Virgin UK offer an essential broadband package for customers who are on certain welfare benefits, I recommended my brother to apply for this but I noticed that the difference between broadband 54Mbps (£20 per month) and 54Mbps with stream (£25 per month) is £5. This seems to be a very unfair charge being that you can currently pay a one off payment for stream of £35 (Was £25 a few months ago) meaning someone who takes up the essentials package with stream over 12 months will pay an extra £25 if they don’t buy stream as a one off payment. In the second year it will be an extra £60, considering the essential packages are supposed to help low income families this appears to defeat the object of that package and many customers will be unaware of those unfair extra charges as there is no information letting the customer know that they will be paying more money for the stream than they would if they paid a one off fee and took the 54Mbs package without stream.
@lisa33 wrote:Actually since I queried it with Virgin (and I’m not saying it was anything to do with my query) they are now offering Essentials Broadband Plus with Flex (correctly I feel) at £20 a month and a one off £10 set up fee for the stream, not one person who replied addressed my original post (like I said lost in translation) this package is the same as Essentials Broadband Plus @ £20 a month the difference being the stream box which should be a one off fee rather than £25 a month which would cost low income users much more financially, unaware at the time they could have bought Essential Broadband Plus for £20 a month then pay a one off fee for the stream (which they can now do).
Yes that's a result for that social tariff being reduced to £20 for BB+Flex. The non-social tariffs (as new customers) now have the £5 fee per month just for Flex, without any premium subscriptions, and also anyone renewing a contract.
