BT's Web of Lies!, OT Rant Options

[glasgow_bhoy]

Not the first time I've ranted about BT... probably not the last. Until August when the contract with them is up.

Anyway, for years we've had poor broadband. December 2012 and I was doing my dissertation, and it totally went. We sat with unusable speeds all through January, and after countless calls being asked to 'use the yellow ethranet cable' (which is actually blue) they got an Openreach engineer out, who found a fault and sorted it. Well he didn't sort it. He got another guy out. Who then arranged for another guy to come back the next day. And then another guy went to the cabinet down the road another time. Something to do with batteries was mentioned- they were sticking poles all over the front lawn and what have you, and out in the pit in the street.
Anyway that was fine for a week, and then it went again. This time they wanted to change the modem. Fine. It was changed after a lot of arguing as I refused to go into another contract and two of their agents at offshore call centres had promised I would not be recontracted. So a new modem was ordered after I demanded several calls were listened to. That didn't solve the issue- I knew it wouldn't (I worked for Virgin at the time.. I had a limited knowledge of technical issues and spoke with an engineer at work). So they did a line test and ohhh theres a fault on the line. A guy came out again, and this time sorted it.

It wasn't great, but it was useable till I graduated. And even after that, I never bothered to chase them to get the speed improved as calling them was daunting. In August, we recontracted on a retentions deal as the price was creeping up big time (was about £40 a month just for phone and broadband). They messed that up- quoted £30, and then charged £30. After 2 phonecalls where I'll admit I lost the rag, it was sorted- partially because I'd lost the will to argue.

Throughout the following months, there were various issues. Generally sorted by rebooting the modem, cursing for 10 minutes and going back to it. Then November happened. Speeds were never above 1mbps. I called.. its a wifi issue I'm told. Several calls later I'm still being told that. They did line tests after I demanded managers, and each time found an issue at the exchange. Each time they'd say it will be sorted in 48 hours, and each time I'd have to chase them. At the end of December, after at least 11 calls that month alone, they changed the modem, again. Despite me telling them the modem was fine. They promised this would fix everything.

It didn't. Infact it managed to slow down in January- I can't watch Netflix, my Xbox keeps getting kicked offline, and my phone, in an area where we don't even get 3G, is quicker than the landline broadband. So I've called, and again, problems at the exchange. I refuse to speak with people in call centres at BT now unless its a manager, and I refuse to do the 'have you tried the wired connection' crap with them as its a waste of my time. Managers have, during January, promised me 4 callbacks on my mobile. One has managed to call back- and he didn't try my mobile. He tried the house phone, which meant I was at work and didn't get the call. And I never managed to get hold of him again.

Last Saturday it came to a peak when one of their level 2 support team hung up on me as I refused to speak to anyone other than his manager (who as usual, wasn't there... they're never there unless I refuse to end the call- then suddenly, they appear- if I'm not hung up on). I was pure ragin. So I emailed the CEO and various other bigwigs I found on that mad CEO finder website.

Sunday I got a reply- have you tried a ethranet connection to check speed... very sorry blah blah blah. Not amused. I emailed back nice and curtly, and on Monday, got another person, from the same escalated complaints team in Newcastle, asking me the same bloody thing. Is this a communications company? Do staff not talk to each other? Shambles. Anyway, he's been alright, and arranged an engineer. He wanted to send one yesterday morning, but frankly, it was my intention to get rat arsed on Friday night and subsequently yesterday I was suffering from a pure bellend of a hangover. So we've got one booked for next Saturday. Thats cool.

However I advised other people living nearby have been complaining about the speeds too (mainly when I moan on Facebook about how awful this company are) and as such, could he find out whats going on at the exchange. Tuesday he told me there might be a problem- they'll investigate it. And on Friday, he told me my exchange was at full capacity and as such its normal to experience some issues. Estimated fix time for this is over 2 weeks away- but nothings set in stone. Not amused at BT's incompetance, I've replied querying why they did not carry out work when it was at an amber status, and more why they think its acceptable to continue billing us at the full rate when they know theres an issue.

A bit more digging online via BT forums has revealled BT have known my exchange was at 'amber' level since at least 20th September 2013. It could be longer, but the tool I used to check could only verify the September date. I'm furious that this wasn't disclosed to me by BT during one of my countless calls over the past 2 months, when I explicitly asked is there a capacity issue in my area.

