BT - how are they still in business
BT - how are they still in business
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anonymous-user

Original Poster:

85 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
Long story short but having to get phone line and broadband moved back to BT. Order placed mid September. Letter and email sent to confirm that go live date for both was the 12 October. With the home hub being delivered on or before that date.

It's now the 14th and no sign. Called India to be told that my order has been placed in such a way that delivery will actually be the 28th. Both the letters and the emails were wrong according to "Mark".

Anyone got a number for a uk centre? Surely they would want to know how st their service is and can rustle me up a home hub quicker than that?

P

steedy27

677 posts

221 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
Not sure why you want to get BT broadband so much its 99% chance that its going to terrible

Edited by steedy27 on Thursday 14th October 20:16

SparkFox

2,726 posts

196 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
MRSNEAK said:
Anyone got a number for a uk centre? Surely they would want to know how st their service is and can rustle me up a home hub quicker than that?
020 7356 5000 is the head office switchboard according to http://www.saynoto0870.com

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

85 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
steedy27 said:
Not sure why you want to get BT broadband so much its 99% chance that its going to terrible

Edited by anonymous-user on Thursday 14th October 20:16
The only reason is that my entire street is uses one route back to the exchange, I use another much longer route which means I get 0.8MBs!! Friend is a BT engineer, if I am with them he should be able to get me swapped over.

anonymous-user

Original Poster:

85 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
SparkFox said:
MRSNEAK said:
Anyone got a number for a uk centre? Surely they would want to know how st their service is and can rustle me up a home hub quicker than that?
020 7356 5000 is the head office switchboard according to http://www.saynoto0870.com
Thanks for that

Simpo Two

93,078 posts

296 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
1) They own all the wires

2) Many people still believe that BT is best - in the words of my neighbour, 'We know it costs a bit more but it's reliable isn't it'.

Power of the brand and all that.

davethebunny

740 posts

206 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
Simpo Two said:
1) They own all the wires

2) Many people still believe that BT is best - in the words of my neighbour, 'We know it costs a bit more but it's reliable isn't it'.

Power of the brand and all that.
your neighbour must be my mum.

Same thing she said.

I wasted about ten minutes of my life telling her they were all now separate entities, but left her to it in the end

Engineer1

10,486 posts

240 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
BT have been clever with their home hub, it looks more than just a router which may be enough to convince the less techy that it is something better than the company who give out netgear routers.

Big Rod

6,265 posts

247 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
TBH, I don't know either.

They've got a very bad name in my professional arena and I have no idea how they win contracts. I even worked for them once and their work ethics are deplorable.

They do try to embrace new work ethics but it's with such cack handed officious incompetence I really don't know how they manage to keep their head above water.

I reckon they've depended on a lot of gubbermint 'business' over the past few years and are going to feel the pinch soon.

FWIW, I have BT at home as there's not a lot of choice where I live, but it's not actually been bad TBH.

Pigeon

18,535 posts

277 months

Thursday 14th October 2010
quotequote all
How are they still in business? Simple. Monopoly. Despite decades of bullst about getting rid of their monopoly, they effectively still have one. The so-called "competitors" still have to use BT lines, their so-called "cheap deals" are all about discounts on phone calls and don't save anything on the basic bit of just renting the line, and they tie you in to their own st choice of broadband. If you want to be able to make free choice of your broadband supplier you have to get the phone line direct from BT. The only way the "competitors" are any use is if you don't mind not being able to choose your broadband supplier freely and you also make sufficient use of the landline phone that the phone call discount business has any meaning.

Oh yes, there may be Virgin/cable, but lots of places don't have cable. And they don't do a deal which is just internet, you have to get not only a phone but also some expensive deal to watch a load of st TV as well.

BT suck arse but they are still pretty much the only possible choice.

telecat

8,528 posts

272 months

Friday 15th October 2010
quotequote all
In My case nobody would setup a Broadband line to my house except BT Business.

T_Pot

2,542 posts

228 months

Friday 15th October 2010
quotequote all
i can top this, ordered for my business phone and net to be moved to the new address, and based my moving date (tomorrow) upon the info they gave.

chased the order again today, to be told the phone will be live on the 28th not tomorrow as promised, and the net 3 weeks after.

i was not impressed, and mentioned a conversation id had with a bt engineer who happened to be in my unit who had offered to do the job for me as a hobble for £80, and BT's reply was

"to be honest sir, id go for that offer, its good one"
FFS i can get a BT engineer to work a fiddle quicker than his boss can provide the service i pay for.

aw51 121565

4,773 posts

264 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
Pigeon said:
Oh yes, there may be Virgin/cable, but lots of places don't have cable. And they don't do a deal which is just internet, you have to get not only a phone but also some expensive deal to watch a load of st TV as well.

