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Stay away from bt
mr_rodge
Posts: 4 Newbie
Morning all,
First things first - Apologies for a long and heated post. By the time you've read it, you'll be annoyed at me for losing a couple of minutes of your life, and never getting them back. I have been with BT for a grand total of a day, and have already lost countless hours of mine.
I'll give you a summary before I go on.
BT are a useless organisation that I wouldn't urinate on if they were on fire. I have been with Sky for many years and have not had the problems I've suffered in one day with BT. This applies to phone AND broadband. Interested? Read on.
I've just moved into my new home (I'm saying just, I've been there for six weeks). I never actually wanted a phone line, just broadband that was fast enough to watch multiple catch up TV channels in HD. BT's 'Infinity' package seemed to fit the bill, as it gave my speed estimate at 54mbit/s. Excellent, I thought, as I was moving from a rural area that could only receive ADSL at 1mbit/s. Sky offer a similar service, though it's only currently capable of 40mbit speeds for slightly more money, so I went for BT.
The online sign up process wasn't without its niggles, right from the word go. The £10 line rental advertised on the home page turned out to be £16, unless you paid for a whole year up front. I didn't like this, as moving home I was low on brass. I paid it anyway, to get the rental down. Installation was touted as free and worth £130, and the router/necessary gubbage was also free. I finished the process only to receive confirmation that installation/activation was 6 weeks away. This was due to flooding in various parts of the country. It was flooding in Cornwall, I live in Yorkshire. I wasn't happy, but swallowed it regardless.
A couple of days later I got an email stating my telephone number, and it also had a VERY small comment right at the bottom that said something along the lines of 'Don't forget to maintain your discount you must make ten calls a month'. ??!! WHAT?! I didn't even want a phone line! I immediately Googled around and quickly found that many other people had been had by the same scam. It's apparently there to make you 'earn' your 'free' £130 engineer's visit. If you fail to make the payment, 6 sterling will be added to the line rental on each month that you fail to make the calls!! So the large sum of money that I forked out to get the advertised £10/month rental, it seems, was now under threat. I had numerous rants and raves to the Mrs about it, at which point I checked out the competition and couldn't find a better deal. So I swallowed, and planned on making the 10 calls by ringing a relative and hanging up ten times, on a weekend, on the second Saturday of every month. Another kick to the nether regions that I didn't need.
Anyway, yesterday the date finally came. I thoroughly research everything I do, so I knew what to expect. Apparently the Openreach modems for the FTTC service are prone to overheating, so the engineers mount them vertically to aid ventilation. Mine was dumped on the floor. Again, another kick down below, though I guess I can move it myself.
Now was the time to test it all for real, when the engineer had gone. I tried the phone line, it worked fine. I tried the internet over WiFi, it ran at 11mbit/s which I thought was OK for WiFi. Alarm bell number one. My router was kicking out not just my WPA2 encrypted service, but also two other, unencrypted services. I connected to one and quickly it appeared that I was unknowingly contributing to BT's Openzone network! I knew my account came with free ACCESS to openzone hotspots that I would never use, but NOWHERE did it say that I'd be contributing. It also seems that it's impossible to turn this off, which brings me to my next point. BT have access to my router, and can control it fully. I HATE this. If BT can access it, so can anyone else. Ports must be open. It's more the fact that I wasn't told and can't disable it. If I remain on BT's service, I'll hack and debrand their 'hub' as soon as I can.
Next up, hard-wired speed tests. The MOST I got was 34mbit/s. I used multiple different speed tests, all of which gave the same result, so I know they're right. I've tried at numerous times throughout the night, also. This morning, the speed tests measured 34mbit/s, but the BBC's iplayer wouldn't play HD content without interruption. You only need 3.5mbit/s for this, so BT are clearly throttling, not just slightly. Furthermore, Sky don't throttle their connections and offer 40mbit/s connections, so if I'd known I wasn't going to get 54mbit/s I'd have gone with them.
The speed checker on the BT site shows 54.5mbit down and 18mbit up. The small print at the bottom states you should get between 1-2mbit of the described speed, so WHERE THE HELL IS MY 20mbits?! Useless. FTTC doesn't have a 'learning' period, either so I know it isn't a case of waiting for the connection to 'settle'.
This is pretty trivial, but where is my £50 Sainsbury's voucher?!
Anyway, rant over. If you have common sense, stay away from BT. I'd better start calling Bangladesh and brushing up on foreign accents because there's going to be some hours on the phone to follow.
First things first - Apologies for a long and heated post. By the time you've read it, you'll be annoyed at me for losing a couple of minutes of your life, and never getting them back. I have been with BT for a grand total of a day, and have already lost countless hours of mine.
