Mis-sold fibre broadband but only have copper wire?

Dommika

Good afternoon,

I am looking for some advice. We have been having issues with our broadband speeds for some time which have been exacerbated by having everyone working from home. We are currently with EE and paying for Fibre Broadband with a guaranteed download speed of 12mbps. The last time we called regarding our speeds the speed test showed us we were getting less than 1mbps! Luckily that issue is now sorted and have a workable speed.

We are now out of contract with EE so I have been shopping around for a better deal, I called BT to ask what can be offered which they informed me we can only get Standard Broadband  and not Fibre as we have a copper line and not a fibre line.

It turns out we have never been able to have fibre broadband but have been with EE for 5 plus years now as was informed they could offer this to us. I am not going to pretend I know much on how it all works but I do know we have been paying for fibre broadband for this amount of time but have never been able to receive this service.

I've just been on the phone to EE who have acknowledged this and are currently writing an email to the complaints department for us and have been informed that we will get a phone call within 24hours to go through it with them.

I wanted to know if anyone else has been in this situation or could explain what our rights are. I believe that this is a mis selling of the package and as such are we entitled to a full refund? i seem to be finding mixed answers on the internet.

Many thanks.

pbartlett

I would have thought you would be entitled to the difference (if any) between the price your were paying and the price you would have had paid for the copper broadband.

So if you were paying £30 a month for 'fibre' and copper would only have cost you £20 then refund of £10 a month.

littleboo

Most people on "fibre" are actually on a hybrid fibre and copper network. In the case of OR based providers, that's FTTC which urilises the copper line to the street cabinet, and fibre thereon.  Your speeds look to be ADSL, which is copper to the exchange, but just be aware that fibre doesn't necessarily mean fibre to the house.

Dommika

littleboo said:

Most people on "fibre" are actually on a hybrid fibre and copper network. In the case of OR based providers, that's FTTC which urilises the copper line to the street cabinet, and fibre thereon.  Your speeds look to be ADSL, which is copper to the exchange, but just be aware that fibre doesn't necessarily mean fibre to the house.

I understand, thank you. However, we were sold fibre broadband; BT have said we cannot offer fibre broadband and EE themselves have agreed now that I have brought it to their attention that they cannot offer fibre broadband. Would that imply that we shouldn't have been on that package to begin with?

molerat

What does this tell you ? Use telephone number as it is more accurate

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

There is often a misunderstanding of terminology even when talking to ISP CS.  In reality there is no such thing as "fibre", you either get ADSL, VDSL / FTTC or FTTP

pbartlett

yes if the package wasnt available then  from the begining EE have made a mistake.

Chino

molerat said:

In reality there is no such thing as "fibre", you either get ADSL, VDSL / FTTC or FTTP

Only because marketing got there before people realised what was going on.
"Fibre" should only ever have meant FTTP.

southsidergs

What do you think entitles you to a full refund? You've still had a service so you should get the difference between the 2 packages back as far as i can see

iniltous

If the provider gives an estimate of the ‘speed’ you will receive , and you get that speed, then why does it matter what the medium that speed is delivered over ?, if it’s a copper pair , or hybrid copper/ fibre ( FTTC ) or full fibre ( FTTP ) , given the OP was only guaranteed 12Mb ( I guess they meant 12Mb and not 12mbps ) this speed is possible on ADSL from the exchange if the line is short enough as well as FTTC or FTTP, although  no FTTP service would bother limiting or providing a service at such a low speed.

I suspect the issue is just misinterpreted advertising, ‘fibre’ has long since been used to advertise FTTC services , Virgin started the ball rolling by advertising their version of fibre to the cabinet as ‘fibre’, so no surprise when other operators use the same terminology for their own FTTC products, and the advertising authorities can hardly say it’s OK for VM to do this but not OK for everyone else.
After a while , when ‘full fibre’ FTTP becomes more prevalent, then the issue is how to advertise this as different from FTTC ‘fibre’, hence terms like ‘full fibre’ ‘Gb’ fibre , ‘hyper fast’ fibre.
In the OP case , if the guaranteed speed was only 12Mb and if they were sold ‘fibre’ it will be FTTC and a significant distance to the ‘cabinet’ hence the low speed, it was never going to be FTTP with a 12Mb speed guarantee, unless that particular provider charges more for one product than another ( most providers don’t have different pricing , it the same price for 40Mb regardless of FTTC or FTTP, and ADSL could never offer 40Mb ) then it’s unclear what the problem is...ISP says you will get a minimum 12Mb and they do.

Tokmon

iniltous said:

If the provider gives an estimate of the ‘speed’ you will receive , and you get that speed, then why does it matter what the medium that speed is delivered over ?, if it’s a copper pair , or hybrid copper/ fibre ( FTTC ) or full fibre ( FTTP ) , given the OP was only guaranteed 12Mb ( I guess they meant 12Mb and not 12mbps ) this speed is possible on ADSL from the exchange if the line is short enough as well as FTTC or FTTP, although  no FTTP service would bother limiting or providing a service at such a low speed.

I suspect the issue is just misinterpreted advertising, ‘fibre’ has long since been used to advertise FTTC services , Virgin started the ball rolling by advertising their version of fibre to the cabinet as ‘fibre’, so no surprise when other operators use the same terminology for their own FTTC products, and the advertising authorities can hardly say it’s OK for VM to do this but not OK for everyone else.
After a while , when ‘full fibre’ FTTP becomes more prevalent, then the issue is how to advertise this as different from FTTC ‘fibre’, hence terms like ‘full fibre’ ‘Gb’ fibre , ‘hyper fast’ fibre.
In the OP case , if the guaranteed speed was only 12Mb and if they were sold ‘fibre’ it will be FTTC and a significant distance to the ‘cabinet’ hence the low speed, it was never going to be FTTP with a 12Mb speed guarantee, unless that particular provider charges more for one product than another ( most providers don’t have different pricing , it the same price for 40Mb regardless of FTTC or FTTP, and ADSL could never offer 40Mb ) then it’s unclear what the problem is...ISP says you will get a minimum 12Mb and they do.

If you want to be pedantic then the correct way to write that speed would be "12 Mbps" or "12 Mb/s" just writing "12Mb" is just an amount of data and not a connection speed.

[Deleted User]

iniltous said:

If the provider gives an estimate of the ‘speed’ you will receive , and you get that speed, then why does it matter what the medium that speed is delivered over ?, if it’s a copper pair , or hybrid copper/ fibre ( FTTC ) or full fibre ( FTTP ) , given the OP was only guaranteed 12Mb ( I guess they meant 12Mb and not 12mbps ) this speed is possible on ADSL from the exchange if the line is short enough as well as FTTC or FTTP, although  no FTTP service would bother limiting or providing a service at such a low speed...

There is a thing called Misrepresentation.

A reasonably technical person would have noticed that 12 Mbps is very low for FTTC or FTTP but that doesn't mean that it is acceptable to mislabel something.

The price of their ADSL product isn't directly relevant as they may have not chosen EE for ADSL as sister Plusnet or another providers would have likely been cheaper.