I hope you fine people can give me some pointers. The background: My wife and I live with our disabled son, my wife is his full time carer and all the agencies she is engaged with use our house phone number. I am moving house tomorrow and I have just had a text message from Virgin tor tell me my install has been placed on hold. After speaking to 11 different people, repeating my security answer at least 7 times, I finally managed to find someone who could tell me the issue is with the cable from the cabinet to my new home (I think the issue is that it doesn't exist!). Resolution time is 2-3 months! This is obviously really helpful the day before moving, if they had told me three weeks ago when I first ordered it or the couple of times I have phoned since, I could have arranged something else. The temporary solution (any thoughts you have would be great): 1 - Broadband: I have a "free" sim card from Virgin as part of my new package. That combined with one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07S7DMY3H/ should get me up and running on broadband (at 4G speeds at least). 2 - Phone: Any idea if there is a VOIP type phone I could plug in that would work with the above? 3- TV: We have Netflix and Amazon prime, supplementing with a freeview / freesat box is most likely my plan.
Do Virgin not offer services down the copper phone line? Are you waiting for them to install one of their fibre optic (is that what they use?) lines?
Don't think Virgin does FTTH/FTTP yet: for all the old "REAL FIBRE" advertising poking fun at Openreach still using POTS for the last mile Virgin's always been coax to the property.
As far as i can see our Virgin phone line is on the old POTS, as it uses the BT Master socket. We had an alternative socket when we were with NTL a long time ago, but then went to BT for some years and back to Virgin when they were appreciably better than NTL had been. So, your phone may be on POTS after all. Everything crossed for your move and comms sorting themselves out
Since this is their cock-up, try persuading them to send you a free 4g router for all the data you'd be entitled too under your agreed package. Also as Dave suggests, see if they'll redirect calls to that sim, have it in an old phone (you can have mine if you don't have one but, I'm sure you have a drawer full).
I’m pretty pissed off to be honest. The house uses an old telegraph style telephone line, which the old boy (94) currently living there just uses for a phone. I’m guessing it’s made of cheese, so any service down that is likely going to be terrible. I like the forwarding the phone number to the wife’s mobile. That’s a great idea and will follow up on that. I tried to get them to give me a 4G router but there mobile and cable divisions are separate, so won’t help. Will just buy one and include it in my claim for compensation. Overall very disappointing. I might just get them to put all the infrastructure in then cancel. So I could use them in future.
If the area has FTTC then you might be pleasantly surprised. It won't be 200mbit+ but 60+ is possible. Have you threatened to leave? Might that get their arses in gear?
I think it would be at least worth checking what sort of internet you can get down the phone line. Pretty much all copper lines are ancient but there is still a reasonable chance of decent FTTC speeds.
Just be aware that redirecting numbers to a mobile number generally costs the caller the cost of connecting to a mobile which can be expensive for the caller. That's how it was explained to me when I enquired after I changed my mobile number over to another service provider.
Urg, I feel for oyu. Took 2months for our internet to get installed when we first moved in! Worst part is, our house is a mobile deadzone, so no mobile broadband either!
I can personally vouch for the MR600 , excellent bit of kit. See what sort of speeds you get on 3 / Smarty, unlimited DATA for £20 per month, 1TB fair usage, no tethering / hotspot penalties. 30 day rolling contract so you could cancel when you're ready. Just check speeds first.
Definitely worth a try. I'm on BT's FTTC on an ancient drop-wire, and I get: BT's trying to sell me a 100Mb/s+ service, too, but I'm waiting until my crazy-cheap £20-a-month all-in contract expires before looking into that.
Often companies are desperate to keep customers, especially with it being so easy to switch nowadays. Also - this is from last week's moneysavingexpert email: So companies are being forced to tell you that you'll be paying over the odds and presumably to give you a new deal and get you to sign a new contract. I'm with Plusnet and get very similar speeds - about 57/17 on an average day. Edit: Oooh - I've just realised that my contract with them is up on 15th March. Time to start shopping around methinks. Edit 2: Shame that my contract isn't up slightly sooner - Vodafone would offer me £23.95/month for line rental & broadband with a £100 Amazon voucher - same speeds I'm currently on too. I'll have to wait a couple of weeks and see what deals are around then.
I don't think you can give notice until the contract is up. Most companies take notification of a switch being requested by another company as notice.
I should be hearing from Sky Fibre soon, but I'll likely depart them as my home town is one of the 227 Openreach have decided will get FTTH within the next 12 months!
Had a phone call from a really helpful lady from Virgin at lunch time today. Virgin will apparently need to lay 65m of cable to connect the house. Which they aren't prepared to do, so they are cancelling my order. I questioned this as the big grey virgin box (oooooooh matron!) is only 25m up the road, but apparently I don't know what I'm talking about, as it will definitely require 65 meters of cabling to get the 25m up the road to my house. I then tried signing up with Sky, but apparently the old guy who was here before had a sky sub and hasn't cancelled it, so I need to speak to someone and cant do it online (so no cashback) FFS! Only plus is I should hopefully get my Smarty sim Tuesday so can get he household WiFi back up. Thanks @modd1uk for the tip, I might just use that for my work connection in the garden office.
Well that's a pain but at least you know where you stand... Is it Sky or nothing (as in do you need the telly)?