I'll give you a summary before I go on.
BT are a useless organisation that I wouldn't urinate on if they were on fire. I have been with Sky for many years and have not had the problems I've suffered in one day with BT. This applies to phone AND broadband. Interested? Read on.
I've just moved into my new home (I'm saying just, I've been there for six weeks). I never actually wanted a phone line, just broadband that was fast enough to watch multiple catch up TV channels in HD. BT's 'Infinity' package seemed to fit the bill, as it gave my speed estimate at 54mbit/s. Excellent, I thought, as I was moving from a rural area that could only receive ADSL at 1mbit/s. Sky offer a similar service, though it's only currently capable of 40mbit speeds for slightly more money, so I went for BT.
The online sign up process wasn't without its niggles, right from the word go. The £10 line rental advertised on the home page turned out to be £16, unless you paid for a whole year up front. I didn't like this, as moving home I was low on brass. I paid it anyway, to get the rental down. Installation was touted as free and worth £130, and the router/necessary gubbage was also free. I finished the process only to receive confirmation that installation/activation was 6 weeks away. This was due to flooding in various parts of the country. It was flooding in Cornwall, I live in Yorkshire. I wasn't happy, but swallowed it regardless.
A couple of days later I got an email stating my telephone number, and it also had a VERY small comment right at the bottom that said something along the lines of 'Don't forget to maintain your discount you must make ten calls a month'. ??!! WHAT?! I didn't even want a phone line! I immediately Googled around and quickly found that many other people had been had by the same scam. It's apparently there to make you 'earn' your 'free' £130 engineer's visit. If you fail to make the payment, 6 sterling will be added to the line rental on each month that you fail to make the calls!! So the large sum of money that I forked out to get the advertised £10/month rental, it seems, was now under threat. I had numerous rants and raves to the Mrs about it, at which point I checked out the competition and couldn't find a better deal. So I swallowed, and planned on making the 10 calls by ringing a relative and hanging up ten times, on a weekend, on the second Saturday of every month. Another kick to the nether regions that I didn't need.
Anyway, yesterday the date finally came. I thoroughly research everything I do, so I knew what to expect. Apparently the Openreach modems for the FTTC service are prone to overheating, so the engineers mount them vertically to aid ventilation. Mine was dumped on the floor. Again, another kick down below, though I guess I can move it myself.
Now was the time to test it all for real, when the engineer had gone. I tried the phone line, it worked fine. I tried the internet over WiFi, it ran at 11mbit/s which I thought was OK for WiFi. Alarm bell number one. My router was kicking out not just my WPA2 encrypted service, but also two other, unencrypted services. I connected to one and quickly it appeared that I was unknowingly contributing to BT's Openzone network! I knew my account came with free ACCESS to openzone hotspots that I would never use, but NOWHERE did it say that I'd be contributing. It also seems that it's impossible to turn this off, which brings me to my next point. BT have access to my router, and can control it fully. I HATE this. If BT can access it, so can anyone else. Ports must be open. It's more the fact that I wasn't told and can't disable it. If I remain on BT's service, I'll hack and debrand their 'hub' as soon as I can.
Next up, hard-wired speed tests. The MOST I got was 34mbit/s. I used multiple different speed tests, all of which gave the same result, so I know they're right. I've tried at numerous times throughout the night, also. This morning, the speed tests measured 34mbit/s, but the BBC's iplayer wouldn't play HD content without interruption. You only need 3.5mbit/s for this, so BT are clearly throttling, not just slightly. Furthermore, Sky don't throttle their connections and offer 40mbit/s connections, so if I'd known I wasn't going to get 54mbit/s I'd have gone with them.
The speed checker on the BT site shows 54.5mbit down and 18mbit up. The small print at the bottom states you should get between 1-2mbit of the described speed, so WHERE THE HELL IS MY 20mbits?! Useless. FTTC doesn't have a 'learning' period, either so I know it isn't a case of waiting for the connection to 'settle'.
This is pretty trivial, but where is my £50 Sainsbury's voucher?!
Anyway, rant over. If you have common sense, stay away from BT. I'd better start calling Bangladesh and brushing up on foreign accents because there's going to be some hours on the phone to follow.
0
Comments
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How did you expect to get any broadband service without an active phone line? All BT line rental services come with a minimum bundled call component included.
The qualifying calls requirement can come out of your inclusive calls allowance, so it's not chargeable.
Why did you pick BT when you had the choice of many other BT resellers providing the same FTTC service, but better and cheaper (Plusnet being the obvious example)?
