Thinking of making the leap...

Am thinking of making the leap to VM xxl 50mbps package with a phoneline.. There's a good quidco cashback offer at the moment, and with the 6months 1/2 price and 30quid off it's a pretty compelling reason to switch.

The reason I'm posting, is that I'm currently with BT for my line rental and calls, and Be* for my broadband. In order to switch with the minimum of disruption, am I right in thinking that as far as the Be* broadband is concerned I just want to get in contact with their CS and give my notice (No MAC code needed as I'm switching from ADSL to VMs cable)??

With the phone line however, I'd like to keep my existing number. I started going through the VM ordering process and there's a section where you can enter your existing landline number and a check box to "keep your existing number"... what exactly happens with this? Do VM contact BT on my behalf to obtain my number? Do they also contact BT to cancel my landline contract or do I need to do this? If I need to do the cancellation do I do it straight away (on placing my VM order), how do I know that my number would have been transferred?

Sorry for all the noobish questions.. things just don't seem as clear as they used too (or mebbe I'm just getting old)

Thanks in advance

You will need to terminate your Be contract.

Most BT contracts now have a recurring 12 month call package contract so there will probably be a penalty for cancelling that (even if it's the "free" evening and weekend one). You'll need to contact BT to find out about that and also to give them notice that you are terminating the line contract. DO NOT actually cancel the BT side before your VM activation or you will lose your number. To be 100% safe wait until your VM install is complete and your number ported as it isn't unknown for VM to miss a promised install date.

What happened with my own port was that I just notified VM in the order and as soon as the VM line was installed it worked on my old number. Quite how that magic was achieved I don't know but the installers said it just about always did.

You'll find that VM telephony is expensive and you get no free callerid so if you actually use the landline you should consider using a carrier preselect number or VOIP for outgoing calls. It always pays to take the phone initially to get the good cashback deals and free install and cheap months etc. from VM. I ported my own phone number to Vonage VOIP and cancelled the VM line once my minimum term was up as my wife does use the landline quite a bit and that worked out considerably cheaper.

The Superhub (modem/router) you will get can be a real can of worms and VM seem to be having problems fixing the firmware but with any luck that will be sorted by the time you arrive.

Thanks for the info. Have cancelled my Be* contract (reluctantly) They offered to reduce my monthly bill but when I asked about Fibre, the best estimate they could give me was more than a year away!

As for BT, I called them up and confirmed what you said about the 12month recurring contract.. apparently they're *supposed* to send out a notification letter a month in advance informing you that the contract is to be renewed for another 12months.. I've NEVER received any such letter so it was pure blind luck that I decided to switch now (my contract is up at the beginning of October apparently)

Given the timings, BT are only charging me an additional fiver but I'm VERY annoyed that no notification was ever given about autorenewing 12 month contracts!

According to the BT lady, she's marked my account to NOT auto renew this Oct and apparently the next move is with Virgin to contact BT to request taking over my number which apparently will then kick off the BT line cancellation at the time VM provision/activate my account - no further action is required from me apparently..

Does that make sense/tally with your knowledge/experience?

Calls wise, the Mrs and I get so many free minutes to all networks/landlines on our mobiles that we're not really going to feel any pain from any differences in Virgin call charges (we've opted for the simplest phone bundle)

To be honest, if the service is naff.. hopefully I'll have sussed that within the 28days cancellation period and will just go back to Be + Be Landline (which actually works out cheaper than the BT Landline + Be Home that I'm on now anyway)

Make sure that you order entirely through the cashback site or you won't get it. When I went to cable it was a cashback deal through Simplify Digital rather than the more usual Quidco/TopCashBack which just link you through to the VM site and they actually took the order over the phone and asked about number porting. I imagine the VM online form will too though.

When the number ports it effectively kills the BT line as it no longer has any number so yes you will be able to go back to BT/Be but will need to get the landline re-provisioned and the number ported back which will be a PITA. Unless you 100% must keep the number it would be a lot simpler to just have a new VM number and leave the BT/Be stuff in place until you are satisfied.

Issues that may miff you are...

The Superhub - problems mostly limited to WiFi use though and should be fixed soon (I'd have said that 3 months back too though)

Some gaming gets identified incorrectly and gets subjected to traffic management which can be pretty severe for NNTP and P2P. That should get fixed too but has cropped up several times on different games.

