BT Are A Bunch Of Cretins

[Rroff]

£7.99! I had the same BT email for what must have been 15 years (@btyahoo.com to then internet.com) but stopped using their ISP products years back. At first they charged £1.50pcm to keep the address, fine whatever, then £3, then £5.50 until it started getting awfully close to Spotify & Netflix prices but for....an email address. I rang & told them it was getting silly now, they offered a deal/disconnect for 6 months but in the end realised just how ridiculous it was & completely cancelled. For equivalent £2 a month got my own domain .com address & email with it. Was scary at first but glad I did it.

I had to laugh when I first saw the price increase - £7.99 a year sure but what are you paying that a month for certainly not webmail.

 

[Jez]

We're paying the same for 0.7Mbps, because it's the only (affordable) service we can get out here.

Are GigaClear any better?

if you can get gigaclear then why on earth are you paying for 0.7mbit (Our area is Gigaclear and the service seems good, been with them for not far off a year now).

 

[APM]

I have found that having a little rant on their forums until a cs person steps in and takes ownership can work well.

You still need some patience with the process though.

 

[ttaskmaster]

if you can get gigaclear then why on earth are you paying for 0.7mbit (Our area is Gigaclear and the service seems good, been with them for not far off a year now).

Two reasons:

1/. Having laid the fibre cable over 2 years ago, they've only just (in the last few days) decided to make it available to our road.
2/. Reading reviews, they really come across like a shower of **** and so I'm a little wary of committing to a contract if it's going to be endless hassle. At least with BT, once it's working it carries on working.

So that's why I'm asking if they're as bad as most of the reviews suggest.

 

[Jez]

Ah, ok Quick review as i am overall very impressed and will continue with them. I can get 80/20 FTTC, 300/50 G.Fast, and Gigaclear...i choose gigaclear. The service has been good and it is refreshing to speak to english people at a local company (HQ only a few miles from my house).

I have been with them since early 2019 and we have had one planned outage which was notified in advance, and one unplanned outage due to someone (not GC to be fair to them) digging through a cable somewhere which did cause around 12 hours out which was annoying and something which i did never have with BT Openreach. We had several updates throughout the outage though. Speeds are always 950/950, absolutely no complaints when it comes to the network. I feel very lucky that my whole area has it to be honest, we are fairly rural.

If you read through the reviews, which i did carefully before quitting FTTC, all of the bad ones are pretty much user error. People complaining about slow wifi, or a bad install (i watched mine go in like a hawk and found the installers very accommodating actually, perhaps this would not have been so good if i were not there). The wifi on the supplied NTE is absolutely useless, it barely makes it outside of my utility room where it is mounted. I use structured cabling, a managed switch and multiple aps though.
https://i.imgur.com/rf4sk4u.png

 

[ttaskmaster]

Ah, ok Quick review as i am overall very impressed and will continue with them. I can get 80/20 FTTC, 300/50 G.Fast, and Gigaclear...i choose gigaclear. The service has been good and it is refreshing to speak to english people at a local company (HQ only a few miles from my house).

We can get BT's 'up to 2meg' line, with zero minimum guaranteed speed, because it's so low it's not worth quoting one.
We can get BT's Superfastamazeballz Fibre, which is also up to 2meg and no minimum.

Until GC came along about 4 years ago, those were our only options. Despite their insistent marketing calls, absolutely no-one else could actually serve our area.
This is why I was so excited to hear CG were "coming soon"... Turns out ours was one of the first areas to get it, and it's been plagued with problems.

If you read through the reviews, which i did carefully before quitting FTTC, all of the bad ones are pretty much user error.

Most of those I've noted have been outages, and poor or disinterested CS, often with the latter accusing the user of user error, despite the users themselves being telecoms industry professionals so ought to know what they're talking about.

The wifi on the supplied NTE is absolutely useless, it barely makes it outside of my utility room where it is mounted. I use structured cabling and multiple aps though.

