Saving money on TV, phone, broadband

[MuswellHillDad]

I've been with Virgin Media for 12 years. The monthly package is about £33 for basic TV, broadband and phone (call are extra). I am trying to save money and looked at comparison websites showing BT, Sky, TalkTalk and others. They all seemed to work out about the same.

However, maybe I can drop the TV bit and use freeview and an aerial. Maybe I could also drop the landline (but too many people have the number) and have the number divert to skype or mobile or something?

The only one I really really need is the broadband.

Has anyone done this and what deals did you go for?

diverting your landline to mobile will certainly cut your calls once people find out; costs a fortune for those calling from landlines.

you can get good introductory offers but don't forget to factor in the cost of the line rental. Freeview plus recorder box just means £12 a month for your TV licence.

The killer is the phone line rental.

I can't seem to find a way of getting broadband without it.

I have found a way of keeping the landline but transferring it to the cloud, but you still pay £10 a month for that. Better to ditch the home phone number ....

Virgin do broadband without line rental for 25 a month. You can then just use your mobile? Hardly seems worth it to save 100 a year.

If you pay your annual line rental up front, you save. We have Talk Talk - standard line rental (I think it's free weekend and evening, or free national calls anytime, we almost never use it so I've never taken note) and unlimited broadband. We paid the line rental up front, so instead of £14.95/month it works out at £9.50/month. We got an offer on broadband - £3.25/month for 9 months then £6.50/month for last 3 (it's a 12mo contract), but these offers are quite common. If you average the cost over 12 months it's £13.56/month for unlimited broadband and line rental with some sort of free calls.

As for TV, we used Freeview long ago and were happy with it at the time as we used to watch broadcast TV. Our hours now mean that broadcast TV is pointless so we only watch catch up/online services. We no longer have a TV licence. We pay £5.99/month for Netflix and about £2/month for a separate online subs service, plus £2.50/month to stream to our big TV through Xbox (this payment also serves for online gaming because we're nerds but you can stream to TV via computer, for example, but we can also access Netflix etc on PC, tablet, mobile wherever we are). We occasionally watch iPlayer or 4OD. So in total the cost for TV is roughly £9/month (dividing the Xbox payment as it's not only for TV). This serves me, DH and DS very well and we get a lot of choice as to what we watch

That makes approx. £22.56/month total. Don't forget that in addition the cost of your line rental etc is the TV licence charge, which I think is a good cost to factor in as it's easy to forget!

Delasi

That sounds good. Thanks!

I think we would have to keep the TV licence (kids) but wouldn't add any subscriptions and use freeview.

I'll look into that one.

Forgot to mention, look on Quidco or Topcashback and you may well be able to get cashback for switching. Primus has been recommended by several people as a decent company at a very low cost.

PS you can keep your landline number the same if you switch.

We have just (this week) switched to Talk Talk. I paid £126 upfront for the line rental so £10.50 per month and then we have taken the package which is unlimited broadband, anytime calls & a free youview box with all catch up services for £15.50 per month, 18 month contract. We have transferred our existing number at no extra cost.

So, total of £26 per month (10.50 + 15.50) which has saved us about £10pm on what we were paying and more on what we would've paid on BT's higher prices. They also have cheaper packages.

However BEFORE you switch check what Virgin will charge for leaving. BT has charged us £11something for the last 10 days left on the contract plus £49 'equipment charge' for the router so £60+ despite us being within the last 14days of the contract when we left them. Twats.

TalkTalk do an even better deal if you don't need to use your landline for calls. You pay the line rental as mentioned above but can have unlimited broadband for £2.50per month but it does not include calls at any time. Of course if you have mobiles with inclusive minutes you can use those. I thought it looked pretty good. I hear the customer service is poor, but I was willi g to give it a go on a 12 month contract for the savings.

Are Talk Talk good with customer services?

No.

I ditched my land line over three years ago and also love TV as we never watched TV live.

I was paying for land line and only being used by cold callers so not cheap at £17 at the time per month

I stopped the TV licence at £12 per month and just got broadband through virgin

My package of mobile with 1200 minutes unlimited text and 1mgb of data is £7 and broadband is £21-50

The money I have saved over three plus years is Over £1000 which to me is considerable and I got an iMac with my savings