When I moved into my new house one of the first things I did was purchase myself a nice new Sky+ box. Boy, was that a big mistake.
Virgin, please read the following and adapt your advertising appropriately:
- You don’t own the box: Virgin don’t sell you a box, they let you rent it. Which means free repairs, free replacements and no extra £10-15 a month for a support plan just to get someone out to your house when your Sky box is dead. Virgin also offer remote support on the box where by they can fix some problems over the phone. Sky doesn’t offer this, unless you’re paying extra. Another benefit to this for Virgin’s customers is that your box also gets upgraded for free too.
- Record two, watch one: With Virgin this literally means watch one program whilst recording two others. With Sky, this means record two programs and one watch of them. This is annoying as you more often than not end up watching parts of one of the programs you’ve got set to record. Another annoyance attached to this is that Sky disables all other features when two programs are recording, no information, no guide, nothing unless you cancel a recording.
- Television, that isn’t on: anywhere. Sky has ‘catch up TV’ where by you have a selection of 15-20 great programs over the past week to watch through. The problem is, you require a subscription to the channels to watch them. With Virgin there’s this and a massive back catalogue including the BBC iPlayer, Channel 4’s 4-on-Demand and hundreds of other series for you to watch through. A massive, massive plus on Virgin’s side.
Feel free to share your annoyances with Sky or Virgin Media in the comments below. I’d love to hear your opinions.
Pretty interesting. Everything I’ve seen about Virgin Media’s TV service does definitely seem quite positive, although I don’t think I could live without Sky One, Two, and Three. Has that all been sorted out yet or is Sky still keeping them to itself?
Also, when I had NTL there was frequently very significant lag whilst using the interface; in fact, sometimes it’d just outright freeze up for 30 seconds or more. This went on for years right up until it was dumped few months before the whole Virgin Media thing happened. Has that been sorted out yet?
Sky Two/Three are on Virgin (I think), but Sky One isn’t. It is a massive loss, but the choice of all the TV and Movies on demand (especially the free ones) make up for this in my opinion.
From what I can see the newer boxes are completely fine but the older ones still have the occasional problem with everything. Though when they bought Telewest and rolled that out everywhere it was a massive improvement.
all sky channels sky1,2,3, and sports are back :D so CHANGE TO VIRGIN :D lol
Just tried Virgin and left, Virgin TV is great but their phone calls are sooooo expensive compared to BT, and sadly if you just want tv from virgin its far more expensive than sky, let alone their broadband. I liked the TV Choice and Catch up but paying throught the nose for phone just to have on demand isnt worth it, I’ll watch iplayer on pc instead.
Well i can say that virgin is better then sky because of its fibre optic broadband but sky have many more channels then virgin so hats off to sky on tv.
I’ve got Virgin XL and a Sky TV package…
Since Branson bought NTL its been a massive improvement
There are alot of pros and cons for both Sky + Virgin
Sky’s+ box responds so much faster and feels like they cared about the interface compared to Virgin’s+ box (Changing channels, browsing the guide etc,apparently this is down to it having 3 tuners instead of Sky’s 2)
Virgin’s has all the on demand stuff with his awesome, Sky has almost nothing.(I believe this is changing soon, which is why they are shifting stock of the HD boxes)
The Virgin broadband is awesome when its working a full speed but during peak times speeds are capped and your flashy 20mb line is squished down to 5mb all in the terms apparently :(
i went from virgin to sky to virgin to sky and now we goin back to VIRGIN for good as some people have said the tv choice is fantaistc i watch supernautal s1 s2 s3 and they puting s4 on also if u a XL tv coustmer u get all music free instead of paying 20p and if anyone says about phone calls simple Talk unlimeted cost £5 pcm and means u can talk for 59mins and 59secs and not even pay 0000.01p which is handy if you talk alot on the phone.
sky broadband is far cheaper £15 pound cheaper on 20mb but is made of copper wires which means you will get some delay during 4.30pm and 10.30pm as mass users online Virgin offer fibre (glass) which means no delay at all as it makes ur broadband travel at speed of (cant mem if sound or light) and also Virign are only people to give out 50mb which is superfast we talking 1 song 1sec 15gb hd video 5hrs+ of flim downloaded in less than 30mins virgin is the best one to go for they do have problems with box a lot but so so easy to get fixed and Sky1 2 and 3 are all on virgin and HD
We were promised interactive on Virgin as we are football mad and as Champions Leagues games are usually on interactive we wanted to make sure. We were told by three different staff that this was to be the case only to find out that we were lied to and customer service made a mistake. Three times!
