The Lemon Fool

Just got my latest BT bill
Broadband £38
BT Sport HD £21.50
2X 10 GB Sim £20.40
Total BT £80.20 per month

Sky £49 per month, includes Sports on SkyQ.

Are these costs excessive ? I do like the sports channels.

Interestingly, our current energy D/D is £130 per month so Sky/BT is, currently, about the same as our energy costs.

I wonder what the majority of fuel poverty folkies pay for their entertainment/comms, bet it isn't a lot less than ours.

Less than £30pm for BB, Landline (with free anytime calls) and 2 SIMS (1 with 5GB, 1 with 250MB). We watch very little TV so Freeview is perfectly sufficient.

Rather alarmingly BG have just increased our DD to around 6x this amount! Our energy costs are now 2.5x what they were a year ago.

scotview wrote:Are these costs excessive ? I do like the sports channels.

For the Broadband you should be looking at it costing around £20 (that’s what BT charges me for 80MB Fibre 2), and as for the SIM cards, I would check how much data you actually use as you can get lower data amounts for less or lots more data for the same price.

As for sports - not the faintest idea as I have zero interest in playing or watching any sport, but it sounds damned expensive if you want to.

Stompa wrote:We watch very little TV so Freeview is perfectly sufficient.

So I guess I should also include the cost of a TV Licence.

AF62 wrote:
For the Broadband you should be looking at it costing around £20 (that’s what BT charges me for 80MB Fibre 2)

Does the £20 include your landline and a calls package ? That seems to be an incredibly good price for Fibre 2.

As for sports, I do enjoy watching it. Liverpool and Man City tonight and at the weekend Masters golf from Augusta, all on my splendid 65" LG OLED . Each one to his own I suppose.

I would be interested to see what others are getting in the way of bang for buck.

scotview wrote:

AF62 wrote:
For the Broadband you should be looking at it costing around £20 (that’s what BT charges me for 80MB Fibre 2)

Does the £20 include your landline and a calls package ? That seems to be an incredibly good price for Fibre 2.

Landline is £219.84 for the annual Line Rental Saver (so £18.32 a month) and £2.44 for the broadband - total £20.76. No calls included because I never use the landline.

scotview wrote:Just got my latest BT bill
Broadband £38
BT Sport HD £21.50
2X 10 GB Sim £20.40
Total BT £80.20 per month

Sky £49 per month, includes Sports on SkyQ.

Are these costs excessive ?

What are you really asking? Are you asking whether you are being excessively extravagant, or are you asking if you can get the same deal (or equivalent) cheaper?

We don't pay for TV add-ons like BT Sport or Sky. We pay £15 per month for broadband (Three mobile - unlimited 30-50Mb/s because there is no decent wired or fibre option where we live), £16 for 2x12G SIMs (Talkmobile aka Vodafone). We use Sipgate rather than pay monthly for a landline. £35 on-off cost two years ago, then PAYG - less than £2 in two years - who makes calls from a landline these days.

However, we are happy to pay to go to the thetre, and eat out. A basic pub grub meal for two these days is between £30 and £40, so your BT costs are only the equivalent of two pub meals for two. It does also put into perspective the value we get from our TV licence.

scotview wrote:Just got my latest BT bill

2X 10 GB Sim £20.40

What are the sims?

mobile phone contracts?

Indeed, I can confirm BTs prices are just a starting point for negotiation. If you are talking to them and they are playing hard ball, hang up and try again later. After several phone calls when Mrs BD finally negotiated what she thought was a decent package, the person closing out the contract with her said Mrs BD had got the cheapest deal they'd seen. So, it's well worth being persistent and hard faced. Fair play to Mrs BD, she is good at it.

With Sky, we used to repeatedly go round the "we're cancelling" routine every year or so. But we gave up on Sky and now we negotiate a package with Now TV. Which is Sky by IPTV, effectively. A lot cheaper. Sometimes we have to cancel it and wait a while then renegotiate with them. We always manage to get a cheap deal in the end.

It's quite appalling that the majority of these company's customer base will be paying more than they need to. It seems this is the modern way. Price gouge the clients as much as you can until people push back.

AF62 wrote:Landline is £219.84 for the annual Line Rental Saver (so £18.32 a month) and £2.44 for the broadband - total £20.76. No calls included because I never use the landline.

I thought my BB was cheap at £2.73 for Plusnet's Fibre Extra

BullDog wrote:It's quite appalling that the majority of these company's customer base will be paying more than they need to. It seems this is the modern way. Price gouge the clients as much as you can until people push back.

Indeed, but presumably if the majority weren't paying so much then you and I probably wouldn't be paying so little.

Bminusrob wrote: or are you asking if you can get the same deal (or equivalent) cheaper?

so your BT costs are only the equivalent of two pub meals for two.

Thanks for the interesting reply.

Yip, I'm asking same deal cheaper.

Interesting point about pub meals, puts it into perspective. I like my Sky services and the Sports channels running on SkyQ. They give me a huge amount of entertainment over the winter months, particularly like the FA cup initial rounds with the lower teams.

Maybe next time round I should forget being a loyal BT customer and price for putting everything across to Sky. Our fibre broadband is stable now, so Openreach services aren't so important.

We now pay £20 a month for BB , landline and unlimited calls. We also bought an Amazon firestick and use that & freeview for TV access.

We were paying Virgin £80-£90 a month so have made an enormous saving.

Vodaphone broadband+ line rental, no calls, is going up by 9% from £20. So much for a fixed rate deal. Their customer service is rubbish.

richlist wrote:We now pay £20 a month for BB , landline and unlimited calls. We also bought an Amazon firestick and use that & freeview for TV access.

We were paying Virgin £80-£90 a month so have made an enormous saving.

Yes, I think our broadband is excessive. Will need to negotiate next time around.

I did try the 4K firestick and Now TV sports but I still prefer functionality of SkyQ, especially the 6 channel recording function and flicking seamlessly between say Bloomberg and The Masters which is on right now. One deal breaker was that neither Firestick, Now tv or BT freeview had bloomberg TV.

BTs TV box was too clunky for me.

What has surprised me with the replies is that most folks have gone for a least cost, stripped down solution. I like my SkyQ too much and wont give it up, even at a premium.

I will have to do a tougher negotiation next time, especially if I move everything to Sky.