You clearly know the technical side well, but do not seem to have done much research (despite your claim to thoroughly research everything) on what the deal actually included (for example, the headline line rental rate is clearly shown as only applicable if you purchase Line Rental Saver).
4-5 weeks is a perfectly standard time for a new line provision, it's invariably longer in the winter when the weather is bad, as repairs take priority.
Since Sky's FTTC would simply be the same BT product resold, the speed should be the same on either service-I know which I'd have gone for.No free lunch, and no free laptop
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How did you expect to get any broadband service without an active phone line? All BT line rental services come with a minimum bundled call component included.
The qualifying calls requirement can come out of your inclusive calls allowance, so it's not chargeable.
Why did you pick BT when you had the choice of many other BT resellers providing the same FTTC service, but better and cheaper (Plusnet being the obvious example)?
You clearly know the technical side well, but do not seem to have done much research (despite your claim to thoroughly research everything) on what the deal actually included (for example, the headline line rental rate is clearly shown as only applicable if you purchase Line Rental Saver).
4-5 weeks is a perfectly standard time for a new line provision, it's invariably longer in the winter when the weather is bad, as repairs take priority.
Since Sky's FTTC would simply be the same BT product resold, the speed should be the same on either service-I know which I'd have gone for.
A few things. NOTHING was clearly shown. I half expected the line rental thing as there was a star beside the £10 line rental thing six weeks ago, but no small print associated with it on the page. As I said, I grinned and swallowed it. The free engineer visit scam wasn't in writing anywhere.
At the time of signing up, there was no better deal. Plusnet now appear to be offering one that is better. Their deal was for 40/10 FTTC, not 80/20 and it had a fairly restrictive download cap, for more money. Sky was better, with no download cap but still a 40/10 connection.
The fact is that help from BT is non-existant and my speeds are 20mbits lower than they should be. The sooner I end this the better.0 -
I transferred to BT from Orange in December and so far I am very pleased with the way things have gone. My line speed has increased and I always get connected.
My situation is much different to yours of course as I already had a land-line and ISP and just needed to transfer from one ISP to another.
I am not sure how paying a years line rental in advance constitutes a "niggle". It was stated clearly, when I looked at the offers, that you paid less line-rental provided you paid a year in advance.
With regard to having to make a certain number of calls a month or pay a surcharge you seem to have your facts wrong. You need to make at least two calls a month or pay £2 a month extra. Not ten calls a month or pay six pounds a month, as you have said. I dont like this either but it is still only £12 a month instead of £16. I get free calls anyway.
I had ten good years with Orange and then things started going pear-shaped. I am under no illusions and know that it is only when you start getting problems that you find out the calibre of customer service that is on offer. But I can only speak as I find and so far it has been all good with BT.0 -
I transferred to BT from Orange in December and so far I am very pleased with the way things have gone. My line speed has increased and I always get connected.
My situation is much different to yours of course as I already had a land-line and ISP and just needed to transfer from one ISP to another.
I am not sure how paying a years line rental in advance constitutes a "niggle". It was stated clearly, when I looked at the offers, that you paid less line-rental provided you paid a year in advance.
With regard to having to make a certain number of calls a month or pay a surcharge you seem to have your facts wrong. You need to make at least two calls a month or pay £2 a month extra. Not ten calls a month or pay six pounds a month, as you have said. I dont like this either but it is still only £12 a month instead of £16. I get free calls anyway.
I had ten good years with Orange and then things started going pear-shaped. I am under no illusions and know that it is only when you start getting problems that you find out the calibre of customer service that is on offer. But I can only speak as I find and so far it has been all good with BT.
I've just double checked again, I didn't get it wrong, it says ten calls or £6. If it was two calls for £2 I'd be OK with it, I mean, what's the point in renting a line that you don't use? My bugbear is the fact that it was directly related to my 'free' £130 installation/engineer visit. The site stated it was free for being a new customer, no asterisks, nothing in the terms. I then get an email a couple of days later saying that I have to make ten calls/month. The 'more info' link in the email basically said that I have to 'earn' (exact word) the discount by making ten CHARGEABLE calls a month. As I said, this was NOT communicated at ANY stage and, to be fair, is not a very clever way of making new customers feel welcome, nor is it good practice.
I just tried to cancel as I've had more than I can chew, only to be told I won't get any line rental back and I'll have to pay a cancellation fee (which they wouldn't tell me how much). When I brought up the cooling off period it's apparently in effect from the day you order, not the day service starts. Robbers.