It’s ridiculous that big companies can get away with things like this and simply put it down to a simply mistake. Both Virgin and Sky record all phone calls yet they couldn’t reverse the mistake which is ridiculous in my opinion.
Find out who regulates virgin or sky, they will have to tell you if you ask them. Keep notes on all your calls eg. time of call, promises they have made who you spoke to. If you are not satisfied tell them you would like to know there complaints or grievance procedures, make sure you ask time scales for redress or rejection and what confirmation in writing and continued notification they will give you during the procedure from start to finish of your complaint. Threaten to go to the regulators. You should find they will sort out any problems you are having or come up with a reasonable alternative. It is more hassle for them sorting complaints and grievances through the regulator company than just sorting it out themselves. They may have to pay a heavy fine if they are in breach of contract. It is likely as you are paying for their services they are also covered by the FSA (financial service authority) and you should speak to an Ombudsman this is free to you and will probably cost the company.
Don’t give up just sort it out ! ! !
Just tried Virgin and left, Virgin TV is great but their phone calls are sooooo expensive compared to BT, and sadly if you just want tv from virgin its far more expensive than sky, let alone their broadband. I liked the TV Choice and Catch up but paying throught the nose for phone just to have on demand isnt worth it, I’ll watch iplayer on pc instead.
Very interesting. I am a Virgin customer who is seriously considering changing to Sky. For the past three months I have had nothing but problems with Virgin – both my TV, broadband and phone and still it has not been resolved.
I can’t begin to tell you how many hours I have wasted trying to resolve the problems – from waiting on hold for literally hours (longest time so far has been an hour before I even got to talk to someone!) to taking time off work to wait for engineers. And I’m still experiencing problems – nearly every day in fact. This morning I couldn’t access the TV as my set top box was frozen and the only response was they would send out an engineer but that would take 5 days! My internet access is sporadic at best regardless of the time I go on-line!
In theory I’m sure I would agree with all the comments above however in practice I would seriously warn anyone to think twice before signing up. They have caused me nothing but frustration, disappointment and anger. And that’s nearly every day!
Virgin are far better than sky you can watch tv you have missed phone calls are free evenings and weekends broadband second to none and when its stormy weather you dont loose your picture.
I am at Looking at getting either one, seems that you cannot get a V+ equiv to sky plus unless you have the V+ HD, so I worked it all out
@ 30.50 with phone line with sky , similar with virgin £38.50 minimum……
so for basic browsing, alot of tv ( no rip off sport or movies) but all the other good ones. sky will save me 8.00 a month ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, will i reget it i ll let you know seems like all teh customer service departmnets doi not know what the word means,,,,,,you have to have the same mindset as me ,,, they do not care about 1 customer,,,,,
they have millions , one person (customer) does not matter,, as sky will loose one and virgin will losse one ,,,,, untill there is some proper competition,,( bit like the political partys of this country) ill let you know if i regret going with sky
What I find really annoying about Virgin +,I don’t have broadband or phone, is that the virgin + box continually fail to record the start and the end of programmes,I have complained about this problem a number of times,I am now having to record all the programmes manually.
Another compliant I have with Virgin is that the Virgin+ box keeps rebooting itself in the middle of recording which means that the recordings fail.
I think that both Virgin and Sky are as bad as each other.
I work for Sky (i used to work for ntl before it changed to virgin) and i must say its great.
and people should think about what they say when they say “you dont loose picture in stormy weather” but thats because virgin uses old fasioned cable (underground) and sky… Well it says it in its name!
What was it like working at virgin as apposed to sky? I got through to interviews at sky but failed at the role play.
