Please come back, all is forgiven....

A few weeks ago I got a Sky salesman knocking at my door, trying to sell me the new faster, better, stronger, cheaper, all singing, all dancing 20MB Broadband, Satellite TV & Telephone deal, as seen on TV, all for £20.00 or there about. I don't usually buy anything on the doorstep, and according to my wife, I'm usually quite rude to pushy door to door salesmen. I don't know what it was, but on that day, I listened to the salesman, I don't know whether it was out of pity or due to the Jedi mind control techniques employed by this shrewd salesman (it was pity, I genuinely felt sorry for the man)...

Regardless, I decided to go for it, and signed up for the 20MB Unlimited Broadband Plus the Unlimited Call Package and the Satellite TV for around £40 a month, which is OK, because it was still less than what I was paying with Virgin Media, besides, the Broadband is 20MB with Sky, while I'm getting only 10MB with Virgin Media.

2 Days later, Sky installed the Satellite Dish and the Decoder.  A week later we got the telephone line, and today, we got the Broadband (around a month later)...

The first thing I did, was check the Connection Speed - I love the TV choice, but I'm really not happy with the, supposedly, 20MB Broadband Speed. See the screen image for the results...

Sky 20MB Broadband

 Virgin 10MB Broadband

And believe me when I say, you will notice the speed difference between what you had, and what you think you are paying for and should have.

I think one of the main reasons that I wasn't happy with Virgin is the fact that they treat existing customers, like SHIT, and with contempt.

I was one of the first people in the street to get a NYNEX phone line and Cable TV (around 1996), after a bit, they changed the name to NTL, to protect the innocent, and I stuck with them and added the dial-up internet connection, followed by a 1MB broadband package (this was later upgraded to 2MB), and when they finally sold-out to Virgin Media, I stuck with them through thick and thin. 

Shortly afterward, Virgin and Sky had a fallout which resulted in me, missing my daily dose of the Simpsons. I decided then to cancel the Cable TV subscription, because the only reason I had that was to watch the Simpsons on Sky 1, and during that period I had 90 Cable TV Channels with 80 being blocked and the other 5 being FREE TO VIEW terrestrial ones, like BBC1, 2, ITV, C4 & 5. So instead, I invested in a FREEVIEW box, that had a lot more choice than the Cable.

Still, with only a Phone Service and a 2MB Broadband, I was paying upward of £40 a month.. For few years I was quite happy, til my neighbor, who had just moved next door around a week earlier, had a problem with his Virgin Broadband and asked me to sort it out, and when I asked him how much he was paying, he said, around £17 per month for the first year, for a 12MB Broadband, Digital TV and Phone Service, and that it will go up to £24 a month after the first year.

I really wasn't happy. I felt that I was treated shoddily by them, especially when you consider what I was paying and how long I have been with them, my loyalty and my pathetic Broadband speed, so I phoned Virgin and tried to cancel the whole shebang (they apologised and told me that they will increase the Broadband speed to 6MB immediately, and they will increase that to 10MB within the next couple of months - this being the maximum speed that my modem and line could support). They will also reduce the amount I pay per month. I grudgingly accepted their offer, because I needed to keep my existing telephone number (I use that for business)..

And true to their word, they did increase my speed to 6MB, and around 2 months later, they increased that to 10MB, that lasted for about 4 weeks, then it dropped to the usual 6MB, without them mentioning anything to me or telling me why. I was still paying around £40 per months for the service.

Now I have an unlimited 20MB Broadband that only delivers 3.5MB on a good day... And when there are other users online, it performs considerably worst.. 

So what's the moral of the story. Well, its simply this - Regardless of what you are promised, what you do or what you try, you are screwed, because everybody is just going to lie to you and cheat you til they get your money, and afterward, they will just ignore you, because you no longer matter....