So, as its a Sunday night, and I can't watch Top Gear on iplayer or watch Netflix or even play Fifa on the 360, I thought I'd warn you all- if your dealing with BT, do not trust a word they say. Proven to be incompetent at best in my case, and proven liars at worst. Certainly not a communications company worth considering- they can't do internal comms never mind deal with the network for the rest of the country. Its shocking. The appitamy of a company and of customer service. If I'd acted like any of their staff have (excluding the complaints dude whos kinda trying his best to help me with the shite service BT has to offer me) I know I'd have been booted within weeks when I worked for one of their competitors. What riles me more is the fact that I worked for said competitor, and at times, didn't like the way customers were treated. But looking back now, the way they were treated was actually bloody amazing in comparison to BT's treatment of me. And at least my previous employer was aware of some of its downfalls, and were doing its best (and doing pretty well) to sort them. My parents have been with them for like 35 years, and had no serious problems until about 18 months ago- nothing bad enough to cause them to leave. This year, has been hellish. The accounts in my Dad's name and I've nipped his ear to get this sorted.. but hes not got the pateiece or will power to argue with these fools. So the regins been passed to me (I've become like the Martin Lewis of complaining and getting results on behalf of friends and family it seems... its an unfortunate skill). Which means I've been persistant. I feel sorry for people who don't do confrontation or arguing well- they are being walked all over by these cretins!

For those who aren't daft enough to sleep reading all that, I'll sum up...

Don't join BT. Seriously. Just don't. And if your with them, jump ship before this happens to you.

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[Steve_999]

http://web.archive.org/web/20120920014441/...isp_ratings.php

glasgow_bhoy's view is shared by the majority of BT Broadband users....

... that have used that particular website! What's that? 1% or less overall?

I'm certainly not sticking up for BT and their customer (lack of) service in glasgow_bhoy's case, but you really should take these "surveys" with the shovel-full of salt that they deserve!

[ManxRed]

If you go to a different ISP you'll be using the same infrastructure but at least it'll be your ISP having to battle with BT instead of you.

Encountered that when we bought a newbuild house and wanted phone & BB installing. We were originally taking TalkTalk with us from the old house but they claimed the new one wasn't on an exchange that they had gear in despite it only being 100yds down the road and you could see the exchange out of the windows. Sky wouldn't install without the phone line working so we wanted it working pronto. Next we tried BT as despite it being dearer we thought that at least they'd get a phoneline & BB working for us, they couldn't and came up with a number of baffling suggestions as to why (previous occupants left a contract open being one, on a newbuild property!). In the end we rang Sky to see what we could do about the lack of phoneline and they said they could get the lot working, even if it meant running in a fresh line to do it on at no extra cost to us. I don't know how they managed to get BT to do what BT couldn't but we've been with them ever since.

Ah, that gets terribly complicated. Are you sitting comfortably?

BT Wholesale control the broadband connections in the local exchange.
BT Openreach control the access network in the street, so anything in between the local exchange and your house.
BT Retail are the people you buy the broadband and phoneline off.

BT Openreach and BT Wholesale must treat all operators (so, that includes Sky and Talk Talk etc.) even handedly with the same lead times and response times. That includes BT Retail (they must not be seen to have an advantage).

What usually ends up happening is that some operators escalate jobs with BT Wholesale and/or BT Openreach to try and get jobs in earlier, whereas BT Retail don't as it would be seen to be unfair. Although in theory, no one provider ought to be able to get anything in or fixed any quicker than any other operator.

The only influences on how quickly things can get done will be down to geography, for example the number of available Openreach engineers in any area who can respond to faults, or the availability of Openreach line plant in the ground in any one area. Hence two people living in different towns might get service quicker or slower than each other, but two people living next door ought to get the same lead times, irrespective of which provider they choose (including BT Retail).

Of course, in practice....

[captain swoop]

BT send their shaved Monkeys out to our customer sites to 'upgrade' them with their Infinity Routers or whatever they call it.

They seem to not know anything other than hoe to open a box and plug in a wire. If they come across anything that isn't a wireless laptop at the site they haven't a clue.
They don't know how to access their routers or change any settings in them
That means if they are put on to a network that isn't already on their default 192.168.1.xxx range and isn't set to look for their default gateway address 192.168.1.254 then the site loses internet connection, lose their gateway and Discovery goes bananas.
Even if the IP range is right the routers are set to use the full range as DHCP so you can bet that down the line there will be IP address conflicts with anything Static

It's come to a point where we get the site to put one of their workstations on to DHCP so they can connect us in and then we change the lan setting in the router, it's a 30 second job.
Or we just get them to throw the BT box into a cupboard and put our own router in

I am not talking huge networks or complicated systems. Most of our customers are Dental practices with maybe half a dozen machines on a Workgroup.