Someone said though that’s it’s harder to get in now, I must say they do go a bit over the top with the assessment and interviews.
The above comment by Jazza 98 is nonsense. Are you suggesting that there is some sort of benefit that customers get from Sky being provided through a satelite dish? From where i’m standing, theres only a big downside: you cant get a picture in bad weather! AND, to call the fibre optic cable network ‘old fashioned’ is just a tad hypocritical when Sky run their internet from copper wire phone lines, which are centuries old and give customers an average speed of less than 3mbps on Skys up to 20mbps broadband. Fibre optic broadband is the future! And Virgin TV tops Sky TV in every aspect!
I agree with Djn2k10 jazza28 sounds like a 12 year old kid supporting his favourite games consule. Get the fact rightbefore commenting. Virgin medias services are way beyond anything Sky will or can offer. Cable is far supperior to sky.
The only issue I have with virgin Media is there pricing but to be honest im sure if I had sky with the same package im on it would probably cost the same as virgin.
Cant beat there broadband package and the only problem with their tv package is the lag when using the remote but this has been resolved somewhat with the new V+ box which I just recieved.
I have to side with the SKY service. I’ve seen both, and am not impressed with the quantity of HD channels being streamed by Virgin. Also, the picture quality on the Virgin HD box appeared slightly poorer than on the Sky HD box – using the same Samsung TV.
I do agree with David I had Virgin TV and Even I am also using my SONY Bravia TV. The HD content which Sky is showing is any given day much much better than Virgin and Sky offers upto 63 channels in HD. There is a real difference when you watch Cricket match like Ashes Test series or any big Football match. I totally agree with Sky.
Hello mate, I just got a Virgin “Please use us and drop Sky package” through my letter box. Included in this little pack was a print out of this page, really weird but cool. Would be interesting to see if you get an increase in work from it? Pic: http://twitpic.com/1hki16
Odd, Virgin media a direct mailing print-outs of this web-page as part of an advertising campaign. It comes with a pamphlet with some exceedingly sloppy copywriting such as “Broadband at up to 50Mb” (did they forget the per-second bit?) – so are you by any chance involved with the advertising agency which sent this DM?
Hi Salim,
Virgin’s advertising agency did indeed send this post out to several million Sky customers. I agreed with them to allow the re-publishing of this article which was in no way written especially for that campaign. I wrote this quite a while ago and simply agreed to have it re-published as it still represents my personal and current views on the divides between the two service providers.
it has to be said but Sky is terrible and I’m finding Virgin TV far more superior. Virgin seems to have all the ropes. Sky in its time was good but now Virgin has rose to be much better.
On demand if you’re subscribed is much better than Sky, especially with Sky’s poor list of 15 to 20 catch up channels. So far it seems Sky offers you 32 pounds value, and Virgin offers you unlimited value for money as you’re never going to get bored with on demand on Virgin.
I was a Sky TV customer for many years and earlier this month i ditched it and moved to Virgin. I already had phone and broadband from Virgin and the reliability has always been superb. On the rare occaision that it did go wrong, an engineer was out within a couple of days and fixed it for no additional charge.
Sky annoy me, because you pay a lot for the service and when the service has issues, you’re then expected to pay for engineer call out and so on. That was my reason for ditching it.
Also I found Sky to be slow, affected by bad weather, and frequent box lock ups and failed recordings. I used to put up with this and power off and on my box to get it up and running again etc, but I’d had enough of all that and wasn’t willing to pay Sky even more money for an Engineer to come and fix it.
So far I’m pleased with my new Virgin TV service, but time will tell!….
I hve just had a missed call. It was from the sky engineer. I explained that I called virgin 2 days ago to cancel subscription and they informed me that in the last 6 weeks they have come up with a a deal of Matching sky. Full xl package broadband and phone £35
The engineer then started a sales talk of how rubbish virgin is and began a whole series of comparisons.
At first i thought hmm maybe I should continue with my switch over…but then I began to wonder if this poor engineer was paid commission per job…. I really do not like being manipulted.
Any way after reading lots of these comments I am now not sure what to do. I do think that my mind is more to staying with virgin.
