Sky vs. Virgin – Price Comparison 2013

As you might remember, I’m a Virgin Media Customer – I signed up for an 18 month contract back in April 2012. On the whole I’m very happy with the service I get and am pleased with Virgin. I’m always on the look out to save myself money, and as my contract is up soon I thought I’d better check that my service is still good value for money.

There is a small caveat to this, I’m NOT a sports fan, and I prefer my movies on Blu-Ray, the simple fact is, if you’re a Sky Sports fan, or a Sky Movies fan, Sky will be cheaper for you. No question. 

So lets look at what I’ve got now, and try and compare it to the Sky alternative. So with Virgin I get :-

Tivo Box in the Living Room
V HD Box for the Bedroom
XL TV Package
100Mb Fibre Broadband (100Mb Down / 5Mb Up) – This will soon be upgrade to 120Mb Down / 10Mb Up next month
Telephone Line Rental
– Caller Display
Talk Weekends Package

Total Monthly Cost – £72.74

I’ve just put all of this into Sky.com and tried to match as closely as possible to the Sky alternative. Sky DOES have more HD channels, and more channels in general. BUT the Sky Fibre Broadband is only up to 40Mb (So my Virgin speeds will be 3 times faster!)

So with Sky I’ve added.

Sky+ HD Box for Living Room
Sky HD Box for the Bedroom
Entertainment Extra+ TV Service
40Mb Fibre Broadband (40Mb Down / 10Mb Up)
Telephone Line Rental
– Caller Display
Talk Weekends Package

Total Monthly Cost – £66.25 for Six Months then £76.25 (Plus £10 One Off Cost)

With the discount and one off charge it works out on average £72.03 Per Month

So in theory I DO get more channels with Sky, but my broadband will be THREE TIMES faster, all for 71p per month over the cost of Sky. The other thing to bare in mind is cashback from Quidco, If I joined Sky at the moment via here I could get up to £248 Cashback as well as £100 worth of M+S vouchers. Which is pretty impressive, a new Virgin customer will get up to £76 cashback via here.

I imagine if I call Virgin closer to the end of my contract I think I might be able to get an even better deal on what I pay now, admittedly the cashback from signing up to Sky is sweet too.. As someone who throws a lot of large files around, Sky don’t offer speeds close to Virgin yet, I might revisit it when they launch their ‘Pro’ service which offers 80Mb down and 20Mb up.