Letter from Virgin - 50Mb broaband for £3 extra a month

[superboy]

Basic overview of letter:

You currently have 10mb, get 50mb for £3 extra a month!

All it says is that there will be a £35 installation fee and a £20 activation fee. My question is, will my internet bill forever be just £3 more? Or, after a certain amount of time (say 12 months).. will they randomly start charging the FULL price for £50 (which is probably like £20 more a month, rather then £3 more)

also, has anyone else already taken up this offer?

thanks

[zeameth]

had virgin BB in the last place i lived, their short term offers were great but every 3 months or so they would sneak the price up and it would take a phonecall to sort out. frustrating but the line was worth it.

[coiler]

So i guess the real true cost over the first year will be an extra £91

/12 = £7.58 a month extra.

Not such a good deal now?

[superboy]

So i guess the real true cost over the first year will be an extra £91

/12 = £7.58 a month extra.

Not such a good deal now?

I'm considering the installation fees to be sunk costs, as I'll make my brother pay those :D the only thing i'm worried about is them randomly raising the price by a huge amount, if it's a small rise once a year then I don't mind.. but don't randomly want to get charged £20 extra a month after one year!

[Aaron]

Best thing to do would be to phone them and confirm it I'd imagine. We're all going to be speculating at the moment and could well be wrong. If you call them then you can ask them direct and know that they know what they are talking about. Supposedly. :lol: :)

[Toonshorty]

No matter how much it is per month the extra 50Mb will make a huge difference.

Why?

1) Their 50Mb XXL plan has no traffic shaping.
2) The download speed difference is huge (3-6Mb was huge for me so 10-50Mb would be insane)
3) My school has a 50Mb connection and even with 300 computers streaming youtube videos at once everything loads really quickly so for one house I can only imagine the speeds.
4) Gives you a massive e-peen.

If you do get that 50Mb would you marry me? I'm fed up of 8Mb ADSL.

[Terbinator]

In 12 months time the 50Mb package will be standard anyway - we did the same thing around 15 months ago except it was £3 more for 20Mb as opposed too 10.

I haven't got one of these letter but I f#cking hope one is coming soon :)

[Speed]

Yeah it seem a good deal. Like others have suggested, phone up to check.

We have the 20Mb package and I'd love to get a letter through the post like that, something tells me I won't however as we are on a special deal price.

But maybe I can phone up and say "my friend was offered XXX, can you do the same for me?"

Can't hurt to try lol

[superboy]

lol thanks for the responses, have searched around and apparently they offered this to people in december, and they are still getting charged the same price (so no random price rises). Funny thing is I was planning to upgrade to 20mb for an extra £10 a month, so 50mb for an extra £3 is most welcome. Will probably give them a call on the weekend :)

[Speed]

It would be illegal for them to change the price without giving you notification anyways. So don't worry about it.

[tystar]

And if they try and change it after 12months your contract will be up so you just phone to cancel and get offered a better deal anyway :D

The only issues you may have is that sometimes they dont ammend the bills correctly so you have to phone them up to have them ammend it but it's only time consuming not end of the world so nothing too big.

win win as far as i can tell then.

[Su1c1daL]

only thing i would be cautious of is the stability of the service. there is another forum that i use for cable (not gonna spam the name here but the name consists of 2 words i used to describe the forum ;)).


have a look on there and ask if anyone in the area has had issues with the 50mb platform - plenty nationwide have, and it seems to have been common issues nationwide. other than that, 50meg would be good with no stm. and with 1.5meg u/l good for hosting mw2 matches. 1.5 is a bit pants - but vm are trialing faster u/l speeds which usually filter through the system. last i heard was the trial was around the NE and midlands and was 10 up on the 50 service.

things are now getting a stage further, the 200meg trial has been expanded outside of the usual testbed of ashford (where everything seems to get trialled 10/20/50 and now 200). now as happend when the 50 was first released they hadn't got the 20 fully bedded in and issue free - i could almost guarentee that the same will happen again.

if vm wern't so tight or inclined not to do things - i.e. actually do all the network upgrades when needed, then i doubt that they'd have the ammount of network/subscriber issues that they do.


also they have gotten rid of the tech support on the newsgroups, now it's either thier own support forum or the usual trained monkies from you know where - i don't know whats worse.

