(OT sorry) Virgin Media Tariff Oddity.

[Derek G.]

Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.

After all "Enough is sufficient unto the day", and with 3 phones in the house I have enough already without a fourth.

Derek G

[Ret.]

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels), Sky Broadband with unlimited downloads, and Sky Talk with free 'anytime' calls and free calls to most European countries, USA and Canada (including line rental).

Having Sky broadband also means that I can connect the router to my Sky Box and get 'Anytime plus' with pages of movies and programmes available to download and watch 'on demand' free of charge.

I reckon that's pretty good value compared with other 'packages' I've looked at - and I've been more than happy with Sky broadband service as well.

VM TV may be cheaper than Sky TV - but then they don't have as many channels and don't have quite a number of the more popular channels either. I suppose, in relation to TV, a lot depends upon what channels/programmes you watch.

[Scott M]

Ye gods; £900 a year to watch crap telly and do a bit of browsing. Makes me glad I find almost nothing to watch on TV.

[Robin]

VM *do* offer broadband only packages but they aren't that much cheaper. See eg

can only speculate on the business model but FWIW combined bundles mean VM can quote lower prices for internet, comparable with what competitors advertise. I guess potential new customers mostly look at such figures. It is also not unreasonable given the cabling is the same whatever package you take.

It may help to look at it another way. ADSL requires wires. A lot of (young) people these days don't use wired phones, just mobiles. If they want ADSL for faster/cheaper internet access they might say "why do I have to pay for a stone age phone when all I want is internet?" AIUI though they won't get one without t'other.

[dennis]

Its a marketing ploy.. They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash. The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people pay quite a bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it isn't for me.

[Derek G.]

It may very well be but AFAIAC it's costing them sales.

I pay £71 to Sky for the full bag of mashings inc. 1 HD box plus 1 sky+ box. + £9.00 /month for maintenance of the kit (free with Virgin)

Virgin quote a representative example (Ha Ha) showing Sky costing £819 / year and themselves £369 / year Both including 2 boxes and a bastard telephone line.

Naturally IGWS the content of Virgin's packages is not directly comparable with Sky's.

Derek G

[Brian]

What's this £9/month for maintenance? I've never heard of that and we've been with Sky for over 10 years (IIRC). If anything goes wrong badly enough to need an engineer we just call Sky who, for a one-off charge of £65, do whatever is necessary to get it working again, whether that be a new dish, new cabling, new (refurb) box or whatever.

[Ret.]

You've not been pestered with these sales calls (often from firms purporting to be connected to Sky - but not actually) offering insurance against your Sky box failing? I always send them packing. Like most such warranties they are hopelessly uneconomical unless your equipment is failing several times a year.

Last time my Thomson HD box failed, I paid the £65 and was provided with a brand-new Amstrad box and also had the LNB replaced the dish realigned. I understand that if you threaten to leave Sky they will come and sort things out foc rather than risk losing a customer.

[Theo Markettos]

They advertise the line rental as relatively inexpensive (when you tot up the bundle prices) but fail to mention that their call charges are really high. And since they say you're paying '12.99' for the line rental, they want to encourage you to cease your BT line to 'save money', when in fact if you use the phone much it'll cost a packet in calls.

32p/min to Three mobile anyone? Calling from BT is 13p/min.

Theo

[Brian]

Yes, I have, but (a) I've never taken them up on it as Sky give the service I mentioned above and (b) the way I read it it sounded as though he pays £9/month to Sky, not a third party.

[tim....]

I can see that as the customer you might have something wrong with the dish that is your problem, but as you are RENTING the box from them, if it goes wrong they should always be repairing/replacing it FOC.

tim

[Brian]

But you're not renting the box from them. You may be for the first year or so but the box becomes yours after the initial 12-month contract (or whatever length of contract it is). If I said tomorrow that I wanted to quit Sky, they wouldn't send someone round to collect the box or ask me to post it back to them. I could, if I wanted to, put it on Ebay and sell it. IMHO the £65 to fix whatever problem you may have is good value.

[Ret.]

It's certainly better value than spending £9 - £12 per month on a 'maintenance contract'.

[D.M.Chapman]

It doesn't always work like that. I've had broadband with them (and before when they were NTL, and before that when they were Cable&Wireless) starting with the 150k service that was amazing (no ADSL offering back then), through

600k, 1M, 5M, 10M and now 50M. Tempted to move to the 100M service soon.

I just had the broadband service, but at some point (probably about 5 years ago) it became *cheaper* to take a tv box in the bedroom that I didn't want than to just have the broadband.

Sometimes it works out cheaper to take the whole lot than to pay BT for line rental. Of course, they screw you royally for call charges... not an issue for us as we rarely use it but something to be careful of. Also, watch out for caller ID - free on BT, 2.50 a month on VM.

I suspect their main driver for getting people to take the phoneline is that most people will move from BT and remove their BT line. That makes moving away from VM broadband a whole lot more complex as you need to coordinate BT reconnecting you along with all the other stuff...

Darren

[Dave Liquorice]

That's certainly the impression I have but then I've not looked at a Sky contract ever. Only paid =A320 once for a Freesat from Sky card.

How often do you need to call someone out? More than once every 7 months or so the =A39/month becomes the better option. But I guess a call out is far far less frequent than that...

[Brian]

In our case, twice in the last 10 years :-)

[dennis]

Fixed free and half price for 6 months if you say the right things.

[dennis]

Especially as if it goes wrong again within the year they will fix it free.

[tim....]

So they give you a lower tariff after you have "paid for" the box do they?

No I thought not, ergo you ARE renting the box from them

(they can construct the contact as they like, but that doesn't change the reality of the situation)

tim

[John]

Don't be silly Timothy, of course you're NOT renting the box from them - after the end of the initial contract, that is. If I wanted to, I could quit the monthly subscription and either (a) sell the box as I said earlier - if I was renting it from them, they'd want their property back, surely? or (b) buy a "Freesat from Sky" card at a one-off charge (about £20 IIRC) to put into the box instead of the monthly subscription card. Same box, no monthly payments for programmes or for rent of the box.