Broadband and TV costs. How to reduce them?

Could you try contacting Virgin to say you are leaving as the price is now too high? Not sure that would work, really should try it myself. Our monthly cost for BT Sport etc is now more than the national debt of a Baltic nation.

I think we ought to try that Alima. The big companies must be making enormous profits with their TV and broadband packages. I really would like to walk away!

The sports channel (Sky Sports) is one of OH's luxuries and it does get used, but it is an expensive add-on!

I was a Virgin customer for 23 years (ntl before that), and my last bill was £62, for broadband, landline (free calls for 1hr to any landline), and a Tivo box. I asked if they can offer me a better deal - they offered me £8 a month off!

I changed to Sky this week, and for the landline and broadband, NO tv, I'll be paying £27 monthly for 18 months (by then, I'll go with whichever company is doing the best deal. I intend buying a Freeview box.

I have nothing extra except Freeview and I pay the line rental separately again with Plusnet.

I hope you are sitting own comfortably because I only pay around £15 a month and that includes the cost of telephone calls 24/7. I get the first hour free but I have to pay if I use the landline to ring a mobile.

I watch a lot of tennis and athletics but I could not afford
Sky Sport or Virgin. I have a Humax box bought separately for recording programmes but these days I do not have many in the wings waiting to be watched.

Because I have been a long standing customer with Plusnet I only pay a fiver a month for my mobile but I rarely use it.

I think we ought to get a box which records when we ditch Virgin. I haven't heard of Humax Charleygirl.

We have so many channels we don't watch and rarely watch live TV because of all the advertisement breaks. I'll have to investigate exactly what you get with Now TV and Freeview.

We use Freeview and an Amazon Firestick which gives catch up access and all sorts of other things plus a recorder box when it’s usedul. More is accessible with an Amazon Prime subscription. As several accounts can be linked to one Prime subscription our son used his to give us more to watch. We don’t actually watch much other than standard catchup. Don’t dare tell him .

It is worth negotiating with Virgin. If you do an internet search for deals, make a note of the prices and quote them to virgin you may well find a price match occurs.

Good luck, hope you get a better deal.

I m with EE pay about £ 25 month for internet and phone I only use freeview and then I catch up anything I miss on my iPad Seems fine to me don’t need any more Simples

I've just switched to Plusnet from BT. For unlimited fibre broadband and evening and weekend calls, we now pay £27 a month, much less than BT was charging, and I was sent a cheque for £75 for signing up. The basic broadband was a lot cheaper, but we don't get a fast enough service in this area to rely on that.

As far as TV goes we just have Freeview, and find we've more than enough to watch. We've lots of things recorded and I've also got Chromecast, so we don't need catch up if we happen to miss something good.

I asked virgin if they could reduce my bill for around three years, and they insisted they couldn't.
I threatened to leave, and they said "fine, go!"
About a day before I changed over to talktalk someone phoned me from virgin, with dire warnings about how terrible it would be for me with talktalk, and how bad their customer service is.
I said I was willing to take my chances, since the costs would be half of what virgin were charging.
On the day of the changeover, virgin phoned and offered to match talktalks deal, and I told them to poke it where the sun don't shine.
Then they had the audacity to charge me for the following months service!

We have new catch up TV as the old one stopped working. I loved my free view record box and do miss it. As for broadband, we were with Plusnet for ages and it was the best service we’ve had. Changed to Vodophone cos DH is wilts them for mobile so got it cheaper. As soon as this contract is over I’ll be back to Plusnet. If you go with them just remember to call them at the end of the contract and tell them the renewal is too pricy and they have always reduced it back to the previous level.
I have Amazon Prime and download books, as well as occasionally looking at films. Tbh, there is enough stuff on free view and catch up to keep me occupied.

Talktalk for us were a nightmare when it went wrong, so no way would we ever go back to them. They were ok when all was well

VIrgin is all cable, and I am really not sure if we have an overhead line to our house. Hmmm. Will check in the daylight and when it warms up a tad outside. I think Sky do a cable service now? (I might be wrong.) We have no wish to swap Virgin for another big and expensive company though.

We have virgin phone and tv but it's very expensive. This thread has prompted me to phone and discuss them lowering the cost or us leaving. My only worry is we had a new/better/faster box fitted last year - does this mean we're tied into some deal does anyone know?

Plusnet do high speed as well now. We have it but don’t have any extra TV but we do have phone. We use IPlayer, The Hub, Netflix and Prime for additional choices.

Iam64 you usually start a new contract with Virgin if you ask for your service to be changed. But they will have sent you a letter or email with the details.
Ring them and ask about lowering cost...they can only say no.

We are looking to get a smart TV and use Freeview. With some new TVs you can record onto a memory stick, or USB hard drive. So no special recording box needed.

We left sky because the cost was getting ridiculous but after 12 months decided to rejoin as we missed some of the programmes and the record feature which we used a lot as husband works nights.We got offered a really good deal on rejoining,half what we were paying previously.Our daughter decided to leave Virgin because of spiralling costs and was offered a really good deal to stay so definitely worth a try.

Thanks Pittcity, I'll do that and report back

Not sure if my memory is playing tricks but I seem to remember that Martin Lewis recommended Plusnet as a cheaper option to BT even though....
Plusnet is part of the BT group.

We rarely watch anything that is on terrestrial tv. We have SKY , amazon prime and Netflix. Perhaps it helps that there are three of us in the house so the costs are shared. We don’t pay for Sky sports or movies. We were with TalkTalk and I found they were good when anything was went wrong. I would report it via phone to a machine and it got fixed but the bill went up and up so we combined everything with Sky. My experience is that when you tell any provider you are leaving they always magically remember a new deal.

When our contract with bt finishes we intend to switch to Sky for phone and broadband. This was almost halve our bill.

We do have a SkyQ though.

Rightly or wrongly I don't want to use sky ( largely Murdoch-related).
I currently have virgin but like others, the costs are constantly creeping up. Am willing to switch for a better deal but a major reservation concerns wiring. I have high-speed broadband but can't work out if all the cabling to router/tivo box/landline would have to be fully replaced by a new supplier.
I hate surface wiring in my old flat and it's currently well concealed.
I record programmes to watch when it suits me but have no extras package and use very few of the channels available.. Would Chromecast or firestick replace the recording function of the tivo box?

Unfortunately, sky has most of the football and cricket. Unfortunately, Sport is only available on the most expensive packages too.

Not daft are they?

We have decided that we need to get a child in to figure everything out for us as we have a lovely big tv which apparently takes sd cards and skart cable but haven't a clue how to use all these bits or even what they are and do!

We have sky and pay over £60 a month which is far too much for what we use so clearly need to get a handle on the whole thing to save some money. We are probably their ideal customer ie eminently fleeceable!

They’re useful, these children, Synonymous! When we’re looking after him at DD2’s, we have a 5 year old to sort out the Sky/Netflix/Prime accounts, at DS’s his 6 year old can find us whatever we want on Virgin/Netflix. Just as well, or we’d probably just have to read a book.