Switching from virgin media to hyper optic

[Summerbaby333]

I was doing some bills reconciliation today and had a shock realising our virgin media bill, broadband only 500mbps, is now almost 90£ a month!! The DD goes from my husband’s account and he’s never noticed the increases… the connection is crap too, we average around 160mbps (and we’re in London!)
I’ve tried calling virgin media to complain and get a better deal but just get put on hold - I am so busy and literally do not have the time to sit around for this. They don’t respond on WhatsApp either.

We keep getting post advertising hyperoptic so I’m thinking of switching to them. They have a much bettter deal for 1gp and say they’ll manage the switch from virgin. Has anyone does this - is it as easy as they say? Will they need to come install stuff / do we risk messing up our home internet entirely?

I’m also planning to get a mesh wireless system (TP-Link) as well to deal with some black spots in our house - has anyone used this with hyperoptic?

I’m sick to the back teeth of Virgin as well with their endlessly appalling customer “service” and the annual fight to reduce their inflated prices. The only reason I’m with them at all is because I was an early adopter of broadband (when broadband was 256k 😀) but Virgin bought the company.

Which rate Hyperoptic as “good value” however I don’t know anyone using it. Two of my DC use CommunityFibre in London (also Which rated as “good value”) and rate it highly. Their vans are in my area and I’m hoping to switch to them soon.

I also have a TP-Link mesh system. I’ve only had it for about six months and bought it to replace my aging Airport routers and extenders which tragically couldn’t be upgraded. The interface isn’t great but its adequate and the system works fine. TP-Link is a decent make and has active community forums if you run into trouble.

Assuming you will put a TP-link router and extenders inside the Hyperactive modem then the model just becomes a connection point to the cable and everything inside it is independent. I’ve always run my home network this way as I don’t trust third party modems to be anything other than an access point to the outside world.

I've just switched from Virgin for the same reason, their prices have gone through the roof, particularly with the latest price increase. Previously I've been able to negotiate a better deal but this time nothing. I'm saving £30 a month on the basic package and getting more for my money. A number of alternative fibre providers all came out at a similar price and significantly cheaper than Virgin.

I switched from Virgin to Sky. Much (as in half the price) cheaper and a far more reliable service. The only downside is that any Virgin email accounts you have will shut down after 90 days so you need to set up a new account with gmail/whatever and change email addresses. I found I was unable to connect to my virgin email on my Mac after only a week 'out of contract' so watch out!
And yes, Sky did it all - contacted VIrgin, put in new fibre connection, sent the equipment etc. (I had to connect it myself but that was a doddle)

What do you need so much speed for
people pay an enormous amount for top speed then connect everything over WiFi which defeats the object
few years ok doubled my speed noticed zero difference

“The DD goes from my husband’s account and he’s never noticed the increases”

I don’t understand this, surely you get an email when it’s increasing

I’m tech illiterate and I don’t get this comment. Why would using WiFi mean that top speeds are irrelevant? In any event we need fast and reliable connections as we wfh a lot and do lots of video calls which our current virgin internet absolutely cannot handle

Thank you to everyone who’s posted, at least I feel a bit less alone in being taken in by virgin! They were the only viable option when we moved in, hyperoptic only just became available here. I went through the emails and honestly the price changes were completely buried in small print, it took me ages to find the right emails. But my biggest annoyance is simply that virgin is really taking advantage of customers and seemingly (accordingly to some other threads) only arbitrarily lowers the rates if you are prepared to fight - appreciate we were careless in not checking regularly but people who are actually vulnerable would get really disadvantaged! And for such high prices you’d really expect way better internet ..

Agree about Virgin - we managed to reduce our package to around £35 with them by threatening to leave.

500mbps is fast though - ours is that I think, and we get a download of around 300 mbps which is plenty for multiple streaming, gaming, Teams calls (three working adults in the house).