Best Broadband deals - Virgin BT Tiscali or SKY April 17, 2008
Posted by Andy Roberts in : best broadband deals, UK , trackback
When you look at the newest cheap broadband deals or the latest supercharged fast connection with unlimited downloads promised, it’s hard to tell which broadband provider’s connection will be reliable and up to scratch until after you’ve already signed up for a 12 month contract or even longer.
But the great thing about the internet is that we no longer need to rely on advertisements for all the information that’s necessary to weigh up a service or product before buying. With a little bit of digging around, or just by keeping up to date with what friends are saying, it’s possible to get direct reports from real customers experience of a product, good or bad. In the past this would all have been screened out, and the only source of advice away from the salesmen in the shop would have been “the man in the pub”.
For example, Steve Purkiss had a very bad experience with Virgin Broadband and published about it on his blog where anybody can see:
http://purkiss.com/2008/04/14/virgin-unlimited-broadband-one-week-was-all-i-could-take/
I’ve just cancelled my broadband service from Virgin after only one week. Why? Because today I woke up to find my ‘unlimited’ service had been throttled because I apparently used it too much. I’m now getting less-than-dial-up speeds and the service is all but useless to me
That’s just one really valuable piece of consumer generated information which can help anybody trying to work out which is the best broadband deal out of many under consideration with the main contenders being probably Virgin Broadband, BT, Tiscali and SKY.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
Thanks for the mention - actually I’m still on Virgin at the moment. The credit department suggested that it may just be because it’s a new connection with them, however it seems to be ‘going slow’ from around 3pm until the early hours of the morning, which suggests a throttle.
Trouble is, I can’t really afford to go back to my old supplier so I may just have to put up with it, which sucks when they don’t tell you exactly what is classed as ‘acceptabe use’ - they say they throttle the top 5% but won’t say how much it is, so rather than being able to watch your usage (still a bad thing on a supposedy ‘unlimited’ service), you just take pot luck.
Not sure if you’ve visited the forums over at www.thinkbroadband.com where most of the advice is doled out…
Just a quick update - I’ve just re-ordered my old service from ukfsn.org - £34.99pcm for 2Mb unlimited, no caps, no throttle, and great tech support should you need it. A must for anyone who uses the internet a lot.
I’m with PlusNet (Option 3) myself -£19.99 per month, up to 8mb and 30GB download limit.
I had various problems when VM took over, the latest oproblem been going on a while, phone calls were made, complaints were made via on-line support all a total waste of time even two recorded letters remained unanswered, I got on to the ISPA, after the third complaint with them they escalated the problem (slow outgoing emails) to CISAS. It’s surprising how quickly VM can do things when they want..!
During this time I spoke to engineers and a member of VMs CEO many times. After the last engineer came for the third time the fault mysteriously cleared at 9.01pm that evening, this was after it has been fixed the previous week, server problems was to blame.
I formatted a hard drive with just windows XP and nothing else… it was still the same, I blew a gasket when told it was my firewall or Antivirus..! Yes I did check the modem upstream power levels which should be between 33dBmV (allowing 3dbmV or drift).
The excuses ranging from no fault found, a server problem and traffic congestion amongst others, yes even in the wee small hours before daybreak downloading Emails no problem mind.
I suggest VM engineers are either clueless, Virgin Media is crap if the excuses offered are valid or I was being fobbed off - I believe it was a bit of the lot… and no fault about this on the status page ever.
Customer services are nothing more than pathetic…. once I was without phone and internet for over a day… I went down the road to check a elderly neighbors phone - dead it was, so I rang CS telling them this and that it must be a network fault, “Oh, theres no issue we’ll get an engineer out to check your wiring, my reply is unprintable… “I also complained about wasting about £7 on a mobile phone I had just topped up…
… “You should have dialed the free 150 number”, I politely asked… “How the hell can I do that when the phones are not working?” Virgins Media CS just makes you wanna tear your hair out.
If you want speed and a unreliable service with poor CS support do join VM… I’m about to get a landline installed and look elsewhere.
ive just signed up for tiscali broadband 2 weeks ago. and i must say the service have been brilliant, im getting 8Mg Broadband (actually 7.6 but im not goin to complain about 0.4Mg lol) Free Phone Line Rental with free calls to any house phone in most of the world including mobiles in canada and usa any time 24/7 So I Never have to deal with BT again, and Digital TV which Goes Through My Phone Line. Im Paying 19.99 pcm and thats where it will stay for the first 3 months only increasing to 24.99 never increasing after that…. and when they say unlimited they wernt jokin. my download speed has never dropped more than a Couple of KBs either way and they even waivered the conection fee of £30. but i think that offer is finished now but when you think i was paying £49.50 pcm to sky for my tv, £15 pcm (paid quaterly) to bt for my line rental and 19.99pcm for my BB. im saving £65 Quid A Month lol. so im really happy lol. i went to
www.tiscali.co.uk/products/nm/
to get the offers i got. give it a look. you aint loosing out lol.
in fact most of you will be savin the same asd me.