) added, that costs £34 a month. The only thing I miss (a bit) is that you can't actually record programmes, but you can bookmark favourites and use the various catch-up services which generally works quite well.

WLM21

OP here

I didn't really want a phone to the deal, but as my wife says she needs it, in case of an emergency (whatever that means !) then so be it

I've attached two deals which seem OK.

My current broadband is M125 which seems OK. Our son works from home on some days and occasionally has complained, so I thought the next speed up would be better.

It seems cheaper too .. so why wouldn't I opt for this.

There a O2 price of £6 9which seems to be included) but I'm not really sure what this is for. We all have mobiles (wife, son and I) but these are already on good SIM only deals

I could I suppose just throw away that O2 SIM as the 264Mbps. deal is cheaper and better

I'm just a bit puzzled .. it isn't too clear what this SIM deal is for .. why would ANYBODY pick the more expensive, poorer deal.

Any help would be appreciated... before I phone Virgin in the next couple of days.

BadDebtor

WLM21 said:

I've had Virgin TV for a very long time, since 'Blueyonder Days. In fact I see it is over 20 years .. i got it the day before England were playing football and Paul Ince played with a bloodied head.

Anyway, I hardly ever watch live TV .. usually just being content to watch YouTube.

It's so long now I don't think the aerial even works .. anyway there's no wire in the lounge, so it must have been removed.

Will an 'Amazon Fire Stick' let us watch 'terrestrial TV if I cancel my Virgin contract ?

If not, will I have to get a new aerial fitted ?

I'll keep the broadband package, but that will be all I have. I never even use the house phone, so unless this comes as a 'non-optional' thing, I'll get rid of that too. In the past, you had to pay line rental whether you really wanted it or not

If you like a clean interface that avoids too much information then Roku would be a better stick for you, I find Amazon puts too many hurdles in front of the user and it quickly becomes tedious.  The only positive thing about Amazon firesticks is they are so dire that you can often pick them up on Freecycle, they can also be used if you want to put your kids channels on a single device as a form of physical parental control.

You can choose to let it choose potential app channels based on your IP or you can install as if in Uzbekistan which will not install UK content such as BBC iPlayer (which requires TV Licence).  Once completed you can set it back to UK and just add what you want.

I only have 5 or 6 channels, some of them like Plex are aggregators, so if you search for the Godfather and don't have it in your library it will give you a choice of pay per view (never used that as I don't pay for things unless they are essential, such as heat, mobile, water).  All the usual channels are there, like YouTube, Netflix, Apple TV,  Disney, Prime, Paramount and a few esoteric ones like Rumble.  Roku has there own channel which is pretty naff, if you like UK content and ads then there are the Catch-Up channels C4, Five and ITV-x  

There are loads of free channels/apps, sPluto is a popular one but I don't use it.  There is a mix of ad funded or subscription channels, as well as genre specific channels and when adding channels you can choose from News, Sports, Comedy Lifestyle, Educational, International etc.

You can buy a new Roku device from £30 at Argos or Currys, spend a bit more and you can get a 4k version.  You can pick used ones up on ebay very reasonably.  I bought one on eBay in 2012 and could sell it for the price I paid.

Roku are good for the elderly if you want to set them up with a simple UI with six big icons (you can sort the order and scroll down for more) and the remote can control the TV power and volume and mute.   

You can add podcast and music apps such as Spotify, BBC Sounds etc but I would choose mobile (with Bluetooth/Alexa) for those to avoid energy cost of TV.

I avoid anything Google so I would not consider a chromecast device. 

The settings on Roku are quite granular it can be set to have a "continue watching" collect from multiple apps, I am still trying to figure out how to disable that!

The remotes are pretty solid, I drop mine quite often but never has one break.

Roku is the ideal platform if you want to dump the BBC TV Licence and Freecycle, just make sure you do not install anything LIVE and nothing BBC iPlayer,

BadDebtor

WLM21 said:

OP here

I didn't really want a phone to the deal, but as my wife says she needs it, in case of an emergency (whatever that means !) then so be it

I've attached two deals which seem OK.

My current broadband is M125 which seems OK. Our son works from home on some days and occasionally has complained, so I thought the next speed up would be better.

It seems cheaper too .. so why wouldn't I opt for this.

There a O2 price of £6 9which seems to be included) but I'm not really sure what this is for. We all have mobiles (wife, son and I) but these are already on good SIM only deals

I could I suppose just throw away that O2 SIM as the 264Mbps. deal is cheaper and better

I'm just a bit puzzled .. it isn't too clear what this SIM deal is for .. why would ANYBODY pick the more expensive, poorer deal.

Any help would be appreciated... before I phone Virgin in the next couple of days.

I hate to burst wifey's balloon but Landline will soon be IP phone run by BT.

If she really wants security get an basic phone or put a sim (from a different network) in an old smart phone, a lebara sim can be got in her name for 99p a month for six months then move the number to a PAYG service then you take out one for the next six months and each flip every six months after that.

I use a second phone as an authentication device and also have some PAYG sims from years ago when my kids had them for emergency. 

In these situations you really need to focus on what you NEED vs what you are made to believe you need or WANT. 

I have family members who are very disappointed with Virgin, they keep paying for more and more bandwidth, currently on 264mb but not only get barely 100mb but the latency is dire which suggest they are sharing ports like they used to.

You can check the latency on sites like fast.com, when you get your result drill now the show more info then then look at the loaded latency and make a note of it,  click on settings and change the number of parallel connections to 16 and then save to run the test again.  On virgin the number gets worse, much worse.

I asked friends and family abroad and they get way better latency and speed, one remote rural area got 300mb and latency was under 10ms when using 16 connections.  On my current connection the loaded number remains the same at around 90ms with 15ms as the reported load, but it is traffic shaped so dire.

For the money you are paying you could get a 900mb connection at hey broadband (if they are in your area)

https://heybroadband.co.uk/coverage

I see no benefit from buying TV or Mobile from broadband supplier, I like to be agile so I can jump in and out of deals.  For example Lebara SIM because Sky has decided not to compete, I am currently not with any BB supplier but using a combination of Mobile data and Hotspots.

WLM21

Bad Debtor

Thank you for your great replies.

I had never heard of Roku before, so will have to investigate. Funnily enough though, Argos is fully out of stock, so it probably is good.

We already have an Amazon firestick, in a spare bedroom, for when the grandchildren come to stay. It seems to work OK

I actually have a Lebara contract on my own Nokia phone as well as in an old hand-me-down (from wife) iPhone which I use too .. it has a great camera, but the extra data is good too.I pay about £10 total for the two. Yes, it was about 99p for a while too, per phone.

Yes, I think I'll take your advice and just get broadband, without anything else. I don't have a problem really with Virgin broadband, so will just go for their 'broadband only deal

BadDebtor

debitcardmayhem said:

I read somewhere that freeview is going to be on t’net , found this but can’t read it at the mo https://www.everyonetv.co.uk/news/press-release/new-free-tv-service-via-ip

Based on the site info that would be a retrograde step, 400,000 people cancelled their LIVE TV aka TV Licence last year.

The main channels are available as catch up and if one wants to remain with BBC then there is BBC iPlayer

There are even alternatives to the tripe tv channels like freeview .