Phone and Broadband

[Barewolf]

Hi,
My Girlfriend has been with NTL for Phone and Broadband and as you know it went to Telewest and now Virgin.
Trouble she is having is that she can't afford to pay the Broadband now as they have upped the prices.
She is only on a crappy 2meg service and its costing her £18 a Month. Unlimited Download limit. Her phone is with them as well and thats £11 P/M + £5 Calls and £5 Charge.
She doesnt need Unlimited Download limit and she is happy with 2 meg, well she would prefer more speed but she cant afford to goto 10 meg and pay £37 P/M like i do obviously.
Has anyone got any reccomendations because she is doing 2 OU courses which she needs the net for and i am having to help her out to pay for her to stay online so she doesnt fail and I cant afford it myself.

[Tezcatlipoca]

What price rises?


The bottom-end VM broadband has been £18 per month for a long long time......


Sky Broadband is very cheap (from £free to £10 per month). But, it requires both a) a BT landline & b) a Sky TV subscription.


There's bound to be other deals out there for ADSL broadband, however they'd all obviously require a BT phoneline. Plus, anything really cheap would probably have a catch, such as a tiny tiny usage limit, or a slow speed, or whatever.

Have a look around http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ etc etc.


Virgin do a "2 for £20" bundle for Broadband "M" (2mbps) plus phoneline rental.

[nicke261192]

Dont have sky they SAY it is 26 pounds for the full deal but its not it is 37 pounds because you have to pay BT Line Rental and you can get Virgin for 30 pounds total

[Shaun]

BT line - £11 a month
calls with 1899.com - £5
BB from plus.net (or similar) £15

Total: £31 a month

Only a saving of £8 a month.

That's about as cheap as you'll get it.

[Barewolf]

If she goes to BT thou theres a connection charge isnt there? So whats that like 50 notes? And the Broadband, she will need to pay for equipment and installing it? another 50 notes? Is it worth all that hassle over the £8 extra? thats another 10 months with VM at her current state, again money she cant afford

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by Matt D

Virgin do a "2 for £20" bundle for Broadband "M" (2mbps) plus phoneline rental.

Why not phone VM & see if they can switch her to that?

Same as she's on now (2mbps plus phone), yet with a bundle saving ("2 for £20").

[Barewolf]

I asked her about this she said "Dont you have to be a new costumer to get that?" I dont know, do you? Can she just switch?

She also says she hasnt signed a contract with VM, only NTL or telewest, forget which one.

And thanks matt for not ripping me to peices like some idiots no need to name on this forum over some problems of this issue.

[Tezcatlipoca]

I'm not sure if you need to be a new customer or not, but it is always worth phoning them & asking anyway.

When I still had ntl (I'm now in a non-cable area), when I added the TV to my phone & BB I was able to have the "3 for £30" deal for phone + broadband + TV, despite not being a new customer.


You said in another thread she has the TV too... so it may be worth also looking at what deals they do for phone + BB + TV, as well as the 2 for £20 phone + BB.


Contract... doesn't matter. I assume it'd just carry over from when she was with ntl/TW.

[Marge]

Barewolf, I've read through quite a few of your posts concerning your girlfriend and her predicament and whilst I'm sure you mean well, you don't help yourself with daft remarks that get peoples backs up. Your post that started this thread says "She is only on a crappy 2meg service" and yet in the next sentence "she is happy with 2 meg" and other things in the same vein.

I suspect these things aren't coming from her but rather yourself who is frustrated on her behalf but try to remember that the very people who can offer help and advice are the ones you are not complimentry about.

I think your girlfriend needs to have a good look at her services and cut her cloth for the time being until things are more stable financially, perhaps she should ring VM and see what they are able to offer. Is she receiving help with the little one, http://www.entitledto.co.uk/ is somewhere she can check to make sure.

[Shaun]

Originally Posted by Barewolf

If she goes to BT thou theres a connection charge isnt there?

If there was ever a BT line there (probable) then no.

So what's that like 50 notes?

Was £70 I thunk it's now £120 but very few people pay for a new connection - most can have the free re-connection.

And the Broadband, she will need to pay for equipment and installing it?

http://www.plus.net/residential/broa...home_bbyw_0407

No.

another 50 notes?

No.

The info is in the link I posted before.

Is it worth all that hassle over the £8 extra? thats another 10 months with VM at her current state, again money she cant afford?

You tell me - if she's that poor then yes. If it's just an excuse as to why she hasn't paid her bill then probably not.

£8 a month doesn't sound much but it's £96 a year. That's alot of food to someone who's truly living on the breadline!

Like Marge said - you need to cut your cloth when you're poor. Most of us have been there and I couldn't afford Digital TV or the internet no matter what I wanted to do with it.

If she dumps the TV too then she can save even more money. A Freeview box is only £20 and the kid will get plenty of cartoons on there. Although some would argue he'd be better out playing with his mates.

[deysmeean]

Hi All

The advice above if fine and good, but I would like to offer my suggestion, The thing with these bundle packages is that though they seem cheap and nice, there is always on thing amongst them that is rubbish.

If you really want to be ahead of the game then do what I did. I got a 24Meg line for £24 per month from BeThere https://www.bethere.co.uk/, I dropped there mail service and use a free web mail service like hotmail or yahoo. I needed a BT line to get broadband. For phone calls I use BT’s £19.99 per month packages (can’t remember the name), but I can make local and national call peak and off peak free which includes mobile calls.

I don’t use BT for international calls I use http://www.reallyjustdial.co.uk/ and use their access numbers which is extremely cheap

So all in all If I add up all I get, its better value for money than the bundle packages

Good Luck

Regards

[londoner_1]

No need to change.

I am on a 2mb line since dec 05 plus had switched to vm phone and paying £20pm (weekends free), however i phoned up their retention dept and told them i will be moving to carphone wharohouse 19.99 package (free internet plus 24/7 free phone calls), if they want me to stay they will have to match it.

They matched it at £19.99.

[Skyornot]

If you did need to be a new customer couldn't you just cancel the service and then re-instate it later as a 'new customer'?
Anyway,when i was on the phone to VM, i was told i would have to sign up to a 12 month contract as it was essentially a new deal with a new company, so therefore surely everyone is in effect a new customer (i've been an NTL customer for over 2 years btw).