Misleading BT Cold-Callers

ComplexP

Since I pay BT for my phone line and have been a 'loyal' customer for many years I was lucky enough to recieve a call from them last night offering me a limited offer on my broadband.

To be fair, in financial terms the deal wasn't bad but it was the pushy and misleading nature of the call that hacked me off.

I'm currently on a very high end package with Plusnet that has no traffic shaping at any times and allows me to keep interleving off (for low ping times at the cost of slightly reduced speeds) which most ISPs hate because it lowers the 'average' speeds they can advertise. So offering me a cheap deal isn't likely to win me over.

The guy first phoned up when I was at work and talked to my wife and was trying to get her to agree over the phone to the package even after she said she wanted to check with me first.

Later he phoned back and I asked him about their traffic shaping policies on the package in question and about how the package deals with online gamers and whether interleving is locked on etc, etc. He didn't understand.

He then goes on to start claiming that BT can offer better speeds than anyone else because everyone uses BT's equipment which is a pile of tosh (the better speeds bit, I know everyone has to use BT's equipment; more's the pity). He then said that my current speed is showing at 2.5MBits (my current profile is actually 3.5MBits but their system takes a while to update) and they can offer me up to 8MBits. This is also misleading since every package offers up to 8MBits but the physical properties of my line (line length, noise margins, interleving settings etc) mean that the speeds are limited to what they are regardless of who my ISP is.

I told him in no uncertain terms that the package wasn't right for my somewhat specialised needs and that I wouldn't sign up to BT if they paid me simply because my previous dealings with them have convinced me that they are a shambolic company who have the worst customer service I have ever encountered.

If BT call you up and start saying they can incease your current broadband speeds, be wary and quiz them hard about how exactly they plan to do this. I find it insulting that they make these claims and worrying that many people could be taken in by them.

Jemma-T

ComplexP wrote: »

Since I pay BT for my phone line and have been a 'loyal' customer for many years I was lucky enough to recieve a call from them last night offering me a limited offer on my broadband.

To be fair, in financial terms the deal wasn't bad but it was the pushy and misleading nature of the call that hacked me off.

I'm currently on a very high end package with Plusnet that has no traffic shaping at any times and allows me to keep interleving off (for low ping times at the cost of slightly reduced speeds) which most ISPs hate because it lowers the 'average' speeds they can advertise. So offering me a cheap deal isn't likely to win me over.

The guy first phoned up when I was at work and talked to my wife and was trying to get her to agree over the phone to the package even after she said she wanted to check with me first.

Later he phoned back and I asked him about their traffic shaping policies on the package in question and about how the package deals with online gamers and whether interleving is locked on etc, etc. He didn't understand.

He then goes on to start claiming that BT can offer better speeds than anyone else because everyone uses BT's equipment which is a pile of tosh (the better speeds bit, I know everyone has to use BT's equipment; more's the pity). He then said that my current speed is showing at 2.5MBits (my current profile is actually 3.5MBits but their system takes a while to update) and they can offer me up to 8MBits. This is also misleading since every package offers up to 8MBits but the physical properties of my line (line length, noise margins, interleving settings etc) mean that the speeds are limited to what they are regardless of who my ISP is.

I told him in no uncertain terms that the package wasn't right for my somewhat specialised needs and that I wouldn't sign up to BT if they paid me simply because my previous dealings with them have convinced me that they are a shambolic company who have the worst customer service I have ever encountered.

If BT call you up and start saying they can incease your current broadband speeds, be wary and quiz them hard about how exactly they plan to do this. I find it insulting that they make these claims and worrying that many people could be taken in by them.

ComplexP wrote:

Misleading BT Cold-Callers

I'd say anyone phoning your house to sell something is going to mislead or misrepresent the goods/service. They are sales people after all. The important stuff is usually what they don't tell you or what you think about later (ie they caught you cold). If sales people told you the entire truth they'd not be very good at their job.

Nobody phones here as I'm TPS'd and BT have been told to NEVER phone and that's it. I think in 12 years I had one call off my bank (£25 given as an apology) and a company selling blinds. Both apologised.

www.tpsonline.org.uk

Don't blame BT or people just doing their job, take responsibility for your own business.

ComplexP

My issue isn't with the hard sell really, it's more to do with the misleading information. I took full responsibility for ensuring that they knew I wasn't interested but my wife could have been taken in by their misleading claims and signed up thinking she was doing me a favour.

When it comes to technical stuff like this, many people are not aware of exactly how the systems work and so are unable to 'take responsibility'. I'd argue that BT should be taking responsibility for providing the correct info up front.

I've lost count of how many threads I've answered explaining to people that 8MBits is the 'up to' speed and there are a whole lot of other factors that determine what you actually get. It's misleading calls like these that cause a lot of the misunderstandings.