BT - the good and the bad

malc_b

I've just swapped to BT from plusnet. Plusnet want to put up my rental by £2.50 unless I moved my phone to them too. A bit tricky since I had just renewed BT line saver for another year. So I ditched plusnet for BT which was also cheaper as well as giving me 6 month's free and a sainsbury's voucher. Bit of no brainer in terms of costs and plusnet didn't offer me anything to stay (so much for customer loyalty, as usual).

BT support is pants. I had much better from plusnet. Also plusnet info is far better telling you all the settings you need to configure your router. BT hide the info making it hard to use anything but BT hub. The best info is to be found in the forums which is hardly a recommendation is it! I find BT is far too found of giving you 25-50% of the full info, plus a link to their paid help service. Hmm!

Also, unlike plusnet BT do NOT allow you to use any email address as from. This makes it hard where you own your domain(s), a useful thing to have as you then keep a fixed email address rather than than changing every time you change ISP (and a domain costs a few quid a year). On BT every email address you want to use you have to register and then click the link on the email sent. This takes a while so you don't want to have loads of email addresses and I read there is a limit of 10 anyway.

In case any thinks why have so many email addresses it aids email sorting. With a domain you can have separate email address for Amazon, ebay, paypal, friends, work, etc.. Have them all end up in one inbox and then sort them in the email client. BTW I got the BT limit by not using BT but using my hosting email server which I hadn't realised came with my hosting always having used my ISP email server in the past.

On the plus point BT haven't changed my internet and I'm still getting the full 8MB I was getting before. I'm rural and only have ADSL1. With plusnet I had to have interleaving removed to get the last drop of speed. I'm glad I don't have to try to do that with BT as the helpline so far has been pretty thick. You know you're on to a looser when you know loads more than the person you're asking the questions of.

I can see why Plusnet adverts go one about their support. Price wise BT wins out for me and as long as every thing works I should be ok. The fact BT want to charge you for support on their product is pretty poor I reckon. OK, if you have issues with PC etc. but to want to charge you for just giving connection details is bottom of the barrel.

JJ_Egan

For me BT was putting up my line rental by almost £2-50 and that's why i took out a Plus Net contract .
Plus the fact that Plus Net constantly came out very high on customer support .

jje

malc_b

The reverse of what I found. I think the only course of action is like with everything else. Keep changing supplier to get the intro deal as no one rewards customer loyalty these days.

wildwestfan

I am moving to Sky from BT next week.

I am out of contract with BT and have asked for and received a MAC from them. However Sky tell me they do not need a MAC and will not be using it. In an email today BT inform me that if the MAC is not used they will charge me £30. This is madness, my gas provider does not charge me for taking my business elsewhere.

Anyone moved from BT recently and been charged?

Dovah_diva

I was charged a 'leaving fee' from BT and *think* it was for £30. Thieving b@stards, they'll never get my custom again.