[Wongsky]

Going a little OT - Sky. My Sky box blew up (PSU knackered) - so I phoned them up and told them that my Sky box won't turn on because the power supply has blown. They insisted there was nothing they could do until I turned my box on for them to run some remote diagnostics. The point that I couldn't turn the box on didn't phase them... "Please turn the box on, Sir". We got nowhere until I asked to cancel my contract.

Arrrggghhhh!

20 GOTO 10

;-)

[dave comer]

Changed to the Post Office this afternoon. Just followed the idiot guide for set up and then took the dog out for a walk whilst the box of magic sorted itself out and settled down.
My laptop seems to be working faster and smoother and is more stable. The change over was seamless and pain free so I am well happy so far. Friends of mine have the Post Office and none have yet had cause for complaint so fingers crossed.

[Alexis]

Heard nothing but terrible things about BT. Got £500 compo out of them a few years ago because if their utter incompetence.

[Monster 900]

BT have just given me 12 months free internet (Option 1), evening and weekend calls and BT Sport HD, so I can't really complain.

Having to start paying now and it isn't that cheap, but as nobody else can be arsed to LLU the local exchange the choice is somewhat limited.

Overall, I'm reasonably content. I don't use the Home Hub though, got my own Netgear router.

[Pug205GRD]

I refuse to have anything to do with BT to the extent we have not had an active landline now for well over a year.

Spent 6 months trying to get a range of issues sorted in one house. Started with the internet only working when the phone line was active and a very noiy phone line. Phoned their BB support line and went through the usual testing thing. Guess what, because the phone line was active the internet worked so I had no problem to complain about! They kept refusing to run the test while I was not on the phone even after me getting the operator to listen without either of us saying anything so they could hear how bad the line was.

Apparently it was a line fault, so had to phone the line faults department. They fixed the problem only to find another problem which was fixed. Then this exposed another fault elsewhere which in turn cascaded into more and more line faults all over the place.

Didnt end there though as I still only had ISDN speeds (128K) on a line that should have supported 4Mb (this was 6 years ago when 4Mb was as good as it got). Lots more of the same can you plug the router into the test socket type phone calls ensued. Then they asked where the router was situated. It was on the floor next to the test socket. This was clearly my problem, the router was suffering from static interference from the carpet. Not such a good idea pulling that excuse out of the bag from somebody who works with electronics and specifically radio transceivers!

Took 5 months of endless telephone tennis before I got to talk to a chap that within a couple of minutes said, its the router mate, there is a new one in the post for you tonight.

Forward to 2011 and we had Sky as our phone and BB provider but could not get more than 2Mb on a new estate and a local exchange in a large(ish) city. Got fed up with the lack of speed so booked Virgin Fibre as it had just been enabled in the area. The fibre terminal was already at the door and the estate had been laid when it was built. Had an install date arranged and then the day before they phoned up and said sorry, no fibre in your area. Idiots!

Stuck with Sky until we moved house when they told us that there was an 8 week wait for the line to be enabled in the new house. 8 Weeks! That is all down to Openreach but as our service was with Sky it was up to them to ensure we had coverage. They had 28 days notice that we were moving so we werent being unreasonable.

Ultimately we ended up with Virgin Cable for the internet, no landline and no TV service from them.

Moved into our new house a couple of weeks ago, phoned Virgin, no problem we will send an engineer with a new router to set you up. Not sure where they got the engineer from but I think he may have been moonlighting form the local comprehensive

Still, we get a solid 33Mb/2Mb service for £25 a month and we have nothing at all to do with BT even indirectly due to their lack of service.

[glasgow_bhoy]

Going by the number of members of this forum, I get the impression that my hatred towards them at present perhaps isn't uncommon in society! I don't know if I'm glad to hear that (as it proves I'm not just being victimised, and that I'm not complaining over nothing) or whether its a bad thing as it means I've no chance of ever sorting this out!

[Fredd]

You could substitute just about any mainstream ISP for "BT" and find a forum that felt exactly the same way about them. There are only really two companies that supply a fibre or ADSL connection to domestic users, BT Wholesale and Virgin (50% of homes).

Everyone other than Virgin has to use the piss-poor BT service, and just seem to vary in precisely how shit their customer service is. Going by various internet forums, Virgin seem to have their very own highly competitive piss-poor service and shit customer service standards.

From current personal experience, Sky are piss-poor in accepting orders for their fibre service, and after 2 months, having taken £50 to replace a lousy but functional ADSL router with an equally crap "fibre-compatible" ADSL router, are still unable through their shit customer service contacts to give any indication of a start date beyond "your order is being processed". Needless to say, Sky blame BT Wholesale blame BT OpenReach blame ....

