Broadband Battle Options

[craig51]

In summary .

I was with sky broadband for years . I signed up to a new providers broadband and it was due to go live on Monday .

Roll on Monday and sky went dead and i was then expecting the new service to come live and away i go.

Well that didn’t happen . The phone line went dead, nothing. So called them and they wanted 48hrs to get back to me with an appointment date! Not happy with this i contacted Open Reach direct and all credit to them they went out the same day and corrected the fault . I got home after work and the line had a dial tone BUT no broadband. Zero. I called Open Reach and they were adamant they had no order for broadband . My landline was only to be setup as a voiceline. The fault was caused by the engineer . Remember it all worked for me for the last 9 years .

So called my new broadband provider and told them there was no broadband order . They seemed confused . I asked them to speak to whatever department deals with setups and have them confirm the order number and then Open Reach would have activated for me within 24hrs . Roll on Friday and no answer so i called their internal department . The guy on the end of the phone assumes i was “internal” and confirms that they only had an order for voice and not broadband .

So this confirmed that my new provider has cocked up somewhere.

So it’s now Saturday and by the time they get this solved i suspect it will be later next week before i see any broadband service .This is really impacting me as i can’t work from home or do a whole host of other things . So today using their T&Cs I Jane cancelled my contract . They tried to threaten me that i was out with the “cooling off” period but i said regardless , take this as notification of my cancellation and if someone wants to call me Monday to discuss then please do. I have then gone to Virgin today and will be setup come Tuesday . All good . Here is the email i sent today to my current crappy provider after i called them .

To whom it may concern,

I have just spoken to your colleague today ( Saturday 7th December at 1030).

I have requested she cancels my account.

According to your own T&Cs, there is no contract in place . I can not take just one element . Today that’s exactly what you have given me , the phone line element . No broadband order was made with Open Reach and as such no service has started yet ;

1.1 The Telephony Service and Broadband Service form the Service. You cannot take one element of the Service without the other.

With respect to cooling off period ;

10.14 If we've already started providing the Service by the time you cancel it, you'll have to pay us the full cost of the Services you've received.

I am sure we can all agree that you haven’t started providing me with a service yet as a/ you can’t have a service with just one element as per section 1.1 of your own T&Cs and b/ you have not as of Friday 6th December 2019 ordered with Open Reach a broadband service as per my request.

As such under you own T&Cs I would like for you to cease all services and acknowledge that no charges will be made against my account . I wish to cancel .

Under section A of your contract I deem you to be at fault .

Please note that, regardless of whether you are inside or outside your Minimum Period, if you terminate or cancel your Contract at any time (other than during the Cooling Off Period) and we are not at fault, you will be charged a Cease Charge. For details, please see the Price List.

Please note , I will contest any charges and as per your contract that will be in a Scottish Court under Scots Law.


So sorry for the long post , anyone think i am setting myself up for a Court fight ? I’m happy to do so . Thoughts ?

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[nigelbb]

The demand has risen inexorably. A&E attendances have increased by about 50% in last 15 years

Most of the rise has been in minor centres, not major ones. The figures need to be interpreted carefully and seen in light of what was expected. The reason minor injury units have seen rises is because of new services.

The increase in all demands for NHS services have increase enormously over the years. A&E departments designed in the 1970s for 15-20K attendances per year now see 50-60K It's partly due to a larger population who are more frail but it's also due to patients being increasingly demanding in what they want from the NHS eg ambulance calls have increased over 5% year after year. GPs had to stop doing Out Of Hours home visits for their own patients because the workload became unsustainable.

This post has been edited by nigelbb: Wed, 11 Dec 2019 - 13:51

[Fredd]

There's no credible source that says the NHS is adequately funded currently.

Neither is there a definition of what "adequately funded" means - that's an entirely subjective measure. I would say comparisons with similar economies are a reasonable way of assessing it, not least because there's no practical limit on the resources a health system could consume.

[TonyS]

Agreed, but providing a more symmetric bandwidth allocation will probably mean system upgrades etc ie. extra costs.

That's correct. Effectively consumer services are asymmetric because typical users have more download than upload traffic. ADSL and FTTC are asymmetric because more frequencies are allocated to upload than to download, a symmetric service using the same technology would have to sacrifice download speed to increase upload.

Dedicated fibre can be symmetric as upload and download are independent, but the shared fibre schemes like Openreach FTTP use different mechanisms for sharing in the two directions, and the end result is lower upload than download speed.

[cp8759]

Agreed, but providing a more symmetric bandwidth allocation will probably mean system upgrades etc ie. extra costs.

That's correct. Effectively consumer services are asymmetric because typical users have more download than upload traffic. ADSL and FTTC are asymmetric because more frequencies are allocated to upload than to download, a symmetric service using the same technology would have to sacrifice download speed to increase upload.

You would have thought the system could intelligently re-allocate frequencies between upload and download based on what a consumer is doing at any given moment.

[TonyS]

You would have thought the system could intelligently re-allocate frequencies between upload and download based on what a consumer is doing at any given moment.

I've not actually seen that mechanism even sketched out. It sounds feasible given that existing xDSL reallocates bits between frequencies on the fly if line conditions or interference effects change. However UK implementations don't change the overall speed, that's fixed when the line negotiates as it connects and the actual speed is relayed upstream so that the ISP knows how fast it can send traffic to that particular subscriber.

[mickR]

A few years back I had a complaint with BT who gave the whole area a "free upgrade" to fibre. From my first new bill i was charged for exeeding my limit of 30gig i queried and They agreed historically id never used more than 15. But now had Next bill said id used over 40gig complained again. They said i should get unlimited for streaming catchup tv, films, video games etc. I said i dont have a smart tv in the house and no one plays video games.
Next month i was billed for 70g they said all dowloads on fibre were automatically send in HD therefore using more data. I asked for a list of all the addresses of the biggest data usage but theyvrefused saying it was for internal use only and not available to customers. A friend in IT knew my position and said it was imposdible to havd used 70g. He suggested where fibre connected to copper at the box, packets eere being rebounded and counted twice. BT did not respond to that claim merely said that id used 70g. So..Complaint to onmbudsman, useless as they ignored most of my points and said BT only count data they dont create it ?? I still won on basis BT failed to inform of possible extra data use and charges.
I joined bt community and realised it was a massive complaint issue with untold threads of excess charging when changing to fibre. When i suggested people take it up with ombudsman to highlight the size of the problem, result.. i was threatened with a ban for breaking forum rules for "campaigning" depite it being about the regulator.
Im of the opinion this was nothing less than a scam designed to get customers to upgrade to unlimited which of course cost more.

This post has been edited by mickR: Thu, 12 Dec 2019 - 14:59