I'm not much into telecoms, though, so unless it's a case of plugging in a router I fear I may end up another User Error statistic...

 

[Blackjack Davy]

Has anyone else encountered this with BT and if so was the matter (eventually) resolved satisfactorily? It is bad enough they even contemplate charging such an outrageous amount in the first place without having to go through the rigmarole of haggling each time the contract ends to a more reasonable price.

So.... just switch to another supplier?

In terms of talking to Customer Retentions I've had no problems with Sky when they said they were going to reduce it they did... funnily enough I've just switched to BT for a 24month return-to-us low(ish) cost contract (£28.99/unlimited fibre) but once the term is over I'll be off elsewhere.

 

[ttaskmaster]

So.... just switch to another supplier?

Which of the alternate options would you recommend - BT, BT, BT or BT?

 

[A2Z]

Had so many problems with BT when I wanted to cancel last year. I also had to make a complaint to get someone else to have a listen to the phone call as they didn't do what they said they would.

In fairness once the person who was reviewing my case got in contact, they kept to the agreed timescale and kept me personally updated.

Not going back to BT again. Ever. Wish Hyperoptic was available everywhere as they were great, internet service and customer service wise.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

The real problem with the industry IMO is that your ISP are essentially a middle-man between you and your line and that means problems are always dealt with slowly. Both because there'll be several layers ("sir you need to try resetting your router before we get an engineer out") and just because of the extra hop in communication. If customers could deal with Openreach directly to rectify line faults it'd be a lot easier.

Choosing an ISP with UK based customer support helps though, and I doubt I'd ever go back to BT again (unless they were the only one offering FTTP or something).

Apparently if you're a BT retail customer you'll get preferential treatment as BT Openreach own the lines. Which is why I picked them over the (slightly) cheaper 3rd party resellers to cut down on the risk of problems as its a major switch from ADSL2/LLU to FTTC - if anyone knows if theres spare capacity at the cabinet it ought to be BT right... right?!

To be honest BT have been almost too eager to get me back on board i've emails saying the router will be delivered such and such a day... its on the way... tracking number is this... it'll be delivered tomorrow... it was delivered today (I know, the postie got me out of bed to personally hand it over) your connection goes live tomorrow... we'll send you another text reminder when its done.

I've switched the mobile off currently I'm fed up with it honestly.

Pretty sure relying on ISP email was a thing in the 90’s, we’re a good 20+ years since that should have ever been something people used as a reason not to switch ISP, let alone paid actual money for.

You used to be able to keep it if you kept a dialup account with them and phoned in once a month say to keep the account active, don't think thats a thing anymore lol

Never used an ISP email in my life since thats one of the marketing tools they use to try and keep you on as people get tied to them... ok I think I used Sky's for some things once but it became so unreliable it was useless then they switched to Gmail but I already have an independent Gmail account already so... totally pointless and I havn't been near it in years.

 

[Avalon]

Apparently if you're a BT retail customer you'll get preferential treatment as BT Openreach own the lines. Which is why I picked them over the (slightly) cheaper 3rd party resellers to cut down on the risk of problems as its a major switch from ADSL2/LLU to FTTC - if anyone knows if theres spare capacity at the cabinet it ought to be BT right... right?!

To be honest BT have been almost too eager to get me back on board i've emails saying the router will be delivered such and such a day... its on the way... tracking number is this... it'll be delivered tomorrow... it was delivered today (I know, the postie got me out of bed to personally hand it over) your connection goes live tomorrow... we'll send you another text reminder when its done.

I've switched the mobile off currently I'm fed up with it honestly.



You used to be able to keep it if you kept a dialup account with them and phoned in once a month say to keep the account active, don't think thats a thing anymore lol

Never used an ISP email in my life since thats one of the marketing tools they use to try and keep you on as people get tied to them... ok I think I used Sky's for some things once but it became so unreliable it was useless then they switched to Gmail but I already have an independent Gmail account already so... totally pointless and I havn't been near it in years.