The phone is a worry. are they really more expensive. anyway I need to make a decision as one engineer is hanging on for a decision and other virgin are due to come out tomorrow (friday) to reconnect telly. (i got so pissed off with not being able to have the music chanel I disconnected the virgin telly)
I wish I’d seen this page sooner. As I type, Sky are removing my Virgin box and I already know I will regret it. I made the decision to change when my girlfriend moved in and demanding sky. My initial 12 month contract had lapsed, and I still remembered a bad customer service experience from a few months ago, so I had no strong objections.
In time though I came started to realise all the points raised above, and to cap it all off – sky have totally messed me around with the installation. Their customer service seems to be even worse – and in virgin’s defence I was asking something a little unusual, whereas sky can’t even sort out a standard installation.
Can’t wait for another year to pass so I can switch back. (Our lass will just have to lump it)
I have been with NTL then Virgin for the last 14 years, I have recently swapped to Sky. I have managed to save around £5 per month on my bill. However Virgin have phoned up in the last few days and told my wife that we could have the HD XL package (tv, phone & broadband for only £29 per month. Although they didn’t say how long it would be at this price for. Has anyone else received a lower price quote over the phone since swapping. The phone rep kept reminding my wife that we should exercise our rights to cancel Sky as we were still within our 30 day cooling off period.
I am currently a virgin media customer, got my new 3d tv and was thinking about SKY, I am still on normal cable tv so would it be wise to stick with them and go for the V+hd ?
just switched to sky from virgin. regretting it already! only way sky beats virgin is hype & advertising. My broadband is about 6x slower and no catch-up tv! roll on 12months!
I have Virgin and I am happy with it generally, although I have an older digital box (I can watch catch up TV but can’t record an entire series at the click of a button). Should I upgrade to the new box?
My uncle lives in Islington in a new build and Virgin don’t offer their TV service on that street. He would love to sign up and has been waiting ages. Any idea how to find out why/when Virigin decides to enter an area/street.
Im a sky+ customer paying £54/month for all channels. I live in an apartment block so even though I pay for the + bit I can actually only record 1 channel, god help me if I turn it over as I get the no signal message and then have to unplug my box for a minute then turn it back on again.
I have spoken to sky about this and apparently they cant do anything. Not even a discount for not receiving the full package I am paying for.
Does anyone know what Virgin is like in apartments? Do you still get the record 2 watch 1 option? If so I’ll be switching tomorrow!!
Thanks!
I have Sky+ HD but due to the variation in HD picture quality depending on the day of the week (I find Sunday is best for all HD on Sky) I’m considering a move to Virgin hoping that the cable will give a more consistant picture signal – has anyone experienced similar issue ?
Adrian, I dont understand how that could happen!
katies sounds like you havnt got 2 feeds into you sky box.
I am with Virgin Media and have the full package phone, 100mb broadband and Tivo box. I love it, £115 a month well spent. Been with Virgin media for about three years, yes their India call centre can be a PITA but once got past them their service rocks. Never been with sky so cannot compare, but they will have to be good to beat the service I get with Virgin Media.
Just moved over to Virgin from Sky and have a brand new (free!) Tivo box. This blows Sky right out of the water in my opinion. Record 3 channels at a time and still do other things on the box like watching the ondemand stuff.
The broadband is a huge leap forward too! Speedtest,net showed I get 29mbps compared to 4.5mpbs on Sky.
Virgin I can simply say dont even compare to sky, there overall service is lacking, highest call charges in the UK, the BB may be fibre optic but they cap there speeds if you download more than 3GB through the day and its capped at 2.5 mps which is a joke considering sky give you your optimum speed at all times which in my case varys between 12-16 mps, the t.v granted tivo is half decent and higher recordings of 3 compared to skys 2 is good but at an overall higher price and having the bloody delay on the box constantly is just not worth it, would not recomend Virigin atall, sky hands down every time, better overall service nice staff and always happy to help. Virgin are simply no where near the overall service quality, and are just more expensive all there is too it
Everyone,
I had sky hd for 1month. it’s is being slow, and annoys, i did paid to the man work at sky. it cost about 110pound for to repairs it. 2day later it’s is not working. i was give up.
