Top up TV+

recovering_spendaholic

Hi - I hope this is the right board to post this question on. I currently get Broadband (20meg), home phone (talk unlimited) and cable TV from Virgin Media and it costs £96 a month before phone call costs. I have been having terrible bother with them because my internet keeps going down and you have to ring a £1.50 a minute line to get any help and then you get put through to India and it is sometimes difficult to understand or be understood. My internet was off for over a week recently and I had to keep ringing the service line (free) which said that there was no problem in my area so I rang the helpline and got mixed results with only intermittent connection until they sent out an engineer. Anyway the upshot is that I got £60 of charges on my bill for calls to their helpline when it wasn't my fault that the thing was broken. I have decided that I want nothing more to do with Virgin and have rung to give my notice in, but they say that because I changed to their VIP package in March I have to wait until March to leave, even though I have been a customer with them (when they were Telewest) for 10 years. I have decided to just cut my losses and finish with them anyway and am looking at getting O2 Broadband (£7.50 a month or £10 depending on speed plus free UK based technical support), A BT line (18.45 a month for unlimited landline calls) and a Topup TV+ box with Topup TV (one off fee of £100 for the box and then £10 a month for the extra channels but no minimum contract). Does anyone know anything about the TopupTV + boxes - are they any good? I reckon that this will come to £35.94 a month, thus saving me £60 a month. I don't want to spend on the box if it is rubbish though. Any advice?

rev229

we had top up tv a few years back but the channels you pay for were only on for about 6 hours each day you need to check before you buy as we were not aware that this was the case. Of course it may all be differnt now there use to be a top up tv web site that may help. We went back to cable in the end. Also we have had several 3-4 freeveiw boxes and after 12-18 months they just stop working, don't know if we are unlucky.

diamonds

£96 a month !

sky FULL package - x 2 Sky + boxes = £55 a month + broadband at upto 16 MB if your exchange is enabled = £65 + 10.50 BT line rental £75.50, Primus with penny mobile = free = free off peak calls 01/02/03 landlines & 20p for 20 mins to a mobile ( nowhere beats that ! ), use 18185.co.uk daytime for 01/02/03 landline calls at 5p per connection 0.00p per minute aswell as under 2 minute mobile calls ( i just use primus penny mobile as a 2/3p saving might not work out if you cant get off mobile call quick enough ) - check out telephones board !

i just saved you 20.50 and sacrificed you nothing ! oh yeah and sky BB help is a 0870 number which will be charged like a 01/02/03 number in the next few months as per ofcom's new rules

as for o2 i hope you have a good deal - most expensive network in the UK

TOPup TV - crap, gave my box away ! after having my Virgin pulled I have 5 channels, now if i was one floor down i'd have Sky mixes & BB at 36.00 a month - with a 14MB connection ! Such is life..........

D.K.

I agree, Top Up is crap. It looks as if your getting all these channels but in fact all you get are programmes recorded overnight from the channels and you have no control what they are. The HD seems OK but I'd avoid.

D.