O Tish; Sky/Virgin

Currently have TV, Broadband & Landline with Virgin.

Got a deal on Sky installation when I bought my new telly, so I'm changing the telly package to Sky.

The guy at Comet suggested we would be better off leaving the Broadband & Landline with Virgin, but having looked at it I could save a good few quid changing the lot to Sky.

So, is Sky broadband problematic? Unreliable? Terrible support?

Can't see the landline being a problem, but I don't want to end up with dodgy internet connection.

Oh. Last night at just after 8pm I called Virgin;

"you now have 3 options". "you now have 3 options". "you now have 2 options"

After all that the message said "sorry, we are now closed! Why couldn't they have said that in the first place!

Reply to
The Medway Handyman
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critcher said.............................. never had a problem with sky broadband max, d/l about 8mb, reliable and never had to call sky about any problem.Am now thinking of downgrading to the middle package, because my bb package is now £15.00 per month, and my usage is not a great amount.

Reply to
critcher

Call VM on 150, ask to speak to retentions or choose the thinking of leaving us option. Tell them your plans and ask for an incentive to stay, be sure to request that it does not tie you into a further 18 month contract and if you are happy with their offer ask for confirmation in writing.

Sky BB is basically BT as that's whose line you will have to use, the further from the exchange you are the slower your connection will be. ("BE" as a provider are apparently quite good). Check online for a postcode speed checker and see if it meets your needs.

Sky support has a history of being bad but VM are giving them a run for their money, the upside with VM though is that they are responsible for maintenance to you STB and modem etc, that's not the case with Sky.

IMPO, go for the TV with Sky but haggle for a better deal on your BB and phone with VM, particularly the phone as line rental alone is £11 pm.

Reply to
Nitro®

--

No doubt one of the reasons they recently ditched their free support news groups, where you would have got an answer with no waiting around or phoning.

S
Reply to
spamlet

Never had a problem with Sky BB and we had our phone line with them too. We only left because we weren't watching many channels which aren't available on Freeview and Plusnet offer free daytime calls (Sky were just evenings & weekends), BB & phone line for £notverymuchatall.

Si

Reply to
Mungo "Two Sheds" Toadfoot

In message , The Medway Handyman writes

AND ...

had my STB replaced at the tail end of last week

the new one is affected by the TV and AV amp remotes, operating them brings up a text box (about text, believe it or not) on the screen

Phoned them yesterday, tech could come around today between 4 and 7pm. Got a phone call - could he come around at 3:30 there was a cancelled appointment

So I said yes, made sure I was home in time - no show

The telkkie had already been (at 1:45 ) when there was nobody at home. They then tried to tell me that the appointment had been agreed for between 12 and 4pm

lying bastards

offered me a fiver compensation

... and next available visit is on saturday

Reply to
geoff

TMH,

No wind-up for a change.

I changed to Sky from BT last week and swapped the whole package Broadband, line rental and calls - and the whole lot went a damn sight better than I thought it would.

Router still in the 'training mode' and I have jumped from a rock steady

1.8Mb connection to a rock steady 8Mb one - with no drop-outs.

The only two problems I have are:

1 The loss of all newsgroup facilities - Sky has no News Servers. 2 A problem of getting Sky e-mail to work through Outlook Express on POP3 (I will give their support a ring over the next day or two - and see how they compare to BT's India mob).

The deal I had was:

Sky+HD box supplied and fitted for free, 3 months free telephone line rental and 3 months free telephone calls.

As for reliabilty - all ok up to now, but No1 son has been with them for around three years, and he thinks that they are the bee-knees both with their service and technical support (and he plays with computers for a living)

Be aware though, if you do get broadband with them, try and set up the system without using their disc as it wanted to drop a few unwanted (for me anyway) programs on my computer[s].

Manual set-up was easy on a hard-wired network, and once I found out how to get into the router mechanics, wireless set-up seems easy enough (but I turned that off anyway preferring to have a wired network)

Unbeliever

Bloody hell, I took you out of the 'bin' *and* typed all that *AND* refrained from extracting the urine out of you - I must be feeling mellow today. :-)

Reply to
Unbeliever

In article , The Medway Handyman scribeth thus

Pity they just can't seem to sort out their customer service but having said that I'd be very reluctant to give up my VM BB, a 10 meg constant speed service.. we commercially rent several BB lines out in the sticks and a new one last week struggles to reach 400 K/Bits!...

And I know a lot of people who are "off" the VM net who'd pay double the cost just to have it!..

Thats one thing they do rather well BB, and ADSL via whoever has some catching up to do especially in more rural areas...

Reply to
tony sayer

How on earth did you manage that?. Did you move into the exchange;?.

And why was that so bad before to suddenly so very, very, good?.

Eternal September Org works fine..

Reply to
tony sayer

You need to check if your exchange is Sky (easynet) LLU enabled.  

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If not you would be on BT Wholesale ADSL services, which would be a disaster compared with VM cable.

Reply to
Mark

It isn't today!

Reply to
<me9

No I still reside about a mile from the exchange as the crow flies - but god knows far as the cables run! ;-)

Quite simple, I refused point-blank to renew my broadband contract with BT, and was 'stuck' on their 2Mb connection for around 8 years.

They really pissed my off by continually changing their minds about their T&Cs, methods of payment, fair-usage policies and prices - and when the time came to jump ship, I didn't have a contract to worry about.

Yep I've been using them for years with very few problems as a back-up - I just wish now I could find a free binary news-server just to keep a track on two groups I was subscribed to, but they seem rarer than rocking horse crap, and for the use I have of them, it's uneconomical to pay several pounds a month to subscribe to the likes of GigaNews!

Unbeliever

Reply to
Unbeliever

Check over at

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to see if your exchange is LLU enabled - if so, Sky are very good (from personal experience)

- almost no hitches in service in the 3? years I was with them, and good speeds given my distance from the exchange (several km). I got between 6 and 7.5Mbit consistently.

If your exchange is _not_ LLU enabled, Sky buy (or did buy) the service in from someone else, and it was reputedly crap.

Support wise - wouldn't know, never needed to call them, other than over the initial fiasco where they moved to googlemail... they closed the old mail servers within 48 hours of sending the first warning of the change, and if you didn't check your email in that time you couldn't because they closed the server - and you couldn't access the new account because you had no access to the details that were sent to the old account / server :-}

There's no "training mode" if you're on an LLU exchange, it'll always connect as fast as it'll allow given the line conditions at the time.

Overall, i'd be happy to recommend them - although i'm currently on Virgin due to a house move and the offer of £130 cashback at the time I signed up :-}

Reply to
Colin Wilson

In article , snipped-for-privacy@privacy.net scribeth thus

It is here tho there were some interruptions recently..

Reply to
tony sayer

OK so that was restricted in the exchange then as distinct from a line issue?..

Reply to
tony sayer

It's been back up since sooon after I mentioned it.

Reply to
<me9

Yes Tony, but I should have kept my thoughts to myself though, as over the last few days the line speed has gradually dropped down to 6.74Mb (as of tonight).

Not sure at the moment whether that is due to network traffic (I've had no end of problems connecting to the BBC sites and their ilk over the last few days) due to this bloody election - or an internal line problem.

As an aside, the problems with the BBC site may be due to the fact that it's undergoing some changes at the moment, so that may be slowing things down a bit.

Unbeliever

Reply to
Unbeliever

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