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Broadband and TV providers (what do you recommend?)
I've been with Virgin for years. Used to be fine. Pay £22.50 for basic TV (basically freeview stuff), very reliable broadband and landline which we don't use (had to have it to get the best deal bizarrely).
The TV service has been on the blink for a couple of months. Have had several engineers round, meaning you have to stay in all day, all as useless as each other and when you phone up you talk to someone in India who is unable to actually help. Running out of patience. I want to threaten to leave to see what I can wangle but I need to actually be willing to leave them, which I won't be til I know some decent alternatives.
Anyway, so who else is good and how much do you pay? Don't have an aerial so kind of stuck with cable TV, so looking for TV plus broadband deals.
Cheers
just tell em your going to leave and are going to BT ...
...they'll soon get their arse in gear. i'd never had any probs with virgin until recently, threatened to leave *bingo* everything sorted and on a better package than before for same money.
...
I've been thinking on this issue ever since last Saturday when I settled in for a nice afternoon of actually watching an Arsenal game live and in my own home when the service cut out 15 minutes into the match. I even got angry enough to phone them up and wasted 12 minutes and £3 alternately on hold and attempting to outline the problem to the most ass-ignorant Indian customer service people I've ever come across.
Unfortunately, where Virgin leads everyone else is that you don't have to pay line rental to BT and the internet is pretty great - which is useful when it comes to downloading the shows you would never be able to get on Virgin's piss poor TV service.
Aside from them, I would really only consider Sky - because the internet couldn't possibly be worse than anyone else, I'd quite like some sports channels, and Sky+ is the fucking nuts - especially during the NFL season.
my virgin internet is woeful
...
I actually should confess: MY Virgin internet is fine. For the rest of the house, it's an abomination. Whether that's Virgin's fault or the fault of our wireless network settings is something I've never had the compunction to figure out.
I bet it's them.
don't pay £3 to call ANYONE
saynoto0870.com is your friend
what's annoying is that, i prefer Sky (more channels, better menu system)
but the On Demand service with Virgin is just SO good.
...
The iPlayer/4OD part of it, anyway.
The other part is brilliant if you want to watch the first eight episodes of season one of The Wire over and over again. Or perhaps half the third season of 2 And A Half Men...
I've been looking at TalkTalk / Tiscali
No BT line rental, you get phone line / broadband / digital TV through their service. Don't know what it's like though, and they did buy AOL, which worries me as they were the effing devil.
...
Anyone who still uses Tiscali in this day and age deserves what's coming to them - which won't be internet service.
Good to know
Just that Virgin don't have cable in the area we're moving to, so with pretty much anything else we'll have to get a BT line put in, which I am loath to do purely on account of the whole "hey give us £120 to flick a switch pls" reconnection malarkey.
I had the most frustrating phone-conversation with Tiscali ever when I was moving house
I'll never go back to them after that.
Sky
tv, broadband and phone for about £25 a month.
Cheers
no movies or music channels
but have got the sports and all that.
I also have a tiny dong.
who knows kikkers, who knows
it's only worth it if you are in the Sky telephone area
where they take on the line rental, if not you still have to pay BT.
I've got all the sports, few other bits and pieces, phone shit (still need BT) and 8mb broaders
£43
...
For only £25? Do you get a deal or something, because I checked out Sky.com and the cheapest package I found with sports was weighing in at at least £30+.
I think it was some promotional offer they were doing at the time
I only have Sky Sports 1 though and not all the other sports channels.
Sky Sports 1 is the channel that any West Ham games
will be on, I couldn't care less about the other sports channels and certainly not Sky Sports News.
I don't particularly want Sky Sports News
but it does piss me off that you get it on Freeview but I don't get it with the full sports package. I subscribe to Sky, for the love of God!
are you talking about sports channels that aren't sky?
o2 broadband (need mobile contract with them) for £7.50pm with BT line rental
Forgo fancy TV.
^ This is what I have
really good connection, event with my torrent downloading.
I miss Virgin Cable Broadband from my last flat, it was sweet.
sky
o2
high 2.5
I can't speak about the Broadband yet
as Sky have said their system has been down for weeks so they can't process my order. But we've had Sky+ for two weeks and it's been shit. The box needs to be reset regularly, we get messages about lack of signal and it takes ages to speak to anyone on the phone.
so basically the answer to the original question is:
It doesn't matter, they're all a massive pile of arse
:) that's the impression I'm getting
I'm going to look into Sky though.
we've just switched broadband to Talk Talk from Demon
first router they sent didn't work, second one we have set up but will not pick up a wireless connection. Phoned them up went through about 40 minutes of "discussing" problem with a Thai lady who had limited English know how, eventually put through to a wireless team in Leeds. Lady on the other end admitted she had no idea what the problem is but she would google the problem and phone us back. Still not returned the call, 3 days gone since, phoned up Talk Talk who said reference expires after 3 days and that we would have to go through whole 40 minute rigmarole to get back to the team in Leeds.
We have given up on wireless and just bought ethernet cables instead.
Useless cunts
never get anything with talk talk.....truely awful
we're rapidly coming to that conclusion.
I just can't believe how crap the customer service is in the sector as a whole.
O2
Just because their customer service is very, very good.
You get told when they expect service disruptions, you get told when your box will be delivered, you get told about pretty much everything and it's great.
However, they're unforgiving when it comes to not paying the bills, so make sure your flatmate isn't a bit crap at doing that.