[glasgow_bhoy]

I blame my supplied Fredd- I can't get laid into Openreach, Wholesale or whatever company the network is hiding behind depending on who you speak with. If I've got a customer who's unhappy, its upto me to apply pressure to my supplier to get the result my customer needs. The same goes here, and I'd say in your case with Sky too.

Any company can get a bad name- and has sites devoted to them. Christ my current employer has several hate sites devoted to them, and hundreds if not thousands of comments on various forums stating how bad the service and products are. Yet we boast a strangely high customer service score in our publications... cos we have hundreds of thousands of customers and most rate us well initially. Weirdly, our biggest competitors (who are nowhere near the size of us) have nowhere near the negative publicity online which we get. Its noticeable online.

Internet companies are the same- its always the same names we see complaints about. The one company I did feel confident about changing to was O2. But now they're being run by Sky... I'd not give Sky my money based on Murdoch being involved (never bought the sun, times... I hate him). BT, from what I gather, used to be good. But something they've done recently must have changed that.

[enfield freddy]

you do know that every BT home hub is by default transmitting and receiving a separate signal that BT then sell on , check your wireless network card for BTfonera ???


this can be disabled ,but you have to ask

BT fonera is the pay per hr or day service , also the one that you log onto free if its in your BT package

fonera is Europe wide , but in other contries , you buy a unit , lug it in and you get paid by fonera , bt have changed the rules in the UK

[Korting]

you do know that every BT home hub is by default transmitting and receiving a separate signal that BT then sell on , check your wireless network card for BTfonera ???

The BT fibre optic router is in two parts, there is one module which interfaces with the BT socket and the router and of course the router itself. If you dont use their router, only the interface box, does the same apply?

this can be disabled ,but you have to ask

Who do you ask?

[captain swoop]

I have an ex- AOL internet account, it goes through Talktalk now.
Not fibre but it is very cheap and unlimited download and we get 10Mb
I use it when I work from home on support. It supports a VOIP Phone, VPN to works call log and message system and we can stream movies with no problem.

It's all very well being obsessed with fibre and advertised speed but I have never needed it yet.

[AFCNEAL]

I suspect GB's problems are due to living in a 3rd World country?....................

[captain swoop]

BT will get most complains, they are the biggest provider.

[buttonpusher]

you do know that every BT home hub is by default transmitting and receiving a separate signal that BT then sell on , check your wireless network card for BTfonera ???


this can be disabled ,but you have to ask

BT fonera is the pay per hr or day service , also the one that you log onto free if its in your BT package

fonera is Europe wide , but in other contries , you buy a unit , lug it in and you get paid by fonera , bt have changed the rules in the UK

Does not a similar thing apply to sky? They advertise you can use 3million hotspots. Got to admit I have found BTFon useful when away from home.

[susie_mcg]

I suspect GB's problems are due to living in a 3rd World country?....................

I too live in that 3rd world country and have been a BT customer for over 10yrs. I can't fault them on anything.
I've had a few issues that were nothing to do with them (builder damaging my line outside the building and Sky taking it upon themselves to cancel my BT service) and their response and resolutions were spot on.
I also had to move home at short notice recently due to separating from my partner and they had me reconnected and online with a new home hub in under a week.
No company is completely flawless but I must say I don't mind paying that little bit more to be with BT who in my experience have always been excellent.

[minotaur]

Virgin are crap.
BT are double crap.

I've had no dealings with BT since Virgin belatedly allowed existing Virgin tv+phone customers to have broadband. That must be about ten years ago.
I've had cable tv+phone ever since the area was cabled by a company that was bought by a company that was bought by Virgin.
Most of the time it works and the BB is faster than anyone elses even though I no longer pay for the highest available speed.

[StuartBu]

I suspect GB's problems are due to living in a 3rd World country?....................

I too live in that 3rd world country and have been a BT customer for over 10yrs. I can't fault them on anything.
I've had a few issues that were nothing to do with them (builder damaging my line outside the building and Sky taking it upon themselves to cancel my BT service) and their response and resolutions were spot on.
I also had to move home at short notice recently due to separating from my partner and they had me reconnected and online with a new home hub in under a week.
No company is completely flawless but I must say I don't mind paying that little bit more to be with BT who in my experience have always been excellent.

As I said before I have had no real problems with BT and I also live in that 3rd World Country .. Opinions about BT ( or any other organisation) are always going to vary and will depend on the persons experience . You and I have have had no bad experiences ,GB HAS had bad .

this can be disabled ,but you have to ask

Who do you ask?

As far as I can tell from looking last night you don't need to ask .You can do it online via MyBT