That’s BT’s standard process. Also BT get zero preferential access to OpenReach, that was the whole point of separating the business and transparent pricing for everyone.

 

[Jez]

Until GC came along about 4 years ago, those were our only options. Despite their insistent marketing calls, absolutely no-one else could actually serve our area.
This is why I was so excited to hear CG were "coming soon"... Turns out ours was one of the first areas to get it, and it's been plagued with problems.

I can only speak for mine and people in my area, but the consensus around here is that it is excellent. You'll want additional equipment to make the most of the speed though, a normal router based wifi ap is never going to work, even if it was a good one.

 

[Joxeon]

So.... just switch to another supplier?

In terms of talking to Customer Retentions I've had no problems with Sky when they said they were going to reduce it they did... funnily enough I've just switched to BT for a 24month return-to-us low(ish) cost contract (£28.99/unlimited fibre) but once the term is over I'll be off elsewhere.

Which of the alternate options would you recommend - BT, BT, BT or BT?

My openreach fttp bt contract has just run out so time to get something sorted, the issue is as ttaskmaster says there is very little choice and options for switching, either bt, Andrews & Arnold, zen and Cerberus to name a few and all are more expensive than bt which is already expensive. Can't get sky, talk talk, EE etc all the usually providers as they don't do fttp on openreach.

 

[moogle]

Definitely this

Yep, don't get tied in to products with suppliers. Although saying that I was tied to BT for years due to actually having FTTP. There was nothing to match it until VM increased their upload speeds.

In my experience BT has been the worst in customer service/promises broken/incorrect billing etc. I've been with VM for 2 years now (was with NTL for loads more before they merged and left in 2006) and they've been decent!
BT's network is better in terms of ping and faults but even though VM has a higher latency, I can't notice it whilst browsing the web or watching YouTube.

The only plus about BT is in all the 5-6 years I was with them I had no faults at all, whereas VM has had 2-3 faults where the service goes down in my shorter 2 year stint. Luckily I was at work so didn't suffer.
Another positive is VM give better discount prices, only if you haggle though. BT have a certain limit and they'll go no lower on some packages.

I think the final straw with BT was all the Line Rental saver recharging, which was basically partially refunding the line rental I paid in advance, and recharging the newer higher costs due to price increases!
If I paid well in advance I expect to pay that amount for a certain period, and only after that period should I pay the higher price for line rental. Really infuriating.

 

[MissChief]

My openreach fttp bt contract has just run out so time to get something sorted, the issue is as ttaskmaster says there is very little choice and options for switching, either bt, Andrews & Arnold, zen and Cerberus to name a few and all are more expensive than bt which is already expensive. Can't get sky, talk talk, EE etc all the usually providers as they don't do fttp on openreach.

Sky should finally be launching FTTP in the next month or two. No idea on pricing at the moment though.

 

[BowdonUK]

To OP, if you can get on to the BT Communities forum and type your complaint on there, being civil about it, then when the Mods pick it up most of the time they will get things sorted.

 

[ttaskmaster]

You'll want additional equipment to make the most of the speed though, a normal router based wifi ap is never going to work, even if it was a good one.

What sort of things would you suggest? This isn't an area I really know anything about, TBH...

 

[Jez]

Post a thread specifying the new connection speed and your house properties, size, expected coverage, etc. People will be able to recommend a wifi solution

 

[Vern1961]

Well I spoke to BT this evening having missed a call from Offline Complaints earlier (they rang while I was out and before the time I stated). From what I can tell the matter has been sorted, albeit without any real indication of what went wrong. So fingers crossed.
@all195 - which web host are you using? I actually did have a domain/hosting up to a few months ago but unfortunately that went dark due to a bolls up between the host and Nominet. I will set another one up specifically so I can put back in place an email address which is ISP independent and switch all our log ins at various sites and online functions to that.

 

[Avalon]

So all in all they resolved your complaint within 48hrs and to your satisfaction, that seems quite reasonable, to the point it almost makes your initial reaction look the opposite.