Utility Warehouse free laptop

hotnuts21

My mum just phoned me who lives the other end of the country, and I hate trying to diagnose her IT problems because she is so far away. Currently we are trying to get her computer working with Virgin, and because its old, the router is inflexible its just a nightmare, she has had an engineer out and paid for the priviledge twice and is now being told she needs to update her computer and operation system, not sure why they didnt point that out when installing the broadband. Also they wont provide a wireless router!

However back to the phonecall a friend pointed out to my mum that Utility Warehouse are doing a Broadcom deal whereby for £30 a month you get phone, broadband and new Fujitsu laptop. Not great spec but adequate for surfing the web.

So I am wondering if anyone here has used this service and what they think.

The costs that she has been told are as follows.
£30 per month,
free line rental
free weekend phone calls to uk
Lifetime warranty
Free laptop
Free connection
Free wireless WIFI router.
2yr contract.

There is also a £90 charge to get her phoneline switched back on as she is on Virgin cable at the mo. (BT quoted £160 to switch back to them!!!, even though they would get the business).

I have found that there might be a monthly club charge on top of the above and also a £30 delivery charge, although the rep she rang up said he would come out and set it all up for her.

Now virgin which is not working right is costing 22.50 a month so for the extra little expense over two years and knowing someone local has said he is happy to help technically it gives me peace of mind to know she will have a brand new laptop, wireless router and some support.

So I am looking for some tips/help/advice on what might be the best thing to do. My gut feeling is that BT, Virgin and UW are all taking the pi** and ripping her off, but I am not sure what to advise. In an ideal world, Martin would go round and speak to my mum and be able to look at everything and point her in the moneysaving direction LOL
Quick advice appreciated as she has till Tuesday to cancel the change in her Virgin plan. (from TV to Broadband)

thanks
Paul

Quentin

Are you really looking for help?

I see you have spammed the board by also putting this "free" offer on the grab-it board.

DatabaseError

quentin, it may be a genuine question, reads that way to me. some things aren't making a lot of sense though (but may have been reported honestly)
i didn't know there was any minimum spec pc/operating system to receive broadband, except perhaps having a network card (£5) or a usb port (£5), i could, if i wanted, browse the 'net in dos (1st used internet long before msdos, let alone bad-vista).
the second thing is, i'm strugging to find the model of laptop offered, but tesco offer the same brand, exceeding the minimum spec shown, for £299. so doing the maths (vaguely) i get £90 phone charge, £30 delivery, about £10 extra/month x24 (£240), so about £360 extra over 2 years. i'd be firing f!"s into virgin to sort out my connection (tbh i wouldn't be there to start with), but for some people, especially backed by the rep offering to install everything, it could be a good deal.

hotnuts21

Quentin, thats the first time I have been called a spammer in nearly 10 years online so many thanks for that compliment. I presume that not many people look at every board on this forum, and as the UW offer seems to be genuine I thought it was the 'community' thing to do to let people who only monitor the grabbit forum know, that there was a free laptop going. However that post has been deleted because apparently it had been posted before although after trying a few searches on the search function I could not find it, hence why I posted it in the first place, trying to help other people out. Also in that thread I did point out that I was not sure how good the offer was. I thought pasting a genuine question in the question forum here about the laptop and a genuine notice to all grabbit hunters in the grabbit thread was what the forums were about. So sorry for causing any problems!

Tony, Yeah some things dont add up to me neither!! The PC is running Win98, not great but it stilll works, it has no network card but it does have USB ports, Virgin only provide a cable router with a network cable coming out if it. I sent my mum a Ethernet to USB adaptor with a win 98 driver, but she could not get it installed (user friendly win98 me thinks). The virgin "tech" and i use that term lightly has been out and told her she needs to upgrade to win xp as their support will only help with PCs running 2000 or higher!

I also wondered about the laptop spec, maybe they have a job load at a special deal specced up for them?

I did the math myself and the rep on the phone said he would do delivery but over two years its about 250-300 more than going with Virgin (depending on some of the hidden costs), but the phone deal is better than she gets with virgin, and she gets a wireless router which i was going to have to buy and upgrade too.

Im thinking from the hassle point of view it might be easier to go with UW, although I see sky have some deals on too, I could always pick up a cheap laptop from Dell and still save money!.

Any other thoughts.

DatabaseError

if she has sky llu available to her (samknows.com) and has sky tv, then its probably a good idea. rather than using a usb>nic, just install a cheap nic card, about a fiver.