[Speed]

Although what Su1c1daL is saying is true, I still would jump at the chance. The 20Mb system is fairly stable and common place, so even if you did have problems and not get the full 50Mb, you'd have something to fall back on and it would still be much quicker than your current 10Mb connection

They will also compensate you for any month where you have been having issues and from what I've read things are improving.

[Gunslinger]

I switched from the 20meg to the 50 and pay less, as i have 2 phone lines i complained that i was not getting the same deal as they were advertising, and threatenned to take the lot to BE broadband :P

they still screwed me the visit fee of £35 or whatever it was... for 2 guys to drink a coffee, unplug one modem and connect the other (that was all they did as i kept my original router setup) even the guys said it was a rip off and they should not have insisted on a visit... no biggie, i'll flog the wireless router and dongle they gave me to make the ££ back :lol:

I also told them they could ram the £20 connection fee, as i was already connected to their network, and if they waffled about but it's a different service i'd take my business elsewhere, as i know all it takes is a phone call to activate, takes about 30 seconds too if you have the direct numbers they use ;)

[Toonshorty]

I switched from the 20meg to the 50 and pay less, as i have 2 phone lines i complained that i was not getting the same deal as they were advertising, and threatenned to take the lot to BE broadband :P

they still screwed me the visit fee of £35 or whatever it was... for 2 guys to drink a coffee, unplug one modem and connect the other (that was all they did as i kept my original router setup) even the guys said it was a rip off and they should not have insisted on a visit... no biggie, i'll flog the wireless router and dongle they gave me to make the ££ back :lol:

I also told them they could ram the £20 connection fee, as i was already connected to their network, and if they waffled about but it's a different service i'd take my business elsewhere, as i know all it takes is a phone call to activate, takes about 30 seconds too if you have the direct numbers they use ;)

Don't sell that wireless router!

About 5 years ago I signed up for orange broadband, 8Mb for £5 a month. Only got 4Mb.

Q4 2009 I left orange for Xilo broadband. I now pay about £25 a month but still only saw the 4Mb until Matt at Xilo showed me some nifty little tricks. I'm now with an ISP that have almost taught me how broadband works, try and help me whenever thet can and give me a solid 6.5Mb connection.

A few weeks ago I got a phone call from orange asking me to send the livebox back otherwise I would have to pay £100. Since it was in the back of a cupboard it didn't really affect me that much but I wasn't about to pay £100 for the POC router orange gave me.

If you ever left Virgin they would ask for the router back so I'd keep hold of it unless you want to pay for it later.

[Gunslinger]

they didnt even seem to care if they took their original modem back when i upgraded.... i had to say to the guys "do you want this?" as they were on their way out, they were like "yeah we can get rid of it for you if you want".... didnt give a crap,

if they ever come back to me, i'll play dumb and send them the spare old modem i had or say the router broke and i threw it away :lol:

[Speed]

Personally I'd would of made them take it, you shouldn't put any electronics in standard rubbish anymore.

[Gunslinger]

oh i did, no point in it sitting in my bin when it can sit in theirs

and trash is trash, i pay the local council enough to come and take it away, now they want us to sort it all for them .... bleh

[Speed]

Ah yes, sorry I misread it lol!

How long did the upgrade take then? How you finding it?

I'm currently on 20Mb and might take my chances and try to get them to upgrade me.

[Gunslinger]

it took them longer to drink the free coffe than to "upgrade" it !!

basically, the guys were baffled as to why a visit was insisted on !!

