Broadband provider

[Huckyfell]

Hi all, I'm not a regular poster.. but any good/bad experiences with broadband providers please? Switched to BT 12 years ago as utterly fed up talking to call centres continents away. Decided to stuff everything but BT. Now paying £45 pm and have to renew, any good or bad advice welcome. Don't need landline, don't watch much tv.

I know they get a lot of complaints and lots of people on here don't like them, but we changed to Virgin a few years ago and not had a single problem with them. When our son moved away and got his own flat a couple of years ago, he got Virgin and likewise has not had a single problem.

We moved because our BT line (for both landline and internet) was absolute crap because the old copper wiring on our estate was far too unreliable, initially with dropped landline calls, distorted line quality, etc., but then when we got broadband, it was constant dropped connections, snail pace line speed, etc. BT came out (for us and other residents) very regularly, almost weekly, and we all joked that whilst they "repaired" the fault for one house, it just caused a fault on another! We went through several broadband providers such as Sky, Plusnet, Talktalk, etc., but as they all used the same copper cabling infrastructure, nothing improved it. Working from home meant we had to do something, and luckily, Virgin came and installed their cables, so we were one of the first to sign up, and as I say, never looked back as we've had no problems at all.

Virgin are good, at least here they are

But at 62 bloody quid a month for broadband alone (what they’re charging me) it’s far too expensive.

And then the fact that leaving them and going to another supplier is made as difficult for you as possible, I’d suggest not going with them. I’m looking to change myself.

Edit to add- parents are with talk talk at around £25 a month. Always good enough when I visit which is quite a lot.

How does anybody end up paying £45 or £62 pcm for broadband? Do you ignore the yearly price increase email?

We are currently paying £27 but have to phone up each year and say we want to leave before they quote us the proper price.

The email from virgin offered me £59, a reduction of 3 quid.

So not worth bothering with. When I tried to call them the person on the phone hardly spoke English and couldn’t help me. So I’m stuck, until I get off my arse and cancel my DD.

Edit to add: that’s their business model- offer a low starting price then ramp it up and make it very hard to leave. I’ve got a few friends too that have been caught like this, so don’t choose Virgin is my advice, no matter how quick their connection is.

How fast is your broadband ? I live with my young adult kids who like to game, stream, FaceTime (often simultaneously) so I need very fast broadband to cope. Luckily I can get super fast broadband here.

I did a test and it's showing as 45mb. I'm not sure where that stands but streaming videos on multiple devices has never been a problem.