Changing ISP

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

I don't know if this is the right section but here goes..

 

I'm currently with Virgin Media and... it works. However, I found out at the weekend that my sister in law is paying ~£14/month less than me for the same package AND they get BT Sport as well!

 

Before I try the old "I'm thinking of leaving" ploy - tried that about 12 months ago and the guy basically said "OK, leave" - I need your advice on two issues...

 

1. I'd need a new email address. Your VM email address is only kept alive for 90 days. I use this one for my serious stuff like banking, etc so I don't mind paying a small monthly fee (if necessary) for a secure email address that I know will be around for a good few years. I already have Gmail for the normal stuff. Any suggestions?
2. New ISP. Looking around I've read some interesting stuff about it basically being a choice between Virgin and the rest as all other ISP's are based on BT Openreach network and this has gone downhill since it was separated from BT. These comments were in a (rather long) discussion thread somewhere about ping. Without going outside to check (I have man flu) I am within ~150 metres from a green cabinet on a main road in an urban town area. Any suggestions on an alternative ISP? There's only me at home so, if I'm playing CoD I'm not watching YT videos. I'm quite happy paying £35 - £45/month for a package but £62 is a bit steep! Any suggestions?

 

Cheers guys <sniff>, <cough>

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Bump, especially for the email question guys..cheers

[GazzaGarratt 11,049]

Dave, @Stretch616  is the best explaining what the difference technically is between ISPs as he works in that industry. As far as I'm aware you're already with the best for speed and they cant be matched because VM have their own cables. Everyone else uses the other ones.

 

If its cost that you wanted to play against each other, if I was able to get more wires into my building I would get Sky installed and switch to them. Then once they are installed, every year switch between Virgin and Sky to keep costs to absolute minimum.

 

I have the same problem and would be able to save easily £40/50 by switching broadband,tv and phone each year but I'm afraid I wont give up Virgin's unrivalled speed and also the wife won't put in any more wires in the house so that's that.

 

Sky btw I think max out at 56mbps whereas VM is currently 200mb which is moving to 400mb very soon as the 'standard'.

[Nutcuttlit 359]

I had similar with sky, if your just on a rolling contract contract them and ask why you are paying more for less than others. The sales team usually makes a deal with you using the old "valued customer" routine. Sky knocked £43 a month off my bill and told me to call back in April to find out the next set of deals, I hope this helps.

Via the FG App

[Diddums 4,346]

Dave it's time to move to Gmail and make that problem irrelevant. Nobody uses their ISP email anymore for this exact reason (and Gmail is really, really good). 

 

For internet speed, anything over 30 is overkill. The only time you'll benefit from higher speeds is when downloading a lot. We have 35mb and we stream in 4k on Kyla's Fire Stick. 

 

For ISP, as much as I hate BT, they were the most consistent and reliable for us, as well as Virgin. Talktalk - no. Don't even go there. Their "customer service" reps are all in India and aren't knowledgeable on anything beyond what's on their script, and anything that needs escalating will take days. We tried Vodafone and they fucked it up six love so I can't comment on them, it might have been a fluke and I'm still tempted to give them a second chance. We're with Sky now and they're dogshit. They go through phases of being reliable / unreliable and we just came out of an unreliable phase where we couldn't hold a stable connection for ages. It seems to have sorted itself out however. 

 

Plusnet are the only company who have managed to beat Talktalk in terms of how complete and utter shit they were. Granted we were on the bottom package but this is not acceptable in any way, shape or form:

 

 

Honestly I'd rather have no internet than the pile of steaming, frustrating shit that was Plusnet. As you can tell, even just watching that video is winding me up.

 

Anyway, more info, and this is a big one, MAKE SURE YOU USE CASHBACK SITES. BT for example will give anything from £70 to £170 cashback on their packages provided you're a new customer.

 

BT Broadband - New Customers Boxing Day Sale, Discounts & Cashback Offers

WWW.TOPCASHBACK.CO.UK

---

Browse top deals on BT Broadband and BT Infinity and get great download speeds. Earn cashback rewards when you buy.

If you aren't already a member of Topcashback, let me know and I'll send you a referral link. I think we both get a fiver or something like that. 

 

 

Any more questions fire away and happy new year ❤️ 

 

[MrBiron 1,453]

@Diddums says to avoid TalkTalk yet I've been with them for years and have never had any issues. 

What I would advise doing is buying your own router when you do decide as the one you'll get from an ISP are always shit. Although you can't do this with Sky as its against their terms of service for some stupid reason. 

[techno 3,510]

I had virgin from the start (ntl) as I had to ring by for bt sport each year for a discount and as I'd been having trouble with virgin dropping out ( I've since learned alot of people friends included end up with no service for a time) I decided to take that leap. However leaving virgin was a fucking chore their customer service is useless appalling and a downright disgrace however reading reviews leaves me in a mind that these companies are pretty much all bad in that  department, seems it's like they all know we need them.

However I have sky for TV (that I can't see changing) broadband is bt so I get sport whilever MotoGP is on that platform, yes speeds are lower but like Dave said it's pretty irrelevant and with all the fools here using it including multiple ps4's I haven't really noticed a problem and I don't have to reboot regularly like I did with virgin. I'd say go for the best and cheaper package that suits your needs.

 

Oh and virgin can fuck off 😁

[Diddums 4,346]

Just now, MrBiron said:

@Diddums says to avoid TalkTalk yet I've been with them for years and have never had any issues. 

What I would advise doing is buying your own router when you do decide as the one you'll get from an ISP are always shit. Although you can't do this with Sky as its against their terms of service for some stupid reason. 

