I'm looking for a new broadband provider

I've been with BT for a while and they sent me a kind invitation to renew my contract within the next 3 weeks or, face extra costs in the future,
I've seen this as a threat, I'm paying now £32 per month and, I've no complains about BT but, I'm not being bullied into a new contract,
Any recommendations from the clever and the ' careful with money' brigade ?

Can't help you there, Tom. I've been on Virgin Media for years now and the only problem with that is that I pay twice as much as you for the privilege of having just a phone and broadband, so it doesn't cover TV 'cos I don't have one.

The reason for this is because I'm an "old" customer so, if I decided to cancel them, then re-join, I'd be a "new" customer and only have to pay less but, to be honest, I can't be bothered going through the rigmarole.

Mollie, I was a virgin customer for 17 years and they always called me a
' valued customer' but, kept hiking the price so, I bailed out, now they mider me to go back and, I might do but, like you , I don't like all the cofufflement that goes with it,

I was with Telewest communication which became Virgin Media but like Tom said they kept hiking the price .I then changed to Sky but it was supplied through the phone line with a top speed of 35mbps.I was happy with this because it served my purpose usage wise but after over 12years they got greedy with their prices and over 3months wanted to hike the price from £27-50 to £43 . I am with a new company BRSK and I get 150mbps and the phone line for £27 fixed for 2 years. At times the speed can be a bit iffy but in general it is ok

Peter, yes, I was with Telewest to start off with before it became Virgin Media. Then, it must have been around 2007 when we decided to change to BT. We got in touch with them and it was arranged for us to come off Virgin on a particular day, and for them to install the day after. I stayed home expecting an engineer who never came and what followed was a nightmare. We started to phone them to ask why no one came, but we kept ringing for more than two hours and nobody picked up. The next day when I got home from work I was shocked to find a card behind the door to say they’d called and we weren’t in, and another one followed the week after. By now we were offline for a week so, I rang Virgin and asked them to reinstate us, which they did immediately, and we became “new” customers.

There followed two more cards behind the door to say they’d been and couldn’t get access after which my partner got a call on his mobile, so they knew how to get in touch with us. Then there was a letter to say that, because they’d been four times and couldn’t get in, they were going to charge us for wasting their time.

Oh goody. Right up Mollie’s street, so I sent them a long letter to tell them that, not only did they have one of our mobile phone numbers, but it was their fault that they didn’t appear on the appointed day, and did they not understand the meaning of the word “telecommunications” which was a means of communicating; and because we’d both taken the day off work, we were going to charge them for our accumulated day’s pay of £200. We never heard from them again and that’s why I’m loathe to change now.

Do away with your land line. That'll save a bit.

I don't have a mobile. Got rid of my last one years ago. I rarely use the phone anyway, unless somebody rings me, which is rare. I'm not the type to natter on and on about nothing. I email instead for that, but I keep the phone in case of emergency.

1st Mate I kept my land line which I pay £4 a month for but since I changed providers in October I have not had any phone calls on it(kept for the answer m/c). Has far as I know every one who needs to contact me either uses my mobile number or E-mails me

First Mate

Not everyone can get rid of a landline if like my Wife and I, they cannot get a good reception at their property with a moblle phone!

And there are the many in the country who like mollie m, content to pay the cost for a landline connection if it meets their needs of just having a means of communication in their properties, even if only for an emergency!

LINK

First Mate

If it takes as long as it is taking them to stop the boat people, many of us will not be around when the work is completed!

If, and only IF, landlines are to become extinct, then I'll have the old mobile I still have squirreled away somewhere reinstated to make and receive calls, but I wouldn't use it for any other purpose. No apps, no games. A phone is just a phone.

mollie m

Not to some as a smart phone is a god to them!

"If, and only IF, landlines are to become extinct"

Who said they were doing away with landlines? They are doing away with analogue lines and replacing them with digital lines.

Oh right. Sorry, I misunderstood what was in your link.

Avoid BT like the plague.

A couple of years ago, we decicided to have a change from Virgin Media and got BT.

A man came on the Thursday, put up a wire from a pole to our house and installed a new BT box in the lounge. All very well until two days later when I tried to make a call from the phone receiver in our porch but found that the line was dead. Contacted BT by a mobile who said they would send out someone on Monday. When he came, he looked at what work had been done, went out to his van and was talking to somone on a mobile phone then came back into our house, removed the phone receiver from the porch and connected it to the new BT box in the lounge and then placed it on the floor in front of the television and then scuttled out of the house without a word or even explaining that a link wire had not been placed between the the phone receiver in the porch and the new BT box in the lounge.

We then contacted Virgin Media who re-connected us to their system and even got a cheaper deal than what we paying before the experience we had with BT.

What was bad turned out to be good in the end!

Owd Codger

You were let down by 'Openreach' which is the company and it's sub contractors who do all the work on the old BT phone network, they were split off from BT in 2017, so your problem was nothing to do with BT.
But to condemn a multi billion pound company, because of the antics of a couple of it many thousands of employees, is in my opinion a rather silly thing to do.
If you had a similar experience with Virgin Media, if the guy who turned up in the van, if hee or she proved to be an idiot who didn't fix your broadband properly, would you fire them off too ?

a proud latics supporter

Our change from Virgin Media was to the company BT and not Open Reach who obviously are part of the same company who just handle the instalation side of BT provider applications.

We have never had any problem with Virgin Media and we regret having a brainstorm of changing to BT and from what I discoverd afterwards we have not been on our own where compaints about BT are concerned

Oh, and the only idiots who have ever turned up in vans at our house have been the one who failed to link our phone receiver to the BT box and the 'silent' one who put the phone receiver on the floor and shot out of our house like a bat out of hell!

Owd Codger

Poppycock !!!!

a proud latics supporter

If you think so!