broadband rant - Useless BasTarrds
Discussion
Mods, if I am breaking the rules here, please aceept my apologies, and kindly dont sin bin me! I dont think I am though!
My broadband went down for 3 days 3 weeks ago, 3 months into a contract with a certain well known provider of toal broadband services. They agreed to cancel the contract when I read them back the acount details of people I had over heard while I was on hold and they patched me into the payment system by mistake! I also pointed out that they must give me my MAC code at any stage, although they could insist I pay for a years service if I left. They had told me I was not allowed my MAC code....
So 5 days ago, as I try to port, my line goes down. According to their so called customer services this is due to the router so I have to buy a new one, ignoring that they provided me with a free one when I joined. So I tried a spare router, wouldnt work. I also tried 3 seperate PC's, both wi-fi and wirelsee and finally they agree there is a line fault. 3 days on, me calling them 3 times a day and it turns out they have not even passed the fault to the escualtion or engineering teams. Tomorrow morning I shall be making it clear to them the extent of my displeasure although they finally agreed today to send an engineer who "should" be with me some time in the morning.
Having been doing a little reading on the oftel regs and being in the phone industry to some extent, I have a fair idea of these things anyway, I have discovered an insane number of breaches.
I am going to see just how far I can push this tomorrow as frankly, I have had enough of sitting in web cafes, being messed about by useless call centres and its time to do what I do fairly well and put a little pressure on...
However, I would say that despite excellant service when I signed up and for the first week, my provider has been comfortably the worst customer experiance I have ever had and would recommend simply getting a mate to read you web pages over a string and can arrangement as a better option. This stands even if you have no mates, have never seen a tin can or string !
My broadband went down for 3 days 3 weeks ago, 3 months into a contract with a certain well known provider of toal broadband services. They agreed to cancel the contract when I read them back the acount details of people I had over heard while I was on hold and they patched me into the payment system by mistake! I also pointed out that they must give me my MAC code at any stage, although they could insist I pay for a years service if I left. They had told me I was not allowed my MAC code....
So 5 days ago, as I try to port, my line goes down. According to their so called customer services this is due to the router so I have to buy a new one, ignoring that they provided me with a free one when I joined. So I tried a spare router, wouldnt work. I also tried 3 seperate PC's, both wi-fi and wirelsee and finally they agree there is a line fault. 3 days on, me calling them 3 times a day and it turns out they have not even passed the fault to the escualtion or engineering teams. Tomorrow morning I shall be making it clear to them the extent of my displeasure although they finally agreed today to send an engineer who "should" be with me some time in the morning.
Having been doing a little reading on the oftel regs and being in the phone industry to some extent, I have a fair idea of these things anyway, I have discovered an insane number of breaches.
I am going to see just how far I can push this tomorrow as frankly, I have had enough of sitting in web cafes, being messed about by useless call centres and its time to do what I do fairly well and put a little pressure on...
However, I would say that despite excellant service when I signed up and for the first week, my provider has been comfortably the worst customer experiance I have ever had and would recommend simply getting a mate to read you web pages over a string and can arrangement as a better option. This stands even if you have no mates, have never seen a tin can or string !
seem to have been logged out, but not sure why 
Guess this is the downside of going with very cheap all in one packages with script reading tech monkeys, ie if it is not covered by the script, then it not their fault
What does the op want ? tv and phone or a broadband that works ?
try a smaller company for broadband and some do charge more
eg
entantet resellers like aquiss, or independents like merula and zen
been up for 19 days, previous session was 54 days, the disconnections are usually when I change centrals to get better speed
click on the link to get u an idea of speed u could get :>
http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/results.php?t=120...
Guess this is the downside of going with very cheap all in one packages with script reading tech monkeys, ie if it is not covered by the script, then it not their fault
What does the op want ? tv and phone or a broadband that works ?
try a smaller company for broadband and some do charge more
eg
entantet resellers like aquiss, or independents like merula and zen
been up for 19 days, previous session was 54 days, the disconnections are usually when I change centrals to get better speed
click on the link to get u an idea of speed u could get :>
http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/results.php?t=120...
Got to agree with Scraggles here.
If you look for pure price alone for your Broadband package then unfortunately something will give - usually the service or performance. There are some well known 'brands' which are truly awful when it comes to actually delivering the service, but because they advertise, they get the business. Shame really as it often leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
I hear very good things about the indie's and Zen is one that springs to mind from a friend of mine who has been with them for years. Not a bad thing to say about them. Personally, I am with BT and they have proven to be pretty darn good. Not perfect, but the faults that I have had they have been prompt to resolve and had the capacity to sort it out - for example a fault at the local junction box was fixed in 24 hours and sorting out the cable to my house was done in 48 hours.
