BT broadband, charged unfairly, costs spiraling can i get out??

JACE

hello everybody.

so 3 months ago i took out a 12 month contract with bt broadband, but ill start at the start.

we first got broadband seven years ago, since the first day of connecting we had an awful hiss on the phone line when the adsl is connected, bt told us to call AOL, aol said they could do nothing and in out ignoarance we accepted this.

but as i say we recently swiched broadband to bt, who told us they could fix the fault, 5 engineers later, our broadband is going at 8 meg (as opposed to the 0.1 meg we used to get) we were over the moon.

but then our bt bill came in, 127.99 engineers charge!!, for a fault at the exchange.

so i called them, apparently the 4th engineer (openreach) when he unplugged the router heard no hiss (which is what every other engineer said) and therefor put it down to a dud router and we got charged.

now at the time we didnt know he charged us and we just thought he was useless, so (with the hiss still there) we this time got a bt broadband engineer (the 5th engineer) who came out, immediatly knew it was an exchange fault and fixed the problem.

the way he discribed it is , we all have filters in out home, well there is one in the exchange that puts the broadband and phone into one signal and it was out of alignment.

so after calling bt and explaning this, they refuse to withdraw the cost, because bt openreach and bt broadband are separate companies or something like that

what do i do??? i cant really afford this cost right now

to make matters worse, i thought a 10gb allowance would do me, but ive been told im getting a £26 charge for exceeding it 2 months in a row???

i really can't deal with all these costs, ive been told it will cose £90 to leave the contract as well

i just want all of this cleared at the minimum cost to me, even if it means having no broadband for a while.

what can i do???? please help

thank you all in advance

BT_company_representative

Hi JACE

I have just noticed your post and would like to look into this for you to see whether the engineer charge that has been raised on your account is correct. If you look at my profile you will find my contact details and if you send your account number, forum username and a link to this post I will gladly look into this for you.

Regards David

Pegman

A 10 gig allowance per month equates to about 2 movies downloaded.

BT's allowances are ridiculous for technology today, and the way they are still allowed to advertise ""Unlimited" is a disgrace, when the smal print tells you it's limited to 100gb, exceed that and they slow your speed down.

BT are disgrace and should be forced to drop the "British" from their name, Delhi Telecom would be better.

Farway

Pegman wrote: »

BT are disgrace and should be forced to drop the "British" from their name, Delhi Telecom would be better.

You are well behind the times, like BP, BT is the name now, the British bit went ages ago, do keep up

mynameisdave

If the fault is with EU (end user) equipment and BT finds no fault it can pass costs on to the service provider. It is then up to the service provider whether they take the hit or they pass it on. As you are with BT it seems you have been billed for it.

You could complain to AOL that they repeatedly raised faults with BT and didn't think to tell you that BT had proved the connection from your house to the exchange but it won't do much to get the BT charge cancelled.

Good luck getting with the BT representative.

mynameisdave

Pegman wrote: »

BT's allowances are ridiculous for technology today, and the way they are still allowed to advertise ""Unlimited" is a disgrace, when the smal print tells you it's limited to 100gb, exceed that and they slow your speed down.

100 gig is significantly more than a lot of unlimited 'fair use' companies and this is hardly unique to BT.

joegib

Farway wrote: »

You are well behind the times, like BP, BT is the name now, the British bit went ages ago, do keep up

Nope. British Telecommunications plc is still the parent company of the group. Have a look at the payments footnotes on your bill — if you're with BT, that is.

Joe

PNPSUKNET

it would of been an Anova engineer for bt, it would actually be from bt so wouldnt know if a fault was at the exchange

trysaveit

The main problem with BT is actually communicating with them. Their business is based on communications and one would expect the response when contacting them to be world class.

My most recent experience was last week after moving house. Trying to carry out the simple task of transferring my account to the new address involved 3 calls, (cut off twice) and 1 and a half hours on the phone. Of the one and a half hours I actually spoke for around 10 minutes the rest of the time being passed from department to department holding in queues.

The other problem with this world leader is the length of time it takes to transfer the account over. Now I am keeping the same number as I'm only moving 500 yards but 18 days seems excessive. I could understand it if they were digging a trench down the road to me or erecting pylons to beam a signal in but all they are doing is pressing a few computer keys. Why on earth does that take 18days.

kwikbreaks

Was there any change made to the wiring or equipment in your house? If not then it is not your fault and you can refuse the charge.

If there was a change was it in equipment supplied by BT? If so then that is their fault too as they should have changed it before calling out OpenReach.


I'm not sure how you can avoid BT from cutting you off and passing the charge on to debt collectors though - maybe asking on one of the boards devoted to consumer rights will produce an answer.

In fact the fault you describe is reasonably common and usually caused by a bad joint in the line. OpenReach are poor at fixing these faults and I moved to cable after they failed 5 times to fix the same symptoms on my line.