Recommendations Sought For Switching From BT

Oasis_Gardening

We are currently in the middle on another episode with BT "Customer Service" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) relating to a line fault which has currently not been fixed after a week, after initially being told it would be three days.

We're now wanting to move away totally from BT so that we have no contact or reliance on them whatsoever - calls & line rental.

Can anyone recommend another phone company / service which has no reliance on BT for their service and are reliable in terms of customer service if / when something does go wrong? Or are they all as bad as each other?

I run a business from home and cannot afford to be without a phone line for any length of time, so need a company I can rely on.

Thanks

Mark_In_Hampshire

Your only option is Virgin Media Business, and then, only if you're in a cabled area.

If you are not, then unfortunately, you don't have any options. In the rest of the country BT Openreach maintain the exchanges and some of the network, and all suppliers use them. It is a monopoly; there is no competition at all.

That said, what we can't know from your post is who is stalling on the repair - whether it's the engineers (Openreach) or your ISP (BT Business Broadband). Some ISPs are much better at, for want of a better expression, kicking ****. One such quite well known one is Andrews and Arnold (AAISP) though it is very expensive.

wongawonga

Are we talking about a business line here ?

DVardysShadow

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

Your only option is Virgin Media Business, and then, only if you're in a cabled area.

If you are not, then unfortunately, you don't have any options. In the rest of the country BT Openreach maintain the exchanges and some of the network, and all suppliers use them. It is a monopoly; there is no competition at all.

That said, what we can't know from your post is who is stalling on the repair - whether it's the engineers (Openreach) or your ISP (BT Business Broadband). Some ISPs are much better at, for want of a better expression, kicking ****. One such quite well known one is Andrews and Arnold (AAISP) though it is very expensive.

As you say, we don't know whether the problem is with customer facing BT or with [BT] Openreach. As OP frames the complaint in terms of 'Customer Service', in the first instance I would suggest the Post Office, who do have UK and ROI based customer service which does not take the proverbial to anything like the degree of BT's 'customer services'. If that fails, then OP might be out of luck.

NittyGritty

i,m heading to sky for line rental and broadband, you save £5 discount a month if you have both

billsavings

Is the op using a residential line for business,and expecting to get a quicker response that business customers pay extra for ?

Oasis_Gardening

Thanks for the replies. It's hard to tell who is stalling on fixing the problem, however, I think it is probably Openreach (?)

When the problem was reported, we were advised that it would be three days to fix it. On the third day we were then advised it would be another three days. On the third day...you guessed it!

We do have a residential line, however, we're not looking for repairs to be quicker than business lines, merely for a company that delivers in the timeframes it promises.

As a one off I could live with it, however, it's the second time it's happened - hence wanting to get rid of BT.

We are out in the country, but I think we do have Virgin cable out here - I'll check them out.

Do Sky use BT lines?

macman

All lines on the local loop are BT OR, unless you are on VM cable.

BT_company_representative

Hi Oasis Gardening,

I can check the fault report and see exactly what's going on here. If you want, you can get in touch via the "Contact Us" form that's on my profile page.

Thanks,

Stephanie

Oasis_Gardening

BT_company_representative wrote: »

Hi Oasis Gardening,

I can check the fault report and see exactly what's going on here. If you want, you can get in touch via the "Contact Us" form that's on my profile page.

Thanks,

Stephanie

Hi

Did you get my message? I sent a message on Thursday tea time but not heard anything back.