Because i was retaining my original router and wifi setup, all they had to do was switch the modems, call into their tech line to get it activated, and check the tci ip settings on my machine to ensure it wasnt set slower than the connection speed that was available, they actually used a tcp ip auto config tool from one of those free downloads, forget which one now..... job done, quick test on speedtest.net (which i dont trust) and then i fired up something in Alt.Binz and watched the download figures .... mmmmmm fast

thoughts since then, well, initially i noticed right away that the upload speed, whilst testing at the rated speed, under sustained use, say using Rapidshares upload tool, and monitoring with bandwidth monitor, the speed was fluctuating so badly that it was averaging less than i had before (didnt test this before they played with the tcp ip config... should have done !).... but using opera to upload files to rapidshare i was seeing much more consistent speeds, but before i could be bothered to investigate further my pc died on me (couple of weeks after the upgrade) so dodgy speed could just have been that on it's last legs anyway lol

Download speeds are pretty solid and at the levels expected, i'm fairly lucky with the connection, it's always been fairly solid for me.

Right now i'm using my dads pc via the wifi, and it's only wieless G network, so speed testing is pointless (and it's flakey at this range) once i get my machine back in order, and the network upgraded with the Netgear WNR 3700 i bought, then i'll look closer at this upload speed issue

best bit of all, and not to be underestimated, is the no capping periods like there are on the 20meg connection, i was constantly slamming into that, because if you monitor bandwidth usage, full speed downloading will also register an upload usage, this results in you over running the upload limit during those checked periods

EDIT:
always worth using the "i'm thinking of leaving" department, for one they are english and second, they are the ones that can do you the good deals ;)

[Toonshorty]

it took them longer to drink the free coffe than to "upgrade" it !!

basically, the guys were baffled as to why a visit was insisted on !!

Because i was retaining my original router and wifi setup, all they had to do was switch the modems, call into their tech line to get it activated, and check the tci ip settings on my machine to ensure it wasnt set slower than the connection speed that was available, they actually used a tcp ip auto config tool from one of those free downloads, forget which one now..... job done, quick test on speedtest.net (which i dont trust) and then i fired up something in Alt.Binz and watched the download figures .... mmmmmm fast

thoughts since then, well, initially i noticed right away that the upload speed, whilst testing at the rated speed, under sustained use, say using Rapidshares upload tool, and monitoring with bandwidth monitor, the speed was fluctuating so badly that it was averaging less than i had before (didnt test this before they played with the tcp ip config... should have done !).... but using opera to upload files to rapidshare i was seeing much more consistent speeds, but before i could be bothered to investigate further my pc died on me (couple of weeks after the upgrade) so dodgy speed could just have been that on it's last legs anyway lol

Download speeds are pretty solid and at the levels expected, i'm fairly lucky with the connection, it's always been fairly solid for me.

Right now i'm using my dads pc via the wifi, and it's only wieless G network, so speed testing is pointless (and it's flakey at this range) once i get my machine back in order, and the network upgraded with the Netgear WNR 3700 i bought, then i'll look closer at this upload speed issue

best bit of all, and not to be underestimated, is the no capping periods like there are on the 20meg connection, i was constantly slamming into that, because if you monitor bandwidth usage, full speed downloading will also register an upload usage, this results in you over running the upload limit during those checked periods

EDIT:
always worth using the "i'm thinking of leaving" department, for one they are english and second, they are the ones that can do you the good deals ;)

So your 50Mb is active? Right then...

Gunslinger... Will you marry me?

I ask only because my 6.5Mb is pathetic, I can't stand it!

[Gunslinger]

So your 50Mb is active? Right then...

Gunslinger... Will you marry me?

I ask only because my 6.5Mb is pathetic, I can't stand it!

:lol: ... no, never could understand geordies (and i lived there for a couple of years :p)


you think yours is bad now... i went from 56k Dial-Up to 10meg broadband as my first step into broadband (and my pr0n collection grew exponentially :popcorn:)

[Toonshorty]

I'm not gordie, trust me.

I was born in Salisbury, where I could get 50Mb fibre now!

I have no accent to be honest.

[Gunslinger]

I have no accent to be honest.

give it time... you will have :lol:

[Toonshorty]

But can I marry you for the meantime, until my village gets 50Mb at least?

[Gunslinger]

:closet


NO !