BT suck arse but they are still pretty much the only possible choice.
We have Virgin-on-the-ridiculous Media here - my now-wife had just a Virgin Media phone line when I moved in, and I ordered VM Broadbean in my name when I moved in (they seemed to be unable to comprehend that I don't in fact have any desire for a ridiculous number of tv channels for an extra £15 a month, and that's for the 'basic' package, but they 'got it' in the end). So buying just what the customer wants and not all the extraneous garbage is possible with Virgin - if difficult! smile

From previous experience with BT, if they were the only telephone and broadbean supplier available to me where I live, I would go without. Really, their customer (dis)service has been that poor.

VM's customer service has (admittedly) been equally bad at times, but extremely good at other times... Which is probably as good as it will get without be getting a BT line installed hehe which ain't gonna happen.

tinman0

18,231 posts

271 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
Simpo Two said:
1) They own all the wires

2) Many people still believe that BT is best - in the words of my neighbour, 'We know it costs a bit more but it's reliable isn't it'.

Power of the brand and all that.
Hate to say it but BT is probably more reliable for broadband than the rest, especially those that have their own LLUs. BT engineers in the exchanges have a monthly performance rating that lists the number of circuits that have had problems that they were responsible for wiring in. Third party engineers that go on site have no such quality control which is why they got banned temporarily from exchanges in one group a couple of years ago.

Mojooo

13,291 posts

211 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
good customer service is not a requisite of being sucessful. some other companies in that arena have terrible customer service recods, sky, virgin and talk talk to name a few

Tow Vehicle Rqrd

1,217 posts

214 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
MRSNEAK said:
Long story short but having to get phone line and broadband moved back to BT. Order placed mid September. Letter and email sent to confirm that go live date for both was the 12 October. With the home hub being delivered on or before that date.

It's now the 14th and no sign. Called India to be told that my order has been placed in such a way that delivery will actually be the 28th. Both the letters and the emails were wrong according to "Mark".

Anyone got a number for a uk centre? Surely they would want to know how st their service is and can rustle me up a home hub quicker than that?

P
Because TalkTalk are even worse? Waited for four months for broadband, to be eventually handed back to the UK and told they had a technical fk-up that would delay it all for "a considerable time".

Orange got me up and running in 3 days.

randlemarcus

13,646 posts

262 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
TVR Moneypit said:
BT? fking BT?

Those s can go and fk themselves seven ways untill Sunday for all I care. And do it sideways as well. Utter, utter, utter, utter bd tt fkface st breath wkers. And that ginger gormless tt on there adverts can go and fk himself as well.

B fking T? I'd rather use yogert pots with string, carrier pidgeons and smoke signals than use fking BT ever, ever again. Utter fking wkers!
One takes it that you have never had dealing with Kingston Telecommunications? Bunch of s who have taken £50pm for 8mb for the last two years, along with £50/month for a few fking calls.

Fibre? Something to do with fking Gillian McKeith mate.

captainzep

13,306 posts

223 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
Just to weigh-in.

I had Virgin broadband (-non-cable) with BT phone account.

Last Nov, out of the blue, both providers gave me 'sorry you're leaving' notification. Long story short, idiot bds Talk Talk had slammed my line in error, even after I told them of their mistake and they promised not to. Took me fking months to sort and I never got my original number back, -Ofsted were fking useless too.

Tried to get back with Virgin but they could never sort things out.

In the end I relented and went with BT broadband just for the convenience of my phone line and broadband provider being the same.

They did everything they said they would and in about half the time Virgin did. Everything just worked which was a relief after months of being royally fked about by incompetents and hours speaking to clueless helpdesks.

The whole industry seems very inconsistent.

Simpo Two

93,078 posts

296 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
Mojooo said:
good customer service is not a requisite of being sucessful. some other companies in that arena have terrible customer service recods, sky, virgin and talk talk to name a few
I think they're all fine until something goes wrong. Then you end up doing battle with FAQs, automated e-mails you can't reply to, support tickets, and people who can't actually fix the problem. It's more than attitude, it's structure. And so a simple problem that could be solved in one short phone call to somebody who could fix it, because a 9-month battle against the corporate ramparts.


Benzman

231 posts

231 months

Sunday 17th October 2010
quotequote all
BT,I have recently changed my Broadband and Telephone service over to O2, after months, nay years, of paying BT's charges the last bill was for £180 for the quarter I'm now paying £33 a quarter for exactly the same service.

When I told BT I was leaving and why, they immediately offered to match O2 on price. My response was "If you can do that now, why didn't you do it years ago" Robbing bds.