BT not even trying to keep me. A general pattern or just me?

RedDwarf82

I'm sure there are lots of internal details, that it depends on the area, etc.

But I have been with BT for 5 years. I'm with Fibre 2 (74 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up) at £35.67/month with a £6/month discount = £29.74/month. On the website, right now, they offer it for £33.99/month, £16.99/month for the first 6 months.

Vodafone offers £21/month (£33/month with a £12/month) in their website for 82 Mbps symmetric. Supposing the 10.5% CPI from December for January, that would still be £33 * (1.105 + 0.039) - 12 = £25.75/month from April. Through an MSE link, I also got a £105 voucher.

I called BT and they barely tried, offering me £29/month keeping Fibre 2. Being a OpenReach to CityFibre switch (it will not be "automatic" until April: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2021/simpler-broadband-switching), I requested the service to be cancelled at the end of the contract, 30 days later, and a few days later told Vodafone to start the service on the same day the BT one will finish.

They have not called me again since.

Out of curiosity, I have called 0800800030 and they have told me that since my service is already scheduled for cancellation they can't offer me any discount and that the website price is the best one. The BT website, when clicking on "See your Full Fibre deals", also says "You've ordered something from us, and we need to finish your order before you can see personalised TV or broadband deals.".

In nine days, the "switch" will happen. I'm not going to miss BT, we used them only because they used to be the only non-DSL option. But still, isn't the lack of trying a bit weird?

locky123

My BT contract is up next month, there are better deals so will ring them later this week and see what they offer.

Stompa

Well my last online renewal offer was a continuation of my existing favourable deal. They did the same for the renewal prior to that. It seemed too (unexpectedly) easy!

SJMALBA

Plusnet, rather than BT, but unlike the last renewal, they weren't interested in offering anything competitive this time, despite phoning them twice (going through the options to 'thinking of leaving') - the best they could offer was the renewal email offer ( a 30% increase over what we were paying, and that's before the 14.4% April rise to come...)
After signing up with a new provider, they sent  an email with a 'new' offer + £50 cashback (the 'new' offer was the same as the original email renewal offer), but also including a message to give them a call if this still wasn't as good as the provider we were leaving them for, so, against my better judgement, I phoned again (calling the number in the latest email), but the CSA seemed even more clueless than the previous two (she even asked which company was offering the better deal?!), before making a worse offer than before,,,

johnbhoy70

RedDwarf82 said:

I'm sure there are lots of internal details, that it depends on the area, etc.

But I have been with BT for 5 years. I'm with Fibre 2 (74 Mbps down / 20 Mbps up) at £35.67/month with a £6/month discount = £29.74/month. On the website, right now, they offer it for £33.99/month, £16.99/month for the first 6 months.

Vodafone offers £21/month (£33/month with a £12/month) in their website for 82 Mbps symmetric. Supposing the 10.5% CPI from December for January, that would still be £33 * (1.105 + 0.039) - 12 = £25.75/month from April. Through an MSE link, I also got a £105 voucher.

I called BT and they barely tried, offering me £29/month keeping Fibre 2. Being a OpenReach to CityFibre switch (it will not be "automatic" until April: https://www.ofcom.org.uk/news-centre/2021/simpler-broadband-switching), I requested the service to be cancelled at the end of the contract, 30 days later, and a few days later told Vodafone to start the service on the same day the BT one will finish.

They have not called me again since.

Out of curiosity, I have called 0800800030 and they have told me that since my service is already scheduled for cancellation they can't offer me any discount and that the website price is the best one. The BT website, when clicking on "See your Full Fibre deals", also says "You've ordered something from us, and we need to finish your order before you can see personalised TV or broadband deals.".

In nine days, the "switch" will happen. I'm not going to miss BT, we used them only because they used to be the only non-DSL option. But still, isn't the lack of trying a bit weird?

It's absolutely not just you imo and I felt the same at the end of November when my deal was up. I know what I'm doing as I've been with them 10+ years and always got a decent deal in the past but they weren't budging from their first offer of Full Fibre 100 for £29.99. Also pay £2 for keeping landline on PAYG. I ended up going for this just after Black Friday as I didn't think anything better was coming. It's still slightly cheaper overall than their current 6 months half price offer.  I got Full Fibre in start of this month. However, Vodafone's price was extremely tempting but I thought better the devil you know. That's just me though. I just didn't want anything going wrong with the Vodafone order and having to contact them before it thus invalidating any cashback and/or vouchers!!  

Ps- maybe didn't help my bargaining position but just before I ordered I cancelled all my TV package with them but tbh they weren't budging even with it on there in previous calls 

RedDwarf82

> However, Vodafone's price was extremely tempting but I thought better the devil you know. That's just me though.

