BT Infinity - Unreliable service - no cooling off period!

golden1974

Apologies in advance for long thread

I've had BT infinity, phone and vision for less than 2 weeks - installed on 23 August 2011. Since installation the broadband has been down for 2 mornings - (26 August and again today 3 September). Also the BT vision is poor - with pixilated programs that hang part way through the viewing.

Looking at the terms and conditions on the BT website it appeared that I had 14 days from installation in which to cancel the services....

How wrong I was.

I called BT to cancel due to the unreliable service and was passed to their 'options' team - the first person I spoke to said yes I could cancel without penalty due to the unreliable service but that he would need to confirm with the technical department. I was then surprised to be passed through to another team, then back to options, then back to technical then yet again to options. The last conversation on this call was to a rather unpleasant person from the options team who said that he refused to let me cancel the service without me paying penalties of £574. £574 to cancel a substandard service I have had access to for a week and a half!

I looked on the bt site and decided to make a complaint. Yet again to technical services and options. Again told that the £574 cancellation charge applied and the the outages were caused due to planned 'maintenance work' and that as it was pre planned work the service was reliable. I was not contacted by bt (an email or some kind of warning) before the outage of service, and the messages left on the bt broadband help at the time stated that there were 'exchange issues' - no mention of maintenance.

Does it seem a bit odd that BT can not let someone out of a contract where they are providing a substandard service without exorbitant penalties.

Is it even legal to not allow a 'cooling off period' for a service?

I have no problems paying for the service I have had to date but to be charged £574 to cancel a service I have had for less than 2 weeks seems excessive and unreasonable.

I have written an email to bt - we'll see if I get a response, and am considering escallating to ofcom and trading standards - and have sent an email to watchdog - not sure if these methods will help, but people need to be made aware of the Ts&Cs before entering into a service contract with BT - when I signed up there was no forewarning about the lack of a cooling off period - I printed out the agreement at the time of entering into the contract.

If anyone has struggled to get this far into the thread and can offer any words of advice, I would be appreciative!

Thanks

JJ_Egan

Maintenance work would be the reason for your poor service i would guess .
They dont contact every BT customer when maintenance is carried out .But preplanned work may be listed on the exchange .

Nub of the matter is you want out of a contract as you say poor service .

BT say No it was not poor service but due to work being carried out .


jje

golden1974

I do find it hard to believe that a provider as large as BT would have outages for a large area across london and surrounding areas for planned maintenance... if you are doing upgrades or maintenance you would do it in the early hours - and should be able to migrate traffic to other portions of infrastructure... I personally think it is some BS the 'customer services' person has made up to excuse the poor service

golden1974

You seriously think it costs bt £574 to install my services?! I have no problem paying a resonable sum to disconnect but £574 is unreasonable.

With regards to my BT vision - the picture is perfect through standard aerial - it is only pixilated when I go through BT vision.

x2 outages for broadband in less than 10 days - you think that that's acceptable then? Was with virgin for 3 years with no outages

spike7451

golden1974 wrote: »

I do find it hard to believe that a provider as large as BT would have outages for a large area across london and surrounding areas for planned maintenance... if you are doing upgrades or maintenance you would do it in the early hours - and should be able to migrate traffic to other portions of infrastructure... I personally think it is some BS the 'customer services' person has made up to excuse the poor service

It's not as simple as that.For one it could be a certain item of equipment has failed & needs replacing or the street cabinet has been wrecked by joyriders (has happened,we spent two weeks rebuilding a NTL mux & troubleshooting follow on faults on one that the phones were connected into) or the fibre optic cable feeding the cabinet is damaged.
It could be a cable needs replacing which means a road dig that requires DOE permission.

As to "migrate traffic to other portions of infrastructure" how are they going to do that?..if the main reason you don't have service is due to the fibre optic cable being damaged for example,what are they going to move it too?

And as others have stated,bad picture on your BT Vision is down to your aerial & cabling,not BT.

macman

If there's a fault, you have to give them the opportunity to remedy it. Which you clearly have not.
The cancellation charge is a proportion of the remaining value of your contract, as specified in the T&C's,which you freely entered into. Therefore it is reasonable.
It appears that after only 10 days you have simply decided that you don't want this service regardless.

golden1974

I have called bt both times at the time of outage and have reported the faults. All I want is a reliable service and so far this has not been the case.

I have clearly (wrongly) read the Ts & Cs - which I fully admit to - but to have no cooling off period is poor. Clearly this is not the view of the posters here. I was hoping for some words of advice not a berating.

macman

BT have already borne the full cost of the install, which for Infinity is considerable. Bear in mind that a normal OR call out (not a broadband or Infinity engineer, which is specialised work) is billed at £130 alone. Once the service has commenced and the physical work done, there is no cooling off period.
If you have suffered downtime, then ask them to credit you for the time involved. The fault may however be due to matters entirely beyond their control. 2 brief outages does not give you the right to void your contract.
You have been given sound advice, it's just that it wasn't what you wanted to hear. That is not 'berating'.

Taiko

But if the service is not as described, they need to be given chance to put it right or OP is entitled to exit under SOGA, surely?

JJ_Egan

Taiko wrote: »

But if the service is not as described, they need to be given chance to put it right or OP is entitled to exit under SOGA, surely?

But that may not apply if remedial work was required and the time period may well be to short for the service to be deemed as not up to standard .

OP has the choice of going up the scale with the complaint . My first step would have been advice from Trading Standards .

The post is more of a rant than actually asking for advice .

jje

purple-rain_3

Oh my god, some people on this forum are so harsh :eek:

OP, I sympathise and would be feeling similarly frustrated. I don't have any advice but in my opinion what you have described is NOT acceptable.