I was thinking about that i paid the virgin. I had pay it. it’s was really good, and fast, good channel. But sky had a really good channels but it’s is annoys slow.. and i have a virgin over 3year. it none problem, i’m put sky at my bedroom.. it’s being slow and annoys, i was leave it out..
i think virgin is the best… sky is rubbish as make!
Do Virgin have sky go or anything equivalent to that? No I dont think so and for anyone that doesn’t know what sky go is… It’s where you can watch your sky tv package on the go through up to 2 devices ie iPhone, laptop, android so on…. Also for anyone to say sky don’t have on demand… What’s sky anytime+??? Read up! Over 450 movies on there. Sky’s entertainment extra package cost £25, virgins cost £26.50… Sky sports cost £20, virgin charge £22.50….sky movies cost £16, virgin costs £18.50…. Sky line rental cost £12.25, virgin cost £13.90…..you do the Maths!!! Fair enough sky don’t have fibre optic yet but come April they will. Virgin rent there channels from sky so will always be more!
I’ve been with Virgin since NTL. They’re expensive. The normal response/delay on the box is excessive.
It nearly freezes at midnight, for up to 10 mins, I presume when they’re updating the box. It sometimes re-boots itself!
I am seriously thinking of switching to Murdock, as they have the channels I want in their basic package. I have to go XL with Virgin.
Very reliable BB (Manchester), the main reason I’m still undecided.
At the mo, it’s £52pcm with Virgin, or £37pcm with Murdock (risking slower bb speeds and third world call centres)
My problem is … thete’s nothing else, other than these two!
Please, please, someone get another company together and offer frreview, freesat and specific channels on a subscription.
I subscribe to the full sky package – £62-50 p/m
I am with Talk Talk phone and broadband plus anytime calls and line rental – £28-50 p/m. Total £91-00. Can any tell me how much to get the same with virgin. After all the offers lapse.
In the year I’ve. Been with virgin I’ve only box fail 1 and that was sorted out over phone with in 20 mins. And box and even new remote are. No this as kids lost there remote had. New 1 with in 3 days.
I feel like I have just been mugged by Sky!
I called them 2 weeks ago to match their price against a Virgin offer I had received.
Sky offered a 25% reduction in monthly cost, plus a new HD box (mine was 10 years old). Not bad, I thought.
I called them today (2 weeks later) to take them up on the offer. At which point they decided to only offer a 20% reduction on monthly cost and no new box.
Talk about kicking your loyal customers in the teeth!
I am very angry. Sky have treated me so badly that I will do anything to not use their services ever again.
Sky – not to be trusted.
I will be leaving Virgin Media never to return just the moment that we possibly can and all because this is undoubtably the most uncaring and thoroughly nasty company that I have ever encountered , that through its own woeful incompetence has caused us so much grief without making any effort whatsoever to either keep its insincere promises to us or to address the problems properly, other than ONE non computer generated letter that refused to either note or apologise for not keeping to the promises made by one of its so-called ‘Directors’ in a previous computer generated letter.
After being a loyal customer with them for years and never missing a single payment, all we did was to change direct debits and while one part of the company wrote and confirmed that that was sorted, the other idiotic part wrote at THE SAME TIME to say that we were late with our payment and we would now be charged £10, which of course went ahead!
I had to run the gauntlet of impotent foreign call centres that they know very well we don’t like, escalate this to a so-called ‘Customer Services Manager’ on my day off, who told me a pack of lies about VM customer service having won OFCOM awards, which when I checked with OFCOM simply wasn’t true and he then personally promised that he would write to me to confirm that all this was now sorted, which unsurprisingly never materialised and we were left, as per usual, with absolutely no idea to what the hell was going on.
Because they obviously couldn’t care less, I had to go through all this again THEN put my complaint in writing to which we received the CG Directors letter aiming to contact us within 2 weeks and promising that they would attempt to contact us by phone. No prizes for guessing that none of which happened!
