So I switched broadband providers

[andrewducker]

I've been with Virgin Media for about 20 years. Since before they were Virgin, in fact. They were the only way to get access to dozens of channels if you didn't have a satellite dish and they had the best broadband speeds. They were expensive, and the customer service could be annoying, but if I wanted faster speeds than ADSL allowed then they were the only game in town. And back before TV moved online a Virgin TV box and a Tivo was the best way to get all of the TV I wanted.

And then Netflix and iPlayer and, frankly, all of the other TV channels moved online. And when we moved into our current house I don't think we even bothered plugging the TV box in. And the only person I ever spoke to on the landline was my parents. So two years ago, when I renewed my contract, I said "Take off the TV and the phone, I'm not going to use them." - and their retention team said "How about you keep them, but we don't charge you for them". I was still paying £45/month rather than £40 going with a competitor, but I didn't have the energy to switch for £5/month and so I stuck with them - after all they basically just worked. Although they put up their prices by inflation each year, so it was more like £51 by the time the t years were up.

And then, two years later, three days ago, I called them up* and said "Hi, I'm looking to renew my contract, and I still haven't plugged in my phone or TV box (for 4 years now). What's the cheapest deal you can give me?" and they said "£61". And I said "Pardon?" and they said "£61", and I said "I'll think about it." put down the phone and went straight to Zen* internet's home page and ordered their 300 MBit service for £40.

They automatically set things up so that Openreach (who own the UK's biggest fibre optic system, which they then lease to ISPs) will come and hook us up at some point in the next few days. And then hopefully a few days after that we'll have internet through them, and I won't have to deal with negotiating deals with Virgin ever again.

It's a shame in some ways, because the actual *service* from Virgin was pretty-much rock solid. No problems at all with their internet, TV, or phone service. But whenever I spoke to a front-line customer service rep it was an exercise in frustration. Fingers crossed everything runs smoothly with Zen!

*I say "Called them up." - what actually happened is that I looked on the site for a phone number and couldn't find one on their contact page, so I started in with the web chat, which told me there was a big queue and that I should talk to them on Whatsapp instead. And they sent me a message asking me to say "Hi" on it, which I did, at which point the webchat ended, and then I never heard anything on Whatsapp ever again. So I searched the web for a phone number for them and called them on it. So I was already in a bad mood by then.

** I chose Zen because they consistently win the Which? award for customer service and don't ever raise prices during your contract.Worth paying a bit more than we could have gotten elsewhere to get good customer service when we both work from home.

Comments

[simont]

Good luck!

I can't say the same about my Virgin service. It was prone to 5-minute network outages in the middle of the day, and the occasional entire afternoon.

Since moving to A&A I've had three outages longer than a few seconds, and two of those were deliberate maintenance, in the middle of the night, and announced by email several weeks in advance.

(Not counting outages I brought on myself by overgeeking the setup inside my house, obv. Plenty of those, before and after!)

[andrewducker]

A&A would have been significantly more expensive, unfortunately. If I had an actual business I'd be tempted, but it would be £65 per month rather than £40.

[calimac]

There are two services available here, AT&T and Comcast. We switched from Comcast to AT&T because we could get a significantly less expensive service without a lot of tv channels we didn't want, but now if we're unhappy with the service, there's nowhere we could go except back to Comcast.

[andrewducker]

There seem to be several in my area. But they'll mostly share the same lines, it'll just be the customer service that varies except for the couple that run their own lines.

[mountainkiss]

Like Doris Day.

[andrewducker]

I may need slightly more context!

[mountainkiss]

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/oscar_levant_141876

[andrewducker]

Hah!

[dreema]

I did a similar thing recently, was with BT as they were the only provider who offered fttp in the area at the time (was previously with plusnet) and when the price went to 65pm i switched. Ended up going with voda, same 500Mbps package and it now costs me 33pm. I had an incredibly aggressive sales retention person from BT call whose attitude would make me reconsider ever going back to them or recommending them. I hung up after 11 mins of his ranting.
So far voda have been ok but i've not had to contact support for anything so i've no idea how they fare in that department.

[andrewducker]

I do not understand how they get away with that kind of behaviour for any length of time.

(I tagged the Twitter account of VirginMedia in a post with this entry in it, so they could see why I'd left. Maybe they'll even learn if enough people do that.)

[aldabra]

It took me several goes to close the Virgin account when we switched away. That's several 45-mins-on-phone goes, when they pretended it had all stopped and it hadn't. Keep careful notes. Maybe turn off the direct debit so they can't dick around...

[andrewducker]

Fortunately, One Touch Switch is now active, and so it's all happening automatically: https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/guides/one-touch-switch/

(When I signed up with Zen I got an email from Virgin 5 minutes later telling me they were sad to see me go.)

[aldabra]

Wow. When I switched I got an email from Vodafone saying everyone except Virgin did this automatically but Virgin wasn't co-operating and insisted we did it manually, and then they didn't co-operate with that either.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I seem to have signed up at the right moment!

[fub]

When we move, we'll be getting rid of the landline too -- we have unlimited calls on our mobiles anyway, and we'd have to get a new number so there's very little incentive to keep it around.
Our current provider (the former state monopoly) doesn't provide service in our new house, so I've selected a small provider. When you call them, you get someone on the phone who has a name, who knows what they are talking about, and who can (and do!) help you. We'll be getting faster speeds at a lower price -- I'm looking forward to it.