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One regular visitor to OneCompare.com’s experience of the two companies when asked to provide her with high speed broadband.

Note: The below is an account of one of OneCompare.com’s regular visitors experience when dealing with Sky and Virgin Media in an attempt to get high speed, low cost broadband. The opinions printed below are solely the opinion of this person and not the opinion of OneCompare.com.

My broadband deal with Vodafone at Home was coming to an end and although I’ve never had any problems with my broadband I decided I’d opt for a new package deal of TV, home phone and broadband. After a good week of deliberating and calculating I decided to go for Sky as it worked out slightly cheaper than Virgin and they offered free evening and weekend calls from my landline, free 2mb broadband and Sky TV for £26.00.

Sky confirmed I would be eligible for their free broadband and free evening and weekend calls and I placed my order. I asked to sign up to the package straight away but I was told that I couldn’t sign up to the telephone or broadband services until my Sky box was installed.

Two weeks later Sky came out to install the box, unable to fix the mini dish to my house I had to re-arrange for the Sky roof team to come out to attach the dish to my chimney. Another 2 weeks later Sky came out and installed the mini dish and Sky Plus box.

All seemed fine until 10 minutes after the engineers had left and the Sky Plus box switched itself off and wouldn’t come back on! After several calls to Sky (0870 number) and calls from the engineers it was decided I’d need a replacement box. I was told the engineers would come out again that day to me, this never happened and I had to make another several calls to Sky on the 0870 number once more to sort out when they would fix it. Two days later an engineer came out and replaced the Sky Plus box, so as all was now working I contacted Sky again to sign up for my free home phone calls and my free broadband.

After signing up for the free calls, I proceeded onto the free broadband only to find out I could not have the free broadband because the exchange was now full! Although they could offer me exactly the same 2mb broadband for £17.00 per month! I was told there was no waiting list for the free broadband and the only way I could get a place on the free broadband exchange was to sign up to the £17 a month broadband and they would send me a letter when a space came free, but I could be waiting up to 6-12 months before this happened. After hours on the telephone and speaking to several people who couldn’t help me I was told that they may be able to offer me broadband for £5 per month, but once again this was too good to be true and I was told I could pay £17 per month or have the entire lot taken out.

Sky had told me I had to have a BT line to sign up to Sky Plus/broadband so I had my telephone line taken back to BT and as a result I’m now tied into a 12 month BT contract I didn’t want! I only got it for the free broadband, so even if I did cancel the package I’d still be stuck with a BT line I don’t want. Unfortunately Sky didn’t seem to care about this at all, or the fact I needed the internet for work ASAP. After all the hassle I’d had with Sky I rang Virgin and have signed up to a £10 a month 2mb broadband 12 month contract with them.

My advice would be if you go for a TV, phone and broadband package is go to Virgin. Sky is now costing me approximately £21 for the 6 mixes channels + £11 line rental to BT + £10 for my broadband through Virgin = £42 a month! Its not as good as it seems!