I'm with Virgin for phone and broadband. very good, no complaints other than some price creep recently.
However, I have been offered Sky at half price for as long as a mate of mine is working for them. Knowing him it'll be around 5 years. That means phone (free evening and weekends), 2MB broadband and basic tv (still more than freeview) for £14/mth, which is less than I pay now without the tv. What's Sky service like?

it means giving money to rupert murdoch

he is the antichrist

yes, there's that as well.
But it's giving less money to him than to Virgin, who are just another faceless big business, equally disreputable, just not as loud mouthed about it.

If he provides a good service at reasonable rates, I couldn't care less if he IS the earthly representation of Something That Doesn't Exist.

He despises the royal family and the English establishment, so he can't be all bad.

2mb? I get about 10mb with my Virgin package – I pay £20 or so for basic TV, bb and phone – free weekends.

2mb? I get about 10mb with my Virgin package – I pay £20 or so for basic TV, bb and phone – free weekends.

But the 2meg is the base service – you can get 10meg too.

I pay £33 a month for a mid tv package (Family pack which includes Sky 1), (up to) 10 meg unlimited broadband, line rental, Sky+ subscription and free evening/weekend calls

ok, back on topic – are you happy with sky? or am i likely to save money and end up with the kind of service that makes pc world look like they know what they're talking about?

Sky have always been fine with me – but I haven't actually had to call them with a problem (you always find it is easy to talk to someone when you want to spend money, the key is whether you can when you have a problem).

But communications with them have been good and I have no complaints.

cheers – what i wanted hear.

Had sky for, I dunno, 5-6 years now, never had an issue with kit, use them for land-line and broadband, handled the switch without a hitch, wrote to me with every detail saying when things would happen, and they did. Speak to customer service once in a blue moon, always been spot on for me. Example, I bust my router a year or so back, probably just the power supply, but Sky sent me a new one for free.

I know it's Murdoch, Every media is owned by some-one…

I know it's Murdoch, Every media is owned by some-one…

true, but Murdoch owns a bit too much of the media for my liking. That's a lot of influence.

Agreed on the influence bits above – but the service matters and Sky do heavily support a UK cycling team – even if they are all roadies!

I've used them for TV for about 10 years.

The service seems good. I upgraded to HD recently and it was very smooth. They said what they would do and did it.

It's good but pricey, I pay £49 a month and don't even have Sports or porn…

Sky do heavily support a UK cycling team – even if they are all roadies!

I think they support "British Cycling" generally. I've certainly seen Peaty wearing a Sky logo'd top.

SkyTV is good, especially the way the menu-ing and tech works.

I joined Sky just before Christmas (from BT) & can recommended them. Have been happy so far, they handled the switchover very well and sent me lots of info. Get Sky tv, 10gb broadband and landline with free evening/weekend calls for about £2 a month more than I was paying BT for phone line and broadband only (£38 a month in total). And got a free Sky+ box too. Still doesn't seem to be much to watch on TV though with all the extra channels! 😕 Haven't had to deal with any probs yet though… but I'm sure they can't be as bad as BT were!

Sky is good, service boob on, scottish customer service folk a lot of the time, I paid em 70 odd quid last month just for the telly!!!

We changed from Virgin to Sky a couple of years ago, for same reason – a bit cheaper. In fact we managed to get an HD box as they were on offer and now at last we have an HD TV and can take advantage of it!

No problems. Changeover was smooth and everything's been fine since. And we get the wonderful Sky Arts 2 channel!

Check what broadband speed you can actually get through your phone line too, it will be more than 2mb but you may find you are limited to 5-6mb which means even if you pay for 10mb you wont actually ever get it.

I switched from Virgin to Sky last year but pretty sure I will be returning to Virgin when my 12 months is up.

And we get the wonderful Sky Arts 2 channel!

Not often I get the chance to say this – I think they are still running a programme I made for them – Aquariavision – usually on at 2 in the morning. It's a good show off for your HD TV!

scottish customer service folk a lot of the time,

that's where my mate's going and why I'll be getting the half price deal

Thanks all.

seriously, if you value your broadband speed and plan on living anywhere outside 3 miles of a decent exchange, don't bother. Was with Zen internet – reasonably priced and regular speeds of 6-8mb. Moved to sky on price and it's abysmal. We're on the Sky Connect as our exchange isn't full of their equipment yet / they've not got the capacity.

I work from home occasionally which means being connected to the office network over the web. Sky throttle ALL shh connections between 11am and 11pm to unusable speeds so I'm stuck on the VPN. Evening broadband speed is not fast enough for iPlayer / Channel 4OD from about 4pm onwards. Their technical help consists of reading from pre-approved scripts that they're not allowed to deviate from.

I'm moving either back to Zen or, if I can afford it, to names.co.uk and their decent service with no shaping or throttling and a halfway reasonable contention ratio…

Just got to wait for them to get their fingers out of their proverbial and give me my mac code. 3 days and 2 phone calls, 6 emails later still no sign of it.

Not sure why you say that – I was promised 4 meg speeds and all my tests (daytime, evening and weekend using sppedtest.net) are giving results of between 4.3meg and 5.2meg over the last week of testing.

Not sure why you say that – I was promised 4 meg speeds and all my tests (daytime, evening and weekend using sppedtest.net) are giving results of between 4.3meg and 5.2meg over the last week of testing.

Me?

Are you on their Connect service or one of the 'unlimited' tariffs? I wonder if it depends on your exchange too? The odd thing is that Zen was great – fast and no shaping. Sky can't even confirm they're throttling – all the tech teams can say (from their script) is that 'some users may find their service restricted during peak hours', or words to that effect. You have to work that out using tools and a couple of websites yourself…

Take it- it's dirt cheap. I've got Sky plus HD with multiroom and extra movies, broadband and phone calls and its about £90/month

I had Virgin for years in UK, no problems almost at all. 10 meg broadband, XL telly package, phoneline. Here in Ireland I could only get Sky as they are contracted here. 2 months waiting for the lazy fecker of an engineer, no kiddy BBC despite promise, awful customer service, 3 meg broadband on a very good day (they say it's very fast), no Sky Sport channels unless added seperately. Useless. I'll take Virgin any day.