Don't You Just Love BT?!...NOT

[Ecoman]

Some of you may have noticed I have not been about for a while. This is due to lightning striking our local exchange and knocking out half the phone lines.

We have been without phones or broadband for 2 weeks now and I was told yesterday to not expect to be back on within the next 3-4 weeks!!

I spoke to our provider (BT) and they have kept feeding me with lies upon lies. Some of the excuses are laughable. We know the phone line that runs along the side of the road needs completely replacing as not only is it 20 years old but its also fried but in this day and age should it really take over a month?? One operator even told me they were working on it remotely, I couldn't help laughing out loud at that excuse!! To add insult to injury, they have not even sent a team across to start work on it yet, two weeks after the strike.

Its not so bad for me as I can get most of my work done on my laptop in a café across the glen but there are elderly folk without any means of communication. I keep going round to check if they are OK but it only takes a fall and no way of calling for help.

My wife is having to stay at the hospital and in B&Bs when she is oncall as we don't get a good enough mobile signal at the house. At least that's not a bad thing as I get some peace! ha ha

I know BT and Openreach are separate companies and BT is just a provider but why lie to customers. Don't sugar coat it, tell it like it is and the customer will not feel they are being treated like an idiot!

 

[udamiano]

Report it to Ofcom. That why they are there, to sort the providers out when they get it wrong

 

[dwardo]

I deal with BT reacharound on a regular basis. I have had them leave business without phone lines for a month after a simple change over.
They would send an engineer to fit the telephone system before the guy was sent out to fit the lines. Then they would get it back to front all over again.
Orders would be messed up without fail to the point it was expected and you just had to laugh.

I was left without phones and broadband for three weeks only a few months ago. I was told there were cable problems and it would be fixed in 48 hours, 72, hours, by the end of the week, then the month etc etc. I decided to collar an engineer working at the end of our road and asked him what the score was. He said that someone from our local traveller community had decided to rip up a 100 meter section of the cable between our village and the exchange! He showed me two ends of a cable with 10,000 pairs of wires to mate up again, now that I can understand.
Like you if they had just said what happened and gave a realistic time for a fix you cant complain. Its the daft run around.

 

[British Red]

The joys of rural living again. BT have told me in the past "if your line is down, there are only one or two houses affected - its not a priority".

Weird because other countries cope - my brother lives up a mountain in the Pyrenees and has no problem getting cheap, high speed, satellite broadband. Try getting that here!

 

[udamiano]

the big problem has always been that a single company owns 98% of the infrastructure cabling; whereas in other countries good old fashioned competition happened decades ago, and tier1 telecomms companies fight for your custom, so they invest in the backbone, introduce new technologies in order to provide services at better cost than their competitors. We have BT.

 

[British Red]

Could be worse though - check out broadband prices in the US!

 

[copper_head]

Could be worse though - check out broadband prices in the US!

Or live in Hull for the same effect.

Bloody Kingston Communications

 

[udamiano]

Yeah they had the right idea, but got carried away, now it costs loads to circuit switch the data through different providers, each of which charge. and of course the geographical size of the US, makes it expensive.

 

[rik_uk3]

The joys of rural living again. BT have told me in the past "if your line is down, there are only one or two houses affected - its not a priority".

Weird because other countries cope - my brother lives up a mountain in the Pyrenees and has no problem getting cheap, high speed, satellite broadband. Try getting that here!

You can get sat broadband in the UK and no need for a telephone line. http://sat.tooway.co.uk/

 

[British Red]

You can get sat broadband in the UK and no need for a telephone line. http://sat.tooway.co.uk/

You can indeed - but £75 a month for a service that is still not unlimited is far from cheap - hopefully it will become more competitive over time

 

[Midnitehound]

You can indeed - but £75 a month for a service that is still not unlimited is far from cheap - hopefully it will become more competitive over time

A 20mbps/s connection with 20Gig daytime limit and unlimited between 11pm and 7am, no phone line needed, all for £40/month. BT line rental is over £15/month! If you are in the boonies or need a portable connection then it is becoming reasonable.

Here is another pricing structure for the service: http://www.bentley-walker.com/tooway/tooway_home.php No unlimited night time I guess.

