Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their
product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than
bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.

After all "Enough is sufficient unto the day", and with 3 phones in
the house I have enough already without a fourth.

Derek G

On May 9, 3:27*am, Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their
product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than
bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.

After all "Enough is sufficient unto the day", and with 3 phones in
the house I have enough already without a fourth.

Derek G

They obviously want you to get rid of the other phones and use theirs.

Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels), Sky
Broadband with unlimited downloads, and Sky Talk with free 'anytime' calls
and free calls to most European countries, USA and Canada (including line
rental).

Having Sky broadband also means that I can connect the router to my Sky Box
and get 'Anytime plus' with pages of movies and programmes available to
download and watch 'on demand' free of charge.

I reckon that's pretty good value compared with other 'packages' I've looked
at - and I've been more than happy with Sky broadband service as well.

VM TV may be cheaper than Sky TV - but then they don't have as many channels
and don't have quite a number of the more popular channels either. I
suppose, in relation to TV, a lot depends upon what channels/programmes you
watch.

--
Kev

Ret. wrote:

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels),

Ye gods; £900 a year to watch crap telly and do a bit of browsing. Makes
me glad I find almost nothing to watch on TV.

--
Scott

Where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

On May 9, 8:29*am, "Ret." wrote:
Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels), Sky
Broadband with unlimited downloads, and Sky Talk with free 'anytime' calls
and free calls to most European countries, USA and Canada (including line
rental).

Having Sky broadband also means that I can connect the router to my Sky Box
and get 'Anytime plus' with pages of movies and programmes available to
download and watch 'on demand' free of charge.

I reckon that's pretty good value compared with other 'packages' I've looked
at - and I've been more than happy with Sky broadband service as well.

VM TV may be cheaper than Sky TV - but then they don't have as many channels
and don't have quite a number of the more popular channels either. I
suppose, in relation to TV, a lot depends upon what channels/programmes you
watch.

--
Kev

You need to get out more.

MBQ

Man at B&Q wrote:
On May 9, 8:29 am, "Ret." wrote:
Derek G. wrote:
Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre
optic broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

I am paying £74.50 pm for Sky HD TV (including movie channels), Sky
Broadband with unlimited downloads, and Sky Talk with free 'anytime'
calls and free calls to most European countries, USA and Canada
(including line rental).

Having Sky broadband also means that I can connect the router to my
Sky Box and get 'Anytime plus' with pages of movies and programmes
available to download and watch 'on demand' free of charge.

I reckon that's pretty good value compared with other 'packages'
I've looked at - and I've been more than happy with Sky broadband
service as well.

VM TV may be cheaper than Sky TV - but then they don't have as many
channels and don't have quite a number of the more popular channels
either. I suppose, in relation to TV, a lot depends upon what
channels/programmes you watch.

--
Kev

You need to get out more.

LOL!

--
Kev

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

VM *do* offer broadband only packages but they aren't that much cheaper.
See eg
http://shop.virginmedia.com/broadban...-packages.html

I can only speculate on the business model but FWIW combined bundles
mean VM can quote lower prices for internet, comparable with what
competitors advertise. I guess potential new customers mostly look at
such figures. It is also not unreasonable given the cabling is the same
whatever package you take.

It may help to look at it another way. ADSL requires wires. A lot of
(young) people these days don't use wired phones, just mobiles. If they
want ADSL for faster/cheaper internet access they might say "why do I
have to pay for a stone age phone when all I want is internet?" AIUI
though they won't get one without t'other.
--
Robin
PM may be sent to rbw0{at}hotmail{dot}com

"Derek G." wrote in message
...

Attn. Virgin Media customers.

Daughter had Virgin Media when she was away as a student and would
like us to kick Sky into touch and move to Virgin Media because of
some of it's features. I would quite fancy the super fast fibre optic
broadband, plus VM is cheaper than Sky.

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

Its a marketing ploy..
They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people pay quite a
bit to use it so profits are high.

I don't know how you decided VM was cheaper than sky though, it isn't for
me.

dennis@home wrote:
Its a marketing ploy..
They want you to use all their services so they can make more cash.
The phone service is actually a cheap thing to supply and people pay quite
a bit to use it so profits are high.

They advertise the line rental as relatively inexpensive (when you tot up
the bundle prices) but fail to mention that their call charges are really
high. And since they say you're paying '12.99' for the line rental, they
want to encourage you to cease your BT line to 'save money', when in fact if
you use the phone much it'll cost a packet in calls.

32p/min to Three mobile anyone? Calling from BT is 13p/min.

Theo

In article ,
Derek G. wrote:

Just one question. - On all their tariffs why do VM then insist on
everybody either taking a stone age telephone or in default of taking
one pay for it anyway?

I already have 3 phonelines into the house on long contracts.

It seems illogical to me for VM to avoidably add cost to their
product. If they wanted a higher price for their service rather than
bundling a compulsory phone they should simply increase the price.


It doesn't always work like that. I've had broadband with them (and before
when they were NTL, and before that when they were Cable&Wireless) starting
with the 150k service that was amazing (no ADSL offering back then), through
600k, 1M, 5M, 10M and now 50M. Tempted to move to the 100M service soon.

I just had the broadband service, but at some point (probably about 5 years
ago) it became *cheaper* to take a tv box in the bedroom that I didn't want
than to just have the broadband.

Sometimes it works out cheaper to take the whole lot than to pay BT for
line rental. Of course, they screw you royally for call charges... not an
issue for us as we rarely use it but something to be careful of. Also,
watch out for caller ID - free on BT, 2.50 a month on VM.

I suspect their main driver for getting people to take the phoneline is that
most people will move from BT and remove their BT line. That makes moving
away from VM broadband a whole lot more complex as you need to coordinate
BT reconnecting you along with all the other stuff...

Darren