Fibre to premises? You're stuck with BT and no discounts

Mutton_Geoff

BT are currently offering affiliate discounts on their Infinity packages of £80 cashback, they have an £80 BT mastercard offer on their own site linked through and the monthly rate is £29.99 instead of £34.99.


I went through the whole buying process to reach a page that said "unable to complete your order, please call us". The reason was fibre to premises orders cannot be processed online. So, BT also tell me there are no discounts or offers available as I am getting the bespoke service of a telephone order!


The first year would have cost me £215.88 via Quidco (12 months at £11 for Infinity, 11 months at £18.99 Line Rental Saver, £25 activation and £9.99 "hub delivery", less £80 Quidco, less £80 MasterCard). Total comes to £215.88 (or £295.88 if the Quidco cashback failed to honour).


Direct with BT on the phone, it's £435.79 since they won't honour their web prices, nor offer the MasterCard deal.


Be warned if you have a new build with the added "benefit" of fibre to premises, then you'll pay for the nose and have no option to use BT to provide your service since the other competitive vendors all rely on fibre to cabinet only.


I've raised a complaint with BT but don't expect to get very far.


As an aside, having spoken to 3-4 different sales people today, I asked all of them whether they use cashback sites or been on this MSE website themselves, all said "no".

JJ_Egan

Is FTTP BT Infinity or another product ??

I ask as i was inquiring last week for prices on the new BT GFast service .

lee111s

You also have Zen and AAISP.

Sky, TalkTalk et al are to blame, no one else. They have decided not to offer service on Openreach's FTTP network despite crying the loudest that Openreach don't do enough to offer customers better speeds.

So your complaints need to be aimed at the other providers for not offering the service, as opposed to BT who do.

rtho782

As stated above, other ISPs choose not to offer FTTP because they can't be bothered, and don't want a BT Openreach branded modem providing their service.

I'd still trade places with you. FTTP is much better than what most people have available.

Mutton_Geoff

lee111s wrote: »

You also have Zen and AAISP.

Sky, TalkTalk et al are to blame, no one else. They have decided not to offer service on Openreach's FTTP network despite crying the loudest that Openreach don't do enough to offer customers better speeds.

So your complaints need to be aimed at the other providers for not offering the service, as opposed to BT who do.

Thanks for the info Lee, since posting this, I have been catching up on your other posts on this topic and also been on the phone to Zen. Just deliberating whether to spend £435.78 with BT and get 55 meg and a phone line or £577 with Zen and get 40 meg but better service?


And my complaint about BT was them choosing not to honour any offers because they don't have to in a limited market.

lee111s

There should be no reason you can't order FTTP online? They offer it on the website don't they?

With FTTP there's very little to go wrong. It's not like copper services where small problems on the copper network cause issues. With fibre, it either works or it doesn't.

Mutton_Geoff

Thanks again Lee. I was promised a call back from a BT sales manager today that never came. I chased them again and despite two of their sales staff telling me on separate occasions that I could not purchase FTTP online and therefore no affiliate cashback or cheaper rates were available to me, nor was their own £80 mastercard offer, I was told today by someone in the tech department that the reason I couldn't order online was that the address was still locked to the previous owners BT account. Turns out the seller vacated 3 weeks ago and forgot to tell BT they were leaving.


Thanks for the tip. I have been a customer of Virgin Media and Gigaclear in the last few years and the connections were always more stable than BTs copper so I'm hoping FTTP is "fit and forget".

iniltous

Mutton_Geoff wrote: »

Thanks again Lee. I was promised a call back from a BT sales manager today that never came. I chased them again and despite two of their sales staff telling me on separate occasions that I could not purchase FTTP online and therefore no affiliate cashback or cheaper rates were available to me, nor was their own £80 mastercard offer, I was told today by someone in the tech department that the reason I couldn't order online was that the address was still locked to the previous owners BT account. Turns out the seller vacated 3 weeks ago and forgot to tell BT they were leaving.


Thanks for the tip. I have been a customer of Virgin Media and Gigaclear in the last few years and the connections were always more stable than BTs copper so I'm hoping FTTP is "fit and forget".

So you have presumably been a customer of company's that only offer their own brand service over thier network, ( try asking VM if you can have TT broadband over VM) and had no problem with the lack of choice, but it irks you that on FTTP there isn't enough competition , even though it's not BT's fault Sky , TT etc don't want to offer their branded broadband over FTTP ( it's available to them at a wholesale level, they chose not to bother)
As far as 'you have no choice but to use BT if a new build FTTP' that's just wrong, but even if they don't have to offer discounts that are available on FTTC infinity, there are other providers, it's just at the standard non discounted price BT is still the value brand of those that are available?

steveE2

Mutton_Geoff wrote: »

Thanks for the info Lee, since posting this, I have been catching up on your other posts on this topic and also been on the phone to Zen. Just deliberating whether to spend £435.78 with BT and get 55 meg and a phone line or £577 with Zen and get 40 meg but better service?


And my complaint about BT was them choosing not to honour any offers because they don't have to in a limited market.

You can order BT FTTP online,the best deal for the first year at the moment i think is Infinity 3 £49.99 same as INF 2 but 200/20 instead of 76/20 and no activation fee whereas INF 2 has £50 activation fee currently on offer at £25.
INF 3 works out £23 more than Zen but much better speeds

After the first year contact FTTP team to negotiate new deal

And don't forget TCB or Quidco for another £80-90 cashback as well as the £80 Reward Card

almillar

Is FTTP BT Infinity or another product ??

BT Infinity is FTTC (Cabinet) (then a metal wire from cabinet to your property)
not FTTP (Property) (only metal wiring is in your home)

littleboo

almillar wrote: »

BT Infinity is FTTC (Cabinet) (then a metal wire from cabinet to your property)
not FTTP (Property) (only metal wiring is in your home)

Not really. BT Infinity has a number of flavours, Infinity 4 for example is the 300 Mbps offering, which is obviously FTTP. You can also have the lower speed services on a FTTP connection