My wife is on a business tariff with BT and when they screwed up, they even provided her with one of those mobile USB things for free while they sorted it out. Ok, that was a major cock up by them, but they did manage to sort something out in the end. And on the times that I have had to use BT support, just keep pushing to speak to one of the engineers in the UK (3rd line I believe) as they actually know what they are talking about and can help.
If you look for pure price alone for your Broadband package then unfortunately something will give - usually the service or performance. There are some well known 'brands' which are truly awful when it comes to actually delivering the service, but because they advertise, they get the business. Shame really as it often leaves a bad taste in everyone's mouth.
I hear very good things about the indie's and Zen is one that springs to mind from a friend of mine who has been with them for years. Not a bad thing to say about them. Personally, I am with BT and they have proven to be pretty darn good. Not perfect, but the faults that I have had they have been prompt to resolve and had the capacity to sort it out - for example a fault at the local junction box was fixed in 24 hours and sorting out the cable to my house was done in 48 hours.
My wife is on a business tariff with BT and when they screwed up, they even provided her with one of those mobile USB things for free while they sorted it out. Ok, that was a major cock up by them, but they did manage to sort something out in the end. And on the times that I have had to use BT support, just keep pushing to speak to one of the engineers in the UK (3rd line I believe) as they actually know what they are talking about and can help.
off_again said:
My wife is on a business tariff with BT and when they screwed up, they even provided her with one of those mobile USB things for free while they sorted it out. Ok, that was a major cock up by them, but they did manage to sort something out in the end. And on the times that I have had to use BT support, just keep pushing to speak to one of the engineers in the UK (3rd line I believe) as they actually know what they are talking about and can help.
What does she have that I don't? When I had a week's outage due to a cockup by BT, they paid for me to buy a dialup modem and gave me free dialup for the week. 
BT have been a mixed bag for me, when it works, which it often does for months at a time with no outage or disconnection, it's a good service, though not fast enough until they start rolling out adsl2 later this year. However when you have a problem, be prepared for long calls spent on hold, speaking with clueless Indian call centres who can't deviate from scripts and generally piss poor customer service.
I switched to o2 recently and it's been a great experience so far, UK call centres who pick up in the first few rings, and seem to be knowledgable on the product and service.
I switched to o2 recently and it's been a great experience so far, UK call centres who pick up in the first few rings, and seem to be knowledgable on the product and service.
Edited by Deniz.S on Monday 25th February 10:37
Deniz.S said:
BT have been a mixed bag for me, when it works, which it often does for months at a time with no outage or disconnection, it's a good service, though not fast enough until they start rolling out adsl2 later this year. However when you have a problem, be prepared for long calls spent on hold, speaking with clueless Indian call centres who can't deviate from scripts and generally piss poor customer service.
Not with the business broadband service. You get British call centres that way, and if you have a major problem you get allocated a single point of contact who you can pester to death until the problem is fixed. SGirl said:
Deniz.S said:
BT have been a mixed bag for me, when it works, which it often does for months at a time with no outage or disconnection, it's a good service, though not fast enough until they start rolling out adsl2 later this year. However when you have a problem, be prepared for long calls spent on hold, speaking with clueless Indian call centres who can't deviate from scripts and generally piss poor customer service.
Not with the business broadband service. You get British call centres that way, and if you have a major problem you get allocated a single point of contact who you can pester to death until the problem is fixed. edited to add, I've been to the BT website and the figures are there. The BB looks OK but there seems to be a requirement to have a new business line which racks the price up.
Edited by Piglet on Monday 25th February 13:11
Original poster forgives you all for going off topic, thats just the nice kinda guy I am!
All I want is broadband and cheap cals would be nice. i have Sky+
Yhey turned up today and two enginerring teams are now arguing whose fault it is, but the promised me it will work, probably, maybe before the end of the week, maybe sir, but actually, I can't promise it!
At least dial up works sometimes so I can check emails.
So annoyed.
I have the phone number of the chairmans office at BT and when this is done, I shall consider posting it to all and sundry! I dont mean the one they publish either that goes via the switch board...
All I want is broadband and cheap cals would be nice. i have Sky+
Yhey turned up today and two enginerring teams are now arguing whose fault it is, but the promised me it will work, probably, maybe before the end of the week, maybe sir, but actually, I can't promise it!
At least dial up works sometimes so I can check emails.
So annoyed.
I have the phone number of the chairmans office at BT and when this is done, I shall consider posting it to all and sundry! I dont mean the one they publish either that goes via the switch board...
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