After a month I wrote again and we received our letter which deliberately and completely avoided answering the specific points that I had raised and did not offer us what we considered a fair compensation, that they are actually obliged by law to provide and yet in another legal error, they clearly stated that their offer was at their discretion only.
I called again and eventually got a so-called ‘Customer Complaint Manager’ who would not accept any point that I made and continually interrupted me throughout our ‘conversation’ despite being politely asked not to behave in such a manner and was deliberately argumentative and over defensive.
Not attributes usually conducive to generating good relations with loyal and ‘valued’ customers.
To top it all, I told him that I had previous customer service training and I quoted the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982, which states that when we pay for a service (as we do here) VM are obliged by law to provide a reasonable service within a reasonable amount of time, or by that law they owe compensation and are in breach of our contract.
Considering that this individual was representing VM as a SENIOR MANAGER, he actually and amusingly responded by asking me if I really thought that his company would sign up to such a scheme, which confirmed what I already knew that he had absolutely NO idea that this was actually the law or any interest whatsoever in his company’s LEGAL OBLIGATIONS to its customers and proves conclusively the level of competence and training that Virgin Media ‘invests in’ to provide us with their now ‘famous’ service.
To top all this and because I wanted to pursue my complaint and in a purely childish, petty and vindictive gesture, he has now threatened to take away the credit despite this already having been given to me and confirmed on my account.
While I intend to pursue these matters, I must admit to being a little put off to see on the internet the volume of ‘valued customers’ that have experienced disturbingly similar treatment from Virgin Media and wonder even if I continue to jump up and down and make a fuss, I will be able to make myself heard against the cacophony of criticism already out there!
And they have the nerve to send out their COMPUTER GENERATED letters ELECTRONICALLY SIGNED by Directors telling us how much they care!!!!
Don’t join Sky – their service is shocking, their people are rude, and make even making a payment into a 30 minute drama. Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.
Sky now have fibre optic broadband if you’re in an area that can get BT infinity. I get a full 75Mbps download
Also they’re bringing iplayer etc later this year.
They already have a catch up service that’s not too great. The sky go service is amazing though you can watch virtually any film whenever
I had virgin. Everyday my superhub crashed, constantly had to be unplugged and plugged back in.
My tv was slow and sluggish. Going onto the on demand and catch up tv often made my box freeze
Overall rubbish. Had 5 engineers and then virgin let me leave
With sky my box is speedy. Never once unplugged it since last November. Never ever crashed
My sky routers plugged in behind a fridge & hasn’t been turned off since day one either. That’s from nov 2011 until now.
Nothing has ever gone down or ever crashed. It’s brilliant.
Im with Sky for TV and BB, the BB is SO SLOW it’s unreal, Im only getting 1.5 at the very highest, constantly freezing.
Is there a huge difference between the 3 BB’s with Virgin?
I know there was an issue a couple of years back with the stand and end of programmes not recording is this the case with the TIVO box? Is TIVO reliable?
BELIEVE IN BETTER…. JOIN VIRGIN
Have virgin broadband and am happy with that as I didn’t want a landline. Have sky tv and am very happy with that as well! On demand catch up tv, bbc/itv/c5 iplayer (4on demand in new year) plus a massive library of films/ programmes, including box sets, to watch when I want to. On top of that I can watch on my iPhone/ipad when I’m out and about plus set recordings.
As for bad weather stopping viewing that’s not the case for me, had sky for 4 years and never had an issue during storms etc.
Sky Virgin and BT are the worst possible internet providers anyone could possibly go with. They are both considerably slower than every other ISP because they are the biggest, most advertised and just everyone goes with them and wonder if one or the other is best. My advice to anyone reading this is to get your TV with SKY or Virgin etc but not get broadband with these companies. Instead take a look at other smaller companies, use google etc. I know at one time PLUSnet was the best ISP and rated #1 etc. They then got flooded with everyone joining and went down hill (I experienced this first hand was with them for 3 years). I have used SKY, BT, Virgin from the same address and the speeds very with all (same computer, home etc and upto 20mbit not fibre optic). So in short if your wondering which ISP to go with, dont go with the SKY Virgin or BT.