BT Infinity Frustration

Dispater

We ordered BT Infinity before Christmas as they seemed to be the only offering in our area. Sent all our details of current provider (Talktalk) and were told 12th January for connection. Got an email on the morning of 12th Jan to remind up to be home between 08:00 and 13:00 . Took the day off work and waited, and waited, and waited. At 13:39 got a call from a call centre saying no engineers were available and the appointment would be rescheduled to 26th January!
In the meantime, our Talktalk connection had been cancelled so we have been left with no internet at all and I've lost 1 day annual leave (with another to come).
Asked if BT could provide ADSL in the meantime but was told this would take as long as the next appointment so not worth it.

What are my options? Don't really want to be without internet access for this length of time. BT have been singularly unhelpful.

JJ_Egan

Options are to use a mobile or do without the internet for a few weeks .
Sadly we all have to wait on BT Open Reach .

kwikbreaks

Openreach no-shows are a common occurrence. Just hope they turn up on 26th - there's no guarantee.

After getting my fingers burned the when this happened to me and accepting an upgrade + new contract from VM instead of leaving as I'd planned I made sure my FTTC got installed before cancelling the next time around.

It's high time Ofcom did something about the shambles they created when they effectively created Openreach by forcing BT to split.

BT_company_representative

Hi Dispater

I can look into this for you to see if the date can be brought forward.

Send us an email using the contact us information in my public profile.

Thanks

Stuart

kwikbreaks

Dispater wrote: »

BT have been singularly unhelpful.

Despite the offer above BT Retail have no more influence over Openreach than any other ISP. The regulations insist that they don't.

In order to create a "level playing field" every ISP has to put up with the same abysmal service.

Just to add to your frustration there is no way you can complain to Openreach either.

Dispater

Thanks for the replies.
I eventually got BT to cancel m contract (although they have suggested they will request a £300 cancellation fee and keep the £176 pre=payment we already sent for paid in advance line rental).
The reason originally given for the no-show was a lack of engineers in my area. After multiple phone calls it changed to 'a problem with the fibre at your exchange'. As BT were the only resource suggesting that Fibre was available my feeling is that they somewhat jumped the gun and offered something they could not yet provide. I am taking the route of the small claims court to claw back the money already given to them, prevent them from demanding and extra £300 cancellation fee (ordered on 20th December, promised 12th January, 14 day cooling off period started from date of order) as I believe this wasn't anything to do with a cooling off of interest from me but a failure to provide the product promised by them. I will also claim for one day of lost leave waiting for someone to arrive and numerous telephone calls trying to resolve the situation.
Had they offered me a temporary ADSL line until they were able to complete the contract I would have accepted this as simply bad luck, but this was refused and the heavy handed threats to take £467 from me for ME breaking the contract means that I have no intention of ever setting foot anywhere near a contract with this company again.
TalkTalk are now re-instating the contract I had with them, on ADSL. When fibre eventaully DOES become available I will take the upgrade route with them. I have no choice now as I had to start a new 18 month contract, which limits my ability to shop around and something else I will consider adding to my claim against BT.

No company is perfect, and unforseen situations can always arise. However, its the ability of these companies to work with the customer and resolving issues that is the important factor. BT have come up woefully wanting in this area.

Dispater

kwikbreaks wrote: »

Openreach no-shows are a common occurrence. Just hope they turn up on 26th - there's no guarantee.

After getting my fingers burned the when this happened to me and accepting an upgrade + new contract from VM instead of leaving as I'd planned I made sure my FTTC got installed before cancelling the next time around.

It's high time Ofcom did something about the shambles they created when they effectively created Openreach by forcing BT to split.

The frustrating thing was that we agreed to let BT deal with taking over the services from TalkTalk when we signed up. We therefore lost our broadband connection completely from midnight on 11th January. Had they left everything in place I would have waited patiently (although frustrated) until they sorted out their fibre problems. Instead they left us high and dry and threatened to charge us if we cancelled the contract that they had failed to honour. One operator I spoke to even had to ask me what ADSL meant.

kwikbreaks

Well I cancelled the whole thing when I had a no show and that included a line install as I was moving from cable. There was no penalty and should not be as they have failed to provide the contracted service.

I was annoyed enough to bung up a web page on my experience although to be fair it was just continuing a story of annoyance with VM...

If they persist with their BS about charges email the BT Group CEO office - easy to find the email using google but this site has a downer on explaining how to find CEO emails for some obscure reason amd I've had posts deleted in the past. I've vowed if that ever happens again I'll stop wasting my time on here.

My no show - http://www.idontbelieveit.me.uk/openreach-the-unaccountable-monopoly/

Pauldarkomen

I am 3 months into an 18 month contract for BT infinity.I was with AOL & the speed i got from them for broadband was around 2 or 3 mps when i should have been getting at least double that.So when the contract ended i rang BT to see about infinity.I told the man on the phone my main worry was as the infinity was going to come in to the modem via my original phone line surely the speed would still be slow.He assured me that i would get at least 30mps which to me was like getting an express train instead of the milk train.Wonderful i thought so said yes that was for me.Well when i first got started on infinity i managed to get around 25mbs for the first couple of months or so which i was very happy with.No complaints.But the last week or so after doing broadband speed tests on several different sites including the BT site i am now lucky to get 4 mps.This is useless & frustrating.I have replaced the filter that goes into the phone socket which is right by our BT home hub 5 and is the only phone socket we use.My PC is pretty new & virus free & passes all the tests.I am connected by ethernet not wireless.I have turned the hub on & off & gone through everything with the online team and am still left with this rubbish speed.I am paying for something i am not getting.BT now tell me i can have an engineer visit but could end up with an £130 bill.No way.I have sent an email to the watchdogcomplaints@bt and await their response & am considering contacting ofcom. This is not good enough.15 more months of speed that i was getting with aol at a far cheaper price.If this continues then Virgin here i come.

NeverEnough

I had problems recently with severely degraded speed on Infinity and their awful Indian Call Centre chanting the same old rubbish over and over. I escalated the issue and was threatened with the £130 charge, but insisted and was mildly surprised when an openreach chap arrived on a Saturday morning without an appointment -saw him by chance on our shared driveway and he spent the next hour or two at our local cabinet after checking our line. He found we were on a completely rubbish pair and once swopped over, speeds were over 24mbps which is the most we can get in the area, so was very pleased.

Unfortunately, a few weeks later a telephone line fault occurred close to our house and cut us off completely, a week or so before Xmas - insisted despite the usual £130 threat that there was a problem- line engineer confirmed fault and repaired it, but the BB speed plunged again, this time the BT rep on here had to help as the Awful Indian Call Centre was amazingly bad, even for them. BT sent me a HH5 and speeds are back to normal again after they escalated the issue within Openreach. Mo £130 charges despite the threats -they always threaten this.

Not a lot of choice in our area, its really just BT or shockingly awful providers like TalkTalk, Plusnet possibly the next port of call when our contract runs out.

Just checking though......do you actually need a filter? Infinity usually does not need an added filter as when the engineer installs it, they upgrade the wall socket, so an additional filter added to the installation might be messing about with your speed.

As long as you have done your own checks ie that your own modem and router are not at fault, book the visit as the £130 threat is a constant with Bt - they do it all the time!

Sterlingtimes

Of course, you do not have a contract with BT Openreach. It is a subcontractor in this instance.

When I suffered from the wait-at-home no-show game, I telephoned BT's CEO and spoke very politely and immediately to his PA. I had an engineer on my doorstep within an hour.