FWIW I had a 8h - 13h appointment with CitiFybre to do the connection. They came before 8:30, had some struggles that made them stay more than one hour, but they did the job nicely and clean. I have contracted 84 Mbps and my download is actually over 88 Mbps and my upload over 87 Mbps.

People complain about Vodafone's customer service, but:

a) I don't think I have ever had a problem-free interaction with BT (the original contract interaction ended up in the Ombudsman, which agreed with me)

b) I'm not planning to contact Vodafone's customer service... ever.

diystarter7

Hi OP

I think its luck of the draw, ie who answers the phone at all of these service providers

What we have done is put the phone down and rang again a minute later got on to another person who gave us a deal - not bt but another provider


Thnaks

2pints

diystarter7 said:

Hi OP

I think its luck of the draw, ie who answers the phone at all of these service providers

What we have done is put the phone down and rang again a minute later got on to another person who gave us a deal - not bt but another provider


Thnaks

What kind of deal did you get? I'm on just over £26 per month for 80/20 (give or take) and out of contract.

johnbhoy70

RedDwarf82 said:

> However, Vodafone's price was extremely tempting but I thought better the devil you know. That's just me though.

FWIW I had a 8h - 13h appointment with CitiFybre to do the connection. They came before 8:30, had some struggles that made them stay more than one hour, but they did the job nicely and clean. I have contracted 84 Mbps and my download is actually over 88 Mbps and my upload over 87 Mbps.

People complain about Vodafone's customer service, but:

a) I don't think I have ever had a problem-free interaction with BT (the original contract interaction ended up in the Ombudsman, which agreed with me)

b) I'm not planning to contact Vodafone's customer service... ever.

I'm glad it worked out for you. Please don't take my post as advocating BT. The fact that they've paid me hundreds in compo  (guessing about 4 or 5) over the years is testament to that. However, you're right i was probably swayed by some of the Vodafone reviews and BT have been better imo in the last few years, certainly in my case.  With regards to your 2 points mentioned i would say

a) agreed as above i've had plenty issues with BT

b) i'm sure you don't plan contacting Vodafone CS but i would think if you had to it would be out of necessity and for no other reason. I just didn't want to take the risk and accept i'm paying a small premium for that decision. About to go up circa 15% too

mookev

Interesting post. My BT fibre 2 contract runs out on 14th February. We've had a line fault not affecting the broadband but causing a noisy line since 16th December. Twice engineers have been, spent 2 hours, diagnosed that we need a new duct and cable from the manhole and up our drive to our house, but then they dontbfo it, latest target date, coincidencidentaly, is 24th February.! I've no faith they will fix it and have escalated to a complaint.  We are in a fibre to cabinet area. Can't get any serious deals for renewal and I'm seriously tempted to go to three home 4g broadband and ditch the landline.

RedDwarf82

johnbhoy70 said:

RedDwarf82 said:

> However, Vodafone's price was extremely tempting but I thought better the devil you know. That's just me though.

FWIW I had a 8h - 13h appointment with CitiFybre to do the connection. They came before 8:30, had some struggles that made them stay more than one hour, but they did the job nicely and clean. I have contracted 84 Mbps and my download is actually over 88 Mbps and my upload over 87 Mbps.

People complain about Vodafone's customer service, but:

a) I don't think I have ever had a problem-free interaction with BT (the original contract interaction ended up in the Ombudsman, which agreed with me)

b) I'm not planning to contact Vodafone's customer service... ever.

I'm glad it worked out for you. Please don't take my post as advocating BT. The fact that they've paid me hundreds in compo  (guessing about 4 or 5) over the years is testament to that. However, you're right i was probably swayed by some of the Vodafone reviews and BT have been better imo in the last few years, certainly in my case.  With regards to your 2 points mentioned i would say

a) agreed as above i've had plenty issues with BT

b) i'm sure you don't plan contacting Vodafone CS but i would think if you had to it would be out of necessity and for no other reason. I just didn't want to take the risk and accept i'm paying a small premium for that decision. About to go up circa 15% too

Yeah, I know. I just wanted to add a positive review between the bad ones.

To put some extra positives for Vodafone:

- IIRC the BT SmartHub 2 didn't have the option of a guest WiFi network

- IIRC the BT SmartHub 2 didn't accept spaces in the WiFi password (the SmartHub 1 did!)

- IIRC the BT SmartHub 2 didn't allow you to have a SSID for the 2.4 Ghz WiFi and another for the 5 GHz one (and the SmartHub 1 did!)

- The BT SmartHub 2 shared the hard drive connected to the USB port with the network using a very old version of Samba (the sharing protocol) that's not supported by default on neither Windows 11 or modern Linux distributions. So I had to mess with my OS/applications config to make it accept the unsecure protocol.

All of this is supported/fixed in the Vodafone router, and I have not yet noticed anything missing that I had in the BT SmartHub 2. The Android app to handle the router is also not bad.