 

It's not having the issues, it's when you have the issues. Their internet was decent, however when we had an outage dealing with their customer support was about as fun as rolling off a waterfall in a barrel full of scorpions. This was about 10 years ago mind you, they may have improved. 

 

Also @Plumbers Crack Birron makes a good point, no matter what internet you have, crap hardware will ruin it. I get by fine with my ISP router but everything's homeplugged to the hilt, the only devices on WiFi are phones, Fire Stick and Chromecast and these seem to work fine. My PS4 & PC are on these bad boys. Cost a pretty penny but they're worth it. Do NOT buy cheap hardware as it'll just add more factors that can go wrong when you have to diagnose a fault, and there is nothing more frustrating that trying to find out why your internet is unreliable when you've got crap hardware messing with the signals. 

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Thanks for the replies guys and I've made the first step... I'm going to be using these guys https://protonmail.com/ for "proper" emails and I'll keep using my existing Gmail account for everything else. Didds is right, I should have grasped this particular nettle years ago

 

Download speeds is not an issue for me as I'm the only one here, it was ping that was my concern..hopefully I'll be OK as there are about 4 or 5 green cabinets near me

 

Domestic connection is also not a problem as I currently have the VM router set up as a dumb modem. I've got a Buffalo Airstream for WiFi and the house was wired for Cat5E a while back so the PS4 and PC are hard wired

 

I'm not worried about TV packages as I have a decent aerial installation and I'll just fork out for a Freeview video recorder like a Humax or similar

 

@Diddums Topcashback referal - if you send me the link I'll give it a look. Never used anything like that before though

 

Thanks again guys

[Diddums 4,346]

2 minutes ago, Plumbers Crack said:

 

@Diddums Topcashback referal - if you send me the link I'll give it a look. Never used anything like that before though

 

 

TCB is fantastic Dave, honestly you can save some decent cash with it, and it does work. It might take a few months, but for the sake of a few extra clicks when buying something, that extra cash is always welcome. Here's my referral:

 

TopCashback.co.uk: The UK’s #1 Cashback & Vouchers Site

WWW.TOPCASHBACK.CO.UK

---

TopCashback is the most generous free cashback and voucher website. Save money on purchases through thousands of merchants online and in-store.

 

Also, just as an example, here are BT's offers:

 

BT Broadband - New Customers Boxing Day Sale, Discounts & Cashback Offers

WWW.TOPCASHBACK.CO.UK

---

Browse top deals on BT Broadband and BT Infinity and get great download speeds. Earn cashback rewards when you buy.

 

[Plumbers Crack 4,062]

Well, that was relatively hassle free. They wanted to give me a lower price but I just wasn't interested so I've signed up with BT to begin with. Only drawback is BT can't port my existing landline number from Virgin - yep, still use a landline so that'll be a whole mess of emails/texts to send at the end of the month. I can't believe line rental used to be something like £18/month now it's included in a £29 broadband package!

 

Got a BT package through TCB for ~50Mbps down 8Mbps up and landline with 500 Anytime minutes a month to UK landline or UK mobile for £34/month and also £85 on TCB which is a bonus! If they payout (eventually) as Didds says, I'll definitely use it more

 

Thanks for the help lads, much appreciated

[techno 3,510]

43 minutes ago, Plumbers Crack said:

Well, that was relatively hassle free. They wanted to give me a lower price but I just wasn't interested so I've signed up with BT to begin with. Only drawback is BT can't port my existing landline number from Virgin - yep, still use a landline so that'll be a whole mess of emails/texts to send at the end of the month. I can't believe line rental used to be something like £18/month now it's included in a £29 broadband package!

 

Got a BT package through TCB for ~50Mbps down 8Mbps up and landline with 500 Anytime minutes a month to UK landline or UK mobile for £34/month and also £85 on TCB which is a bonus! If they payout (eventually) as Didds says, I'll definitely use it more

 

Thanks for the help lads, much appreciated

Hope you find leaving virgin a smooth experience, mine  wasn't even though I was assured it would be.

[Teenwolf25 327]

Well, that was relatively hassle free. They wanted to give me a lower price but I just wasn't interested so I've signed up with BT to begin with. Only drawback is BT can't port my existing landline number from Virgin - yep, still use a landline so that'll be a whole mess of emails/texts to send at the end of the month. I can't believe line rental used to be something like £18/month now it's included in a £29 broadband package!

 

Got a BT package through TCB for ~50Mbps down 8Mbps up and landline with 500 Anytime minutes a month to UK landline or UK mobile for £34/month and also £85 on TCB which is a bonus! If they payout (eventually) as Didds says, I'll definitely use it more

 

Thanks for the help lads, much appreciated

 

That 50mb down will in real life be more like 10..

They inflate numbers like they all do. I’ve always found VM a more stable and better speed infrastructure over BT for the reason they have their own cabling network. BT cabling is used more basically 90% of the rest like sky, Bt, plusnet, etc etc

 

Either way I hope you don’t have any issues with the swap

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Stretch616 697]

Totally missed this @Plumbers Crack so apologies!! Seems like you're sorted now which is good though.

 

As the guys have already said, Virgin were the only ISP that has their own network. Everyone else uses the Openreach infrastructure and offers out packages to their tailoring. Theres one exception which is Vodaphone who are rolling out true fibre service which can get upto speeds of a GB!! It's worth noting that theres a massive drive now within Openreach to now start providing Fibre to the home rather than to the local cabinet which will more likely mirror or exceed the current Virgin offering.

 

A bit late to the party but hopefully good info for all nonetheless!!