Long time BT Halo user. Looking to switch to cheaper provider. Is Virgin still rubbish?

[quant]

Thanks for reading.
I'm coming to the end of my current BT Halo3+ contract. BT want to change the price from £70 a month to £100 per month. Clearly, that ain't gonna fly.
Virgin Media seems to be significantly cheaper and faster than my BT service.
The question relates to horror stories I have heard in the past. Is Virgin worth switching to??

[Adduxi]

As a new customer you will get good deals. However in 18 months the discounts will end and the price will rise and maybe quite significantly.  If you are on Openreach connections there are so many ISP’s available.  Have a look at Aquiss, quite reasonable and only a 12 month contract to boot.

[Client62]

VM Customer service remains as poor as ever. Offshore sales team remain as untrustworthy as ever too.

A move from Openreach FTTP ( with any ISP )  to VM's COAX / DOCSIS would be going against the global trend for future internet services.

Even a move from Openreach FTTP to VM XGS-PON would be a serious concern. VM's XGS-PON looks more like a customers are guinea pigs on a beta platform with a small team of utter rookies providing customer support.

[pete_at_home]

Ignoring the customer service rabbit hole, it also depends where you are & how busy your local network segment is.

Performance varies a lot.   Plenty of peeps on here with issues, but my VM connections is stable & always at the speed I pay for. (350Mbps).   The XGS-PON stuff also varies, and does seem to depend on the build quality.  Quite a few have reported their speed profile changing after initial connection, but htat sounds like backend provisioning issues rather than the connection.

I also dumped BT recently due to cost, but retained VM connection.  When installed about 7 years ago, I only had the basic broadband as a backup to my VM connection (BT offered 35Mbps, but it actually gave me 67Mbps because I'm so close to the cabinet containing the DSLAM).   Then over the years they updated it & replaced the router for VDSL.  Until I closed the account, was getting >> 300Mbps. 

At the time we closed BT, it was over £100 / month.  VM was about the same, but for Broadband, TV & Phone.  Since then we negotiated another 12 month discount with VM  🙂