If you are unlucky enough to find yourself in an over subscribed area it will be poor beyond belief or endurance.

IMO the very nature of cable makes it marginally more prone to hiccups than ADSL. VM have a lot of active hardware in street cabs where all the ADSL hardware is in the exchange. I virtually never had any ADSL disconnects until I moved house and got a duff line (which is why I moved to cable) but minor short term outages do happen sometimes on my cable and may need a manual reset of the modem + router to get going again.

I'm happy with VM myself - I don't have a superhub and don't do gaming, nntp, or p2p and swapped out the expensive phone for VOIP. The biggest plus though is my area isn't over subscribed and I can download from good sources at 6MBps pretty much any time I choose to.

Well, I cleared browser cache and cookies, then logged into Quidco and clicked their links through to the VM site. Stayed there and completed my order. I got a Quidco tracking confirmation email through, and the VM purchase is listed on my Quidco account details (though worryingly the purchase and tracking values are 0.00.. I've raised a ticket with Quidco about this.. don't want to get stiffed on a free bit of dosh.. With any luck it may be down to the fact that although I've set up a direct debit with VM, no actual money has left my account yet - I think that happens either when I've been given a formal installation date OR when my service is activated.. If that's the case, then perhaps the Quidco will track then. Still I'll have to wait and see and perhaps Quidco CS will get back to me and confirm this)

As for keeping existing BT/Be in place until I'm satisfied with VM.. not really an option if I don't want to be stiffed for cancelling my BT landline during the next 12 month renewal which given the timelines, would probably happen if I waited much longer to cancel while I evaluate VM. I'll take the risk trying to retrieve my number from Virgin if I *do* have to cancel with 28days.. I'd be going back to Be but for ADSL and Landline this time.. so hopefully Be could get the number back off Virgin and re-provision/set up all the other necessary stuff (I'd effectively be a "new" customer)

In any case, I'm not wedded to the old number but it is handy.. so worth a smidge of effort if I have to

As for the Superhub.. guess its a suck it and see moment.. have seen a few workarounds posted about pairing the superhub with an existing router (put the router in the superhub's dmz etc.) and may look at that if its a complete bust.. the main machines in the house will be connected via ethernet with only the tablets needing WiFi

Gaming wise, its Xbox live for me.. so again a suck it and see..

Subscription wise.. who knows.. I talked to my neighbour who was sharing a house with 3 other students (they were on the 30mbps package) who were avid WoW & p2p-ers... apparently they never had any problems, so fingers crossed on that front (again, 28days should be long enough to see if there are any patterns in congestion)

I've got an installation date of the 14th Sept.. deliberately put back because I'll be on holiday from the 6th - 10th.. and my Be* is due for cancellation on the 24th (even though my BT phoneline will be dead on the 14th). I get invoiced by Be on the 27th of this month (will need to check if I get refunded for the 3days between cancellation and invoice date but not overly fussed as it'll be pennies no doubt)

Lots of crossing of fingers and sucking and seeing but hopefully I'll be able to post back here as a satisfied customer! Thanks once again for all your advice and please keep it coming if you can think of anything else - always good to stay informed

Everything you've posted sounds good and with any luck you'll be happy with VM. It's common for Quidco to track at the wrong amount initially and get corrected later. I use TopCashBack more now but used to use Quidco and they were always good for me.

The latest round of Superhub firmware testing was opened up today so there is a chance at least that it will be released by 14th relatively bug free.

I've enver known Quidco not to track if you get the tracking confirmation email

Got a reply on my support ticket from Quidco. They said that virgin stuff often tracks at 0.00 but then changes later, so should be ok

Just to add 2 of my family members have the superhub and say it works flawlessly. So fingers crossed

VM installed today finally. The nice engineer man came and put everything right where I wanted it - coincided nicely with the R30 firmware release too... tested SHub and actually seems to be delivering WiFi everywhere the old DLink ADSLRouter did without problems (so that's another tick in the box)

The Missus uses an RSA based VPN to connect to work and that seems to be behaving itself ok, and getting near as damnit the 50mbps during the day - wired ethernet (no idea when the congestion times will be - Guildford area - if any)

So fingers crossed.. so far so good Thanks to everyone for their advice!

(Now to keep an eagle eye on things incase I need to use that 28day cancellation policy.. really hoping I don't.. 50meg is a revelation!!!)