You’ve certainly set the bar high….
I think it’s sickening that they’ll offer new customers inflation busting deals whilst existing customers are expected to take the full brunt of price increases.
So all I did, was go into the conversation armed with the deal a new customer would get and ended up saving myself over £100 a year. The only thing they wouldn’t give me, was the £70 BT card credit they hand out as part of the deal.
If you’d waited those extra 2 months and spent the £15 extra it would have cost, they’d have given you this too, and perhaps a lower price as well.
Good haggling, but that’s pretty average from BT. Guessing they have little competition at those speeds where you are besides other BT resellers?
My friend is on that same package and pays £22.50 per month and got the card. Haggled out of contract just a few weeks ago. Though they’re currently in the process of complaining because they’re only getting throughput of around 300mbps, and slower when wired.
Completely agree though. If they can sell it so low at those haggled prices, then what on Earth is the honest justification for the increases besides blatant greed?
It gets to a point where the shy folks are rinsed to offset those bold enough to ask for better. I wish we had a system whereby instead of super low prices for some and annual hikes on top of a high price to begin with for the rest, and just had a fair standard price for all.
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I think they can’t sell it at those prices, but in the short-term need to while the market is currently so competitive. Once the smaller players start going belly up and consolidation happens, we’ll see price increases.
Without sounding sour grapsish, that’s not a given. Trust me, I worked hard over that 15 minute call to get what I got and I was happy with the result.
I’ve had absolutely no issues with BT in the almost 2 years I’ve been a customer. I looked carefully at two other providers who could supply me with a similar package and yes, I could have got a slightly cheaper deal. Unfortunately I’d also be stepping into the unknown and there’s the added issue of whether transferring provider is going to be seamless. My Wife has an extremely important job WFH and we just don’t want to risk being in a downtime situation changing provider as it would cause problems.
I suppose my unwillingness to dump BT may seem illogical to some, but everything just works and I’m not paying any more now than when I started with them almost 2 years ago.
You can overlap the service provided that they’re not running on Openreach… also worth mentioning that a few of the providers now are offering some free months, so it wouldn’t cost you any extra to do that. (source: planning on doing it w/ CityFibre via GigaNet)
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I think I may have posted about this at the time, but a year ago I signed up with YouFibre. I’d been in my new build house for 5 years with only very poor ADSL or unreliable 4G connectivity. Openreach refused to upgrade the street cab serving half of the development, and they had an exclusivity clause that meant no other provider could supply the area until 2022. I even wrote to my MP as it was nigh on impossible to work from home during the lockdown periods.
Anyway, long story short, YouFibre (and their infrastructure partner, Netomnia) put their own fibre in last year and I signed up in April. 1Gbps download and upload speeds, 3 months free, only £36/month on an 18-month contract. Guarantee of no in-contract price rises, plus they threw in 3 x eero 6 Pro mesh Wi-Fi units worth about £600!
I’ve been absolutely delighted with them, no issues whatsoever since my service began.
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Anyone else on Virgin media having issues. I woke up this morning to get something done and no page loads. Went to Twitter and found many others having the same issues.
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No virgin media working fine here.
It was sorted shortly after I posted but people had issues from around 1 am.
Edit: it is off again. 
Was a bit odd when I got up jst before 6am but seems to have settled now
It is on for like 15 minutes and an hour off though WhatsApp is working with text only, media not loading at all.
According to my ISP (which quite a few Virgin subscribers connect to via L2TP), Virgin have national ethernet issues at the moment, despite their 0800 status message saying nothing’s wrong 
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I change ISP as frequently as possible, using every contract break clause possible and focussing on shorter contracts. I always use my own router, so the process is as simple as changing the ISP creds in the admin panel (and in the case of swaps to/from VM changing from the Openreach line to the VM router set to Modem Mode). So much negative feedback relates to ISP provided routers, but I can safely ignore all of that.
For the last 3 or 4 years my average price paid has been something like £15/month once you factor in cashback, selling the router (where it’s not loaned) etc.
The only ISP I actually wouldn’t touch is Virgin Media - great headline speeds but absolutely sod all bandwidth in my area. I think we went from 100Mbps in theory to 66Mbps with basic provider Now but the reality was the service with the latter was way more usable.
In general I find the monofocus on speed to be a bit of a marketing swizz.
It is only VM that do anything above 35+ Mbps at my postcode. The providers using BT line used to provide up to 65 Mbps but for unknown reason that stopped last year. I am now left with VM which I switched to last October, first time I have had issues with their network. Speeds have been good on my M108 line averaging 150Mbps.
I was previously on Talktalk with no issues until I moved to this address and they could no longer offer 150Mbps so they downgraded me to 65 Mbps which they never even got close too. From when I moved address speed checks where averaging 38Mbps. There was constant calling and emailing but they kept insisting I am on the right plan of 65 Mbps and getting that. It was until I insisted and they escalated to someone in their tech team. The guy said from his side the checks he had done I was miss sold the product. He said their line at my address had no potential to reach even 50 Mbps. He told me he had made a report for me to get back to the retention team. I had to leave 6 months into the contract penalty free.
At the moment it is only VM that can provide any usable fiber internet to my address. Even mobile signal for all networks is not that good so I rely mostly on Wifi calling.
I am near (walkable distance) a big town centre in the South East.
I have been seeing OpenReach guys carrying out works in the area for the whole of last year up to now but still providers on that network only have plans of up to 35 Mbps.
I am a prisoner to VM now.
Broadband is the one thing that I’m not prepared to compromise on. I won’t go with any provider whose customer support is less knowledgable regarding networking and telephony than I am. I want static IP addresses (both IPv4 and IPv6), zero port blocking and zero traffic shaping. I’ve found all that with Andrews & Arnold and I’ve no intention of moving.
(I was a network analyst for many years.)
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I am not a network analyst but man people’s lacking knowledge is the bane of my existence. Trying to get over to CityFibre currently but being told by my mother (who’s being advised by my friend’s grandfather, who was a support technician for a local school, involving network administration) that we won’t see the speeds advertised (which just isn’t true, fibre is fairly okay for this)
You can still have contention within the network of whichever ISP you go with via CityFibre, which can be an issue.
Sure, I accept that is definitely a possibility; I just think whatever it is, it will be more reliable on average vs Virgin’s coax.
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I think that’s pretty much a given