Let’s start at the beginning, why the change, well I like F1 and this is really the only sport I watch and this has moved to Sky , so I called Virgin and asked if I could have the F1 channel and how much would this cost, they said £22.50 per month, as you can’t just buy one channel you need to take the whole sports package, so on average there is 2 races a month, including build up and qualifying etc. about 6 hours of TV per race, so 12 hours per month, that’s nearly £2 per hour to watch the F1. Feeling this may be a bit excessive I asked for best option, the reduced the package by £10 per month for being a good customer, so this works out at £1 per hour, could you imagine if we paid this for other TV channels. Anyway we threatened to move to Sky and see what they would give and we got "ok bye".
Next we called Sky and advised we wanted to switch from Virgin due to the price issue and asked for their best deal. So all the channels we already had and F1, plus many more channels, also about 5 times as many channels in HD for about £4 a month more. So this worked out at 33p per hour quite a big difference oh and we were going to get a second HD box thrown in too. Next we agreed to this and called Virgin to put in our disconnection notice, to which they did not seem at all bothered and we were allowed to go with no attempts to save a customer who had been with Virgin about 4 years on this account, but previously at other addresses I had been a customer since the old Telewest days on the first 512 Broadband connection.
Then about two days later a man calls from Virgin advising me he could make me a better offer to stay, he would give me 2 TIVO boxes and we all know how good these are so I was already tempted, then he tried to advise me that my current download volume would not be possible on Sky , and this really swung the decision for me as I do not like being lied to, he told me to download the volume of traffic I used the previous month would now take 5 months to reach on Sky , and here is the calculation, Virgin speed 10Mb, Sky speed 2Mb roughly based on other people in the area, therefore 10 divided by 2 equals 5, conclusion it will take you 5 months to download that volume of data. If I did not roughly understand the concept of downloading data via an internet connection I may well have believed this and I am sure this technique is morally wrong and should not be employed in a company which has some great selling points already.
Then he told me that the volume of channels I was getting from Sky was all lies and I should accept that the volume of channels he was reducing me down to was more than adequate, now to be honest I don’t watch much TV but I have a small and a medium sized child whom both watch TV a lot, and when I looked at the revised channel list from Virgin and compared this to the channel list from Sky all the important channels were missing, eg all the Nick and Cartoon channels which the children watch, well that was decision made bring on Sky .
Next comes the installation, oh Sky you can learn a lot from Virgin on this, when we had our Virgin service installed a man came round asked where we wanted things, run the wires to each point neatly, cleaned up, spoke English, was polite, and when he left everything worked. Now the guy from Sky was pretty much the opposite, first of all he drilled holes though the wall making a mess and just leaving it there, no attempt to clean, once the wires were in no attempt was made to secure them to the skirting board I wasn’t even asked if it was ok to leave wires trailing across the room, he unplugged things from the TV without asking, and finally his English was better than my Portuguese but it was not at a standard I would want if I was needing to communicate effectively. Now this was just one of three visits we would have to install our Sky package, next was BT to connect a telephone line, and oh sorry we don’t have one of those running to the house so they left, that someone else’s job, next BT came put up a new pole and connected a wire across the street, then we were told 4 weeks before someone could come and run this into the house. The wire was there it only needed a hole though the wall and fixing into a box. Anyway several weeks later a guy came and drilled a hole through the wall and his mess marked my brand new carpet, you may remember this a few posts back. Thing is we were so happy to have a phone line we never noticed at first. So phone line in any dialling tone, no, any internet no, why the man from BT was a contractor and was not authorised to connect the line, so another engineer came a couple of days later to do that bit. Virgin installation 2-4 hours, Sky installation 5 weeks.
So now we are fully switched over so let’s start with the TV, Sky wins this one, I think more choice and also better picture quality, now the important bit, the internet, well the router I have from Sky is rubbish, some devices will not even connect to it, the connection has dropped off more times in the last week than I have had with Virgin in 10 years, the download speed is nowhere near as good but I expected that and to be fair I schedule my downloads for when I am asleep so barely notice.
Now I have written this down I am struggling to find a winner, they both offer a fair service although I think both customer service departments could do with a little shake up especially the sales guy in Virgin really he should be sacked for lying to a customer, but I wish I could efficiently mix the broadband from Virgin, the TV from Sky and the phone from BT I know I can do this but without paying twice as much as I am now would be nice.
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