can i get out of BT contract in any way without charges

declan37

Hi.
I wonder can anyone help.
I'm in a 2 year BT broadband contract 1 year left and paid my line rental up front , ends on October this year.

2 reason I want to leave
The broadband over the last 4 months got very bad , engineers out saying its an old line and nothing they can do. Today, BT  say I'm getting 2 MBPS  but I'm  at times getting 1.7 mbps and even at stages below 1 mbps. they say as the average is above 1 mbps they are honouring their contract. so are looking more to cancel than it is to stay.
now with schools off and my children doing homework it was impossible so i took out a mobile home broadband deal which gives me 12- 17mbps. and i have switched off the bt hub.
the 2nd thing is I said can i not cancel my contract due the next hike price which i gor an email about 2 wweks ago, ( thought  this was a get out Martin advised once) and they said no! as its in line with CPI inflation. the worst is i get emails saying with whats going on at present with the virus,  BT are keeping people connected, sorry not me!.
Any advice or help would be much appreciated.
BTW as i live in rural area no fibre so the only way I had to go was mobile broadband, and BT only advised due to slow speed to report a fault, they have tried to fix it for 4 months and its not happening due to bad and old lines 
Thanks in advance D

JJ_Egan

< thought  this was a get out Martin advised once) and they said no! as its in line with CPI inflation.>

Yes on old price structure pre 2018  . No longer applies to new contracts as you agree to the price rise / its part of the contract .From August 2018 on every advert and contract .

littleboo

What speed were you told to expect when you took out the contract? How are you measuring the speed?

declan37

I was told min 1 mbps but would get 2 mbps, most of the time its around 1.7 mbps. and times it drops to 0.8 mbps totally useless especially now everyone is on the net . they told me to report slow speed 
They told me yesterday i was getting 2.6 Mbps at hub, but when i told them hub was off they quickly said yuor are guaranteed a min of 1 mbps which i asked what service or supplier like netflix run on they could not tell me. Netflix according to what i read needs 2.8 mbps to be ok. what about service not fit for purpose?

declan37

forgot to say measuring speed via  bt wholesale speed test

littleboo

It is fit for purpose if its delivering the speed you were told to expect, and it sounds as if it is. You should always measure speed using a wired connection direct to router.

mnbvcxz

Tricky as you seem to have realised they said it would be a poor speed and they delivered the promised poor speed.  You could try looking at the bt dsl checker and seeing what the handback speed is though I don't know if that means much.

If you are really below what they promised then you should be able to raise a complaint and if they can't fix it then they are supposed to have agreed to release you. It sounds like you are pretty close to the estimate though. You should be able to loginto the router and see the actual connection synch speed.

There is the USO obligation to provide everyone with 10mbs but that's pretty lousy too. They will probably just say you can sign up with them for two years of mobile broadband 4g at £40 a month for 200gb which is probably not good value.
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/03/10mbps-uk-broadband-universal-service-obligation-to-go-live.html

On the plus side if you want a landline for calls and a number anyway then the cost of a landline and broadband is often similar to what you pay for a landline on its own so you may not be as badly off as you think.

I suppose a nefarious person might wiggle the phone cable often so the router disconnects and syncs slower and see if the engineer gives up and just assumes it's a long line with a hidden fault. But that's not exactly honest is it and if they do blame you its a call out charge.

Raising an official complaint is free of course. You could use the broadband and keep a careful list of every time it has failed you and then say I was told it would be slow but that it would be usable and all these times it was not usable. Perhaps the ombusman would agree with you. Perhaps they would find you such a pest they would let you go, possibly loosing your telephone number? Or they may be too robotic and you will just have to honour what you bought. 

JJ_Egan

Even if OP leaves BT any BB service will be down the same bad line .

J_B

JJ_Egan said:

Even if OP leaves BT any BB service will be down the same bad line .

Exactly - been there etc

We use https://www.airband.co.uk/ - not sure if they are available to the OP

mnbvcxz

JJ_Egan said:

Even if OP leaves BT any BB service will be down the same bad line .

 True but as OP says he has switched  to much  faster mobile broadband instead, presumably it is not an issue?

pphillips

Try making a complaint to BT, after 8 weeks you can go to CISAS for adjudication.