Oops, having read about a bit it seems the unlimited part is being withdrawn, their network isn't coping it seems!

 

[santaman2000]

Could be worse though - check out broadband prices in the US!

What are you paying there? I have my services "bundled." The cable tv, internet and home phone (hard line) are all on a single bill (supposedly discounted because I bundled them all from the same company) My typical monthly bill is around $162 (100.47 pounds) for unlimited HS internet usage, approximately 69 cable channels (non-premium channels) unlimited local calls with extended calling radius (calls within about 150 miles are all considered local regardless of the actual calling area)

I'm not absolutely certain, without the current bill in front of me to break it down, but I believe about $60 per month of that is the internet portion.

I could probably get cheaper if I used a satellite company instead of the cable company (for ALL the above services likewise bundled)

Of course it's free on your laptop at the public library, Starbucks, McDonalds, and just about every other fast food place, coffee shop, etc.

 

[udamiano]

£7.00 broadband unlimited + £18 phone line with free weekend calls and free friends and family calls.

Sky HD TV cost about £30 pm with the packages we have

 

[Stew]

What are you paying there? I have my services "bundled." The cable tv, internet and home phone (hard line) are all on a single bill (supposedly discounted because I bundled them all from the same company) My typical monthly bill is around $162 (100.47 pounds) for unlimited HS internet usage, approximately 69 cable channels (non-premium channels) unlimited local calls with extended calling radius (calls within about 150 miles are all considered local regardless of the actual calling area)

I'm not absolutely certain, without the current bill in front of me to break it down, but I believe about $60 per month of that is the internet portion.

Of course it's free on your laptop at the public library, Starbucks, McDonalds, and just about every other fast food place, coffee shop, etc.

I just renegotiated my broadband including line rental to £10 total per month. No extra TV on that.

 

[dwardo]

I called around today trying to get my self over to fibre, finally its in our area.
I have been stuck to a 2MB download since it was introduced. Now that might sound ok if I was out in the sticks but I am close to one large city and town. Plus running my own business from home has been a pain.
To the point. With no free calls (i dont need them) unlimited fibre (infinity) plus line rental they all seem to be around £32pm.
Half that is the standard BT line rental charge.
There are installation charges, few months half price kind of deals but its about average.
Add to that calls if anyone uses them etc.

 

[rik_uk3]

You can indeed - but £75 a month for a service that is still not unlimited is far from cheap - hopefully it will become more competitive over time

Look at the packages and deals. Its no cheaper in Spain because I've been looking as we intend moving out there for half the year.

 

[rik_uk3]

What are you paying there? I have my services "bundled." The cable tv, internet and home phone (hard line) are all on a single bill (supposedly discounted because I bundled them all from the same company) My typical monthly bill is around $162 (100.47 pounds) for unlimited HS internet usage, approximately 69 cable channels (non-premium channels) unlimited local calls with extended calling radius (calls within about 150 miles are all considered local regardless of the actual calling area)

I'm not absolutely certain, without the current bill in front of me to break it down, but I believe about $60 per month of that is the internet portion.

I could probably get cheaper if I used a satellite company instead of the cable company (for ALL the above services likewise bundled)

Of course it's free on your laptop at the public library, Starbucks, McDonalds, and just about every other fast food place, coffee shop, etc.

WOW, thats expensive. I get fibre at 70+mb/s (unlimited downloads), TV, local, international and mobile (cell phone) for less than half that.

 

[rik_uk3]

http://www.samknows.com/exchange_search see whats available in your area.

 

[British Red]

Look at the packages and deals. Its no cheaper in Spain because I've been looking as we intend moving out there for half the year.

Certainly is for my brother - although I daresay not that firm

 

[santaman2000]

WOW, thats expensive. I get fibre at 70+mb/s (unlimited downloads), TV, local, international and mobile (cell phone) for less than half that.

Are we comparing apples to apples? When i say the three services are bundled, I do mean they're still on separate devices: Computor is separate from the phone (not a smart phone but my hard line) and both are separate from the cable tv (although they all come into the house on the same line)

Even if we are comparing accurately I suspect you do get them much cheaper than we do; here in Florida anyway, but I believe it's cheaper in more densely populated areas.