BT ... Crap! What can i do?

Riddick87

BT are crap. Honestly i could leave it as this and my message is across ...
Basically, I've been with BT for about 2 years, and had no end of problems, with each service.

I managed to get out of the Vision, as it was month by month, only for them to reactivate it without my permission, and charge me for it again. Now this months bill, £20 more than normal, wont go out of my bank because I don't have enough money, meaning my bank will charge me. Now I know BT will refund this charge as well, but can I legally refuse to pay any bill until I am refunded the full amount in bank charges, including if future bills are missed as i stop them because of BT charging me double my bill, due to them adding on services without my authorisation?

That's point one, now to the main point. We moved house in December, and since then have been on BT's option 3, up to Mbps, but have never received more than Mbps. Doing their speed test reveals we are limited to 7150kbps download (20MB being 20480kbps). Calling them, they've told me to ring back in the morning due to a system fault, before they can check, which is fair enough. But I had an engineer out months ago(April), and have been calling weekly since, and before that, and they tell me theirs nothing they can do. Now their also saying there is nothing on record saying I have reported it, so it's my fault. How am I supposed to prove that their crap system is missing things? I signed up for speeds hitting 20Mbps, not 8, otherwise I would of got their Mbps service.

Their telling me its legal for them to charge me for upto 20 but limit me to 7150kbps, if this is legal the world should end to be honest.

Can i use this as grounds to end my contract? Or what can i actually do, in terms of getting a refund for the 6 months period for the difference in speeds?

As a side note, my parents on virgin get 34mbps from an upto 30mbps connection, how are BT allowed to trade? OFCOM have got this all wrong, we should be charged for what we receive, its absolutely ridiculous that companies can get away with this. If i sold a second hand car and put upto one car in a contract, and gave the person a wheel, they'd sue me and win, so can I sue BT? Probably not aye?

Someone please help me here, Anything I can do?

Riddick87

Actually, to be fair, the phone service has been fantastic, they've got something right atleast!

Mark_In_Hampshire

Do take a deep breath as you're not going to welcome what follows...

Riddick87 wrote: »

BT are crap. Honestly i could leave it as this and my message is across ...
Basically, I've been with BT for about 2 years, and had no end of problems, with each service.

I managed to get out of the Vision, as it was month by month, only for them to reactivate it without my permission, and charge me for it again. Now this months bill, £20 more than normal, wont go out of my bank because I don't have enough money, meaning my bank will charge me.
Now I know BT will refund this charge as well

They're not obliged to, even if the error was theirs. When you pay by direct debit you agree to pay bank charges where appropriate.

That's your contract with the bank. However some people have had success in getting bank charges refunded by the payee when the error is the payee's.

Riddick87 wrote: »

but can I legally refuse to pay any bill until I am refunded the full amount in bank charges, including if future bills are missed as i stop them because of BT charging me double my bill, due to them adding on services without my authorisation?

No. You could however pay using a different method of payment to stop this from happening, and regain control. Of course you're entitled to withhold payment of amounts in dispute or wrongly charged. But you can't do that when you pay by direct debit.

Riddick87 wrote: »

That's point one, now to the main point. We moved house in December, and since then have been on BT's option 3, up to Mbps, but have never received more than Mbps. Doing their speed test reveals we are limited to 7150kbps download (20MB being 20480kbps). Calling them, they've told me to ring back in the morning due to a system fault, before they can check, which is fair enough. But I had an engineer out months ago(April), and have been calling weekly since, and before that, and they tell me theirs nothing they can do. Now their also saying there is nothing on record saying I have reported it, so it's my fault. How am I supposed to prove that their crap system is missing things? I signed up for speeds hitting 20Mbps, not 8, otherwise I would of got their Mbps service.

No. You signed up for speeds of up to 20Mbps. To get that speed the line connecting you to the exchange needs to be good quality copper and not much more than about 800m long. The speed is determined by the length and quality of the line. Few people get that speed. The average is about 4 to 6Mbps.

That said, your line is capable of at least 7150kbps. We know that.

When you sign up the ISP is supposed to give you an estimate of the speed you might see, though they don't have to keep to it.

This is the nature of ADSL products. From your post, it isn't clear whether there is a fault or not. For example, if you only got 1500kbps that isn't necessarily a fault, it's "up to 20Mbps". The promise has been fulfilled.

Riddick87 wrote: »

Their telling me its legal for them to charge me for upto 20 but limit me to 7150kbps, if this is legal the world should end to be honest.

That's correct. It's up to 20Mbps.

I think a lot of people think this means that every line is capable of that speed and everyone should see it from time to time. It isn't like that. Few people will get 20Mbps.

Riddick87 wrote: »

Can i use this as grounds to end my contract? Or what can i actually do, in terms of getting a refund for the 6 months period for the difference in speeds?

BT have fulfilled all their obligations. You're not entitled to anything.

Riddick87 wrote: »

As a side note, my parents on virgin get 34mbps from an upto 30mbps connection, how are BT allowed to trade?

You've hit the key point here. Virgin Media cable is fibre optic to the cabinet then the signal is amplified round the local loop so everyone on 30Mbps gets 30Mbps. In theory anyway, it usually works out less because of contention (hence the "up to" caveat. But the nature of the "up to" is different). Your parents are getting a very good service.

The telephone network is not like that. ADSL can rarely touch cable for performance.

Riddick87 wrote: »

OFCOM have got this all wrong, we should be charged for what we receive, its absolutely ridiculous that companies can get away with this. If i sold a second hand car and put upto one car in a contract, and gave the person a wheel, they'd sue me and win, so can I sue BT? Probably not aye?

Someone please help me here, Anything I can do?

That's a whole separate debate. The logical conclusion of that argument is that if the supplier was only allowed to charge by speed delivered, thanks to the nature of ADSL it probably wouldn't be worth supplying you at all because you don't have a phone line capable of fast enough speeds to bother with.

However what your post doesn't indicate, as above, is whether there is a fault. The "limit" you mean may be something called the IP Profile. That is set to suit the phone line you have, it therefore won't go faster than that.

If you can access your router and paste the statistics page - in particular, the IP Profile, Sync Rate, Attenuation and Noise Margins, people can look and see if the line might be capable of more than that speed, or if it's about right.

One final thought: an IP profile of 7150 is typical for an ADSL1 "up to 8Mbps" connection on a very short line. If you can paste your full router stats they should give a clue as to whether it's just possible that your router is negotiating an ADSL1 connection instead of the ADSL2+ connection that might be available. This bit of data is usually called "Modulation type".

ihateyes

Riddick87 wrote: »

As a side note, my parents on virgin get 34mbps from an upto 30mbps connection, how are BT allowed to trade? OFCOM have got this all wrong, we should be charged for what we receive,

That life i guess.... i live in the !!!! end of nowwhere, and only get average of 1.5m, but still pay top dollar.... id prefer to pay for the speed, but how would they price that.... surely i get it for a £5er tops.

TBH, im more than happy with my speed, i watch footy online, doesnt buffer much at all (depends on the stream as well)..... ive neve been offline, and generally i get moe than i thought....

Remembering Virgin is really the only other alternative on the fibre optic, all the ret use the BT infrastructure, and BT will minipulate their service at the exchange.