£130 for a twenty minute plug-in and sit on a cabinet stool still astounds me.0 -
A chargeabe call is any call including an inclusive call to a 01/02/03 number. it excludes calls to freecall numbers.:footie:
Regular savers earn 6% interest (HSBC, First Direct, M&S) Loans cost 2.9% per year (Nationwide) = FREE money. 0 -
But you do use the line. How do you think the broadband signals gets to your property? By magic? All broadband services requires line rental, unless you are on VM cable service.
As for cancellation, Line Rental Saver is not refundable under any circumstances (that is also clearly set out on the website). If you cancel now then you'll be hit with a massive broadband ETC, as you are in a minimum 18m contract for BT Infinity.
And £130 is the minimum engineer call out for any OR visit, whether it takes 1 minute or one hour. You can't expect the cooling-off period to continue after the service has commenced. It's to enable you to change your mind before BT incur the expense of providing the service.No free lunch, and no free laptop0 -
But you do use the line. How do you think the broadband signals gets to your property? By magic? All broadband services requires line rental, unless you are on VM cable service.
As for cancellation, Line Rental Saver is not refundable under any circumstances (that is also clearly set out on the website). If you cancel now then you'll be hit with a massive broadband ETC, as you are in a minimum 18m contract for BT Infinity.
And £130 is the minimum engineer call out for any OR visit, whether it takes 1 minute or one hour. You can't expect the cooling-off period to continue after the service has commenced. It's to enable you to change your mind before BT incur the expense of providing the service.
There's no need for sarcasm, I was referring to cable. Unless that qualifies as magic. I can't get it, but if I could, I would. Therefore I wouldn't have a phone line if I didn't have to. Same goes for two-way satellite broadband, power line broadband etc. if they were cost effective, reliable or available. Don't challenge me on the technical side.
I'm not being funny (and I'm not saying you're wrong in what you quote, this is an opinion), but the cooling off period is complete BS. Every mobile phone contract I have ever had has started the period on delivery of the phone, allowing you to evaluate the service. I'm no expert, but isn't this distance selling regulations? Surely I've paid for a service, so the period shouldn't begin until receipt of that service begins.
Why should BT be any different? There's no two ways about it, it's wrong, even if it isn't in the eyes of the law.
Oh, and they don't all offer the same service. They might use the same lines but they all have different contention ratios at various points in the system, so all offer different performance.
People are saying the line rental is clearly set out... It wasn't when I signed up six weeks ago, but like I said, I half expected it due to the star and lack of footnote, so that isn't my problem. My problem is the consistent and 'convenient' failure to mention things. Inexcusable.0 -
It wasn't intended to be sarcastic, purely factual. You are complaining about having to pay BT line rental for your broadband service, as if this was a feature unique to BT?
It's clearly stated in the T&C's that the cooling-off period ceases at the commencement of service. Since you research things so thoroughly, how did you miss that? DSR simply does not apply here. Do you seriously thnk that BT would be happy for you to say 'sorry, I've changed my mind, please come and take it away and don't charge me' after they have incurred all the set up costs?
If you click on the link that says' Line Rental from £10.75', it is clearly explained that to get this price you must opt for LRS. It also explains the requirement to make 2 calls per month.
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/products/broadband/packages
The essence of your complaint seems to be that you are not getting the speed that BT estimated, yet you do not appear to have asked BT to investigate thsi and worked with them to improve that speed.
PS: I'll challenge you where I please-that's the idea of a public forum, after all.No free lunch, and no free laptop0 -
18 month contract for Internet ? I think I will stick with O2 thanks0
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I've been with BT internet and phone for 10 yrs and never had any sort of hassle from them, no dropped internet, absolutely nothing. 8 months ago I switched to BT Infinity and it's been fantastic. The guy installing it did say the speed may fluctuate for the first 10 days or so and I have never had a problem downloading anything and I download and watch a lot of stuff in HD!
Two weeks ago my hub broke, kept disconnecting me for about a week till I reported it and within a week I had a new hub and not a single problem since.
I've changed to other providers before and have had so much hassle I'll never leave BT until they give me reason to. I don't care that I pay extra/more as long as I get the service I need.
PS My speedtest shows: Download 64.5 mbps and Upload 15.7 mbps.
Cheers
Casper
xxLBM Feb 09[STRIKE] £64 427.32[/STRIKE] £13 700.59! Sub £15 000!
DFD July 2018
GC 01Dec ~ 30Dec £40.00 SSF £00.00
NSD 00/20 WSC (08~14) £13.59 SSF £00.00 DFW Nerd 319 Proud To Be Dealing With My Debts!
"Captain Jack Harkness! When will you learn that you can't solve every problem by shagging it?!"0
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