BT Cloud Phone - Any horror stories?
Discussion
Hi,
I've had a BT salesperson trying to sell me a 2 year contract for their cloud (voip) phone solution + broadband.
Cost wise it works out better than my current basic PSTN line + calls + broadband.
A quick look at Trust Pilot though shows a whole lot of unhappy customers. Should I run a mile?
My needs are very basic. The only useful thing to me (apart from the cost savings) would be the ability to easily transfer calls to our second office which is out in the sticks, and only has a 4G internet connection and a few staff currently on mobiles.
I understand the days of PSTN are numbered - so is now a good time to jump?
I've had a BT salesperson trying to sell me a 2 year contract for their cloud (voip) phone solution + broadband.
Cost wise it works out better than my current basic PSTN line + calls + broadband.
A quick look at Trust Pilot though shows a whole lot of unhappy customers. Should I run a mile?
My needs are very basic. The only useful thing to me (apart from the cost savings) would be the ability to easily transfer calls to our second office which is out in the sticks, and only has a 4G internet connection and a few staff currently on mobiles.
I understand the days of PSTN are numbered - so is now a good time to jump?
My friends experience of BT cloud.
Equipment installed and told to head over to a website and call a helpline to set the parameters for the calling. This took ages and ages and ages and the BT guy kept asking us not to interrupt him, this was cos of a 2 second delay, which he didn't seem to get. The set up was like, how many rings, then revert to other handset, that has a difference number, what engaged tone do you want etc etc. No 'default' setting it would seem to just enable you to use the phone.
My friends business BTW is a takeaway that has one handset. The additional handset seemed like a good idea at the time.
A few months later with the broadband not being very reliable and my friend complaining, BT did some test and decided he never should have been sold the system and they replaced it with a normal line. Only they changed the number without telling him, so when it changed over on Friday approx 4pm his takeaway, of which deliveries are approx 70/80% of his turnover, had a new number that even he didn't know, turns out it was the number allocated to handset 2 of the cloud phone. He then rang up and was told 'nothing' could be done about this as that department had gone home and he would have to wait until they were back, as it was a bank holiday weekend that would be Tuesday!
You can imagine his business was hugely affected by this for the bank holiday weekend.
On Tuesday he kept getting messed around and told he would have to wait for xyz, nobody seemed to care that his number, which he had for years, was the lifeline to his business.
On Wednesday I wrote a strongly worded email (!) to the person dealing with it and copied in the chief exec, the regulator, head of department etc. About 3 hours later his number was allocated and started working again.
Mistakes happen, but their lazy attitude to fixing it, and an offer of a few quid of compo was very below par.
Equipment installed and told to head over to a website and call a helpline to set the parameters for the calling. This took ages and ages and ages and the BT guy kept asking us not to interrupt him, this was cos of a 2 second delay, which he didn't seem to get. The set up was like, how many rings, then revert to other handset, that has a difference number, what engaged tone do you want etc etc. No 'default' setting it would seem to just enable you to use the phone.
My friends business BTW is a takeaway that has one handset. The additional handset seemed like a good idea at the time.
A few months later with the broadband not being very reliable and my friend complaining, BT did some test and decided he never should have been sold the system and they replaced it with a normal line. Only they changed the number without telling him, so when it changed over on Friday approx 4pm his takeaway, of which deliveries are approx 70/80% of his turnover, had a new number that even he didn't know, turns out it was the number allocated to handset 2 of the cloud phone. He then rang up and was told 'nothing' could be done about this as that department had gone home and he would have to wait until they were back, as it was a bank holiday weekend that would be Tuesday!
You can imagine his business was hugely affected by this for the bank holiday weekend.
On Tuesday he kept getting messed around and told he would have to wait for xyz, nobody seemed to care that his number, which he had for years, was the lifeline to his business.
On Wednesday I wrote a strongly worded email (!) to the person dealing with it and copied in the chief exec, the regulator, head of department etc. About 3 hours later his number was allocated and started working again.
Mistakes happen, but their lazy attitude to fixing it, and an offer of a few quid of compo was very below par.
I've had a BT VOIP phone for a few years now.
I only use the app via wireless on an Apple smart phone and the option to bounce calls to a mobile number.
That has worked OK for me and at £15 a month with no additional line rental, I use the home internet I already pay for, its good value.
That being said I found the initial setup a PITA. I had BT internet and BT landline phone. Both of those entities came across as hating BT Cloud. The cloud people were actually quite good but both the BT landline phone and broadband people told me a pack of lies about what I could and couldn't do. I was out of contract with both and could cancel as I saw fit. Which I did in the end but they told me I couldn't have BT cloud phone without BT broadband which was an outright lie.
Ironically when I transitioned I was still on BT broadband and the phone was dreadful, dropping calls etc. I really had a what have I done moment. However, as soon as started using another broadband provider the cloud phone was fine.
I still notice a big lag on some calls which is annoying but its fine on others. I think on balance its fine for me being a light user but if I used it more I would look elsewhere.
I only use the app via wireless on an Apple smart phone and the option to bounce calls to a mobile number.
That has worked OK for me and at £15 a month with no additional line rental, I use the home internet I already pay for, its good value.
That being said I found the initial setup a PITA. I had BT internet and BT landline phone. Both of those entities came across as hating BT Cloud. The cloud people were actually quite good but both the BT landline phone and broadband people told me a pack of lies about what I could and couldn't do. I was out of contract with both and could cancel as I saw fit. Which I did in the end but they told me I couldn't have BT cloud phone without BT broadband which was an outright lie.
Ironically when I transitioned I was still on BT broadband and the phone was dreadful, dropping calls etc. I really had a what have I done moment. However, as soon as started using another broadband provider the cloud phone was fine.
I still notice a big lag on some calls which is annoying but its fine on others. I think on balance its fine for me being a light user but if I used it more I would look elsewhere.
I was involved with them at a client site, client wanted BT. Guy turned up to install, didn't even have a PoE switch or any psu's for the BT supplied phones, "that's customer supply mate".
They where meant to use the existing BT BB, all agreed. Guy turned up to install a new BB line, turned out they had signed up for this as part of the contract, so two BB lines to pay for even though they only needed one.
Watch costs, after first year costs went up, a lot.
They where meant to use the existing BT BB, all agreed. Guy turned up to install a new BB line, turned out they had signed up for this as part of the contract, so two BB lines to pay for even though they only needed one.
Watch costs, after first year costs went up, a lot.
te that company One of the biggest issues with the BT solution is you can't out of the box set up one of the VOIP apps if you want to answer calls via your mobile.
When the lock down first started, all our customers that used our voip solution were set up on Bria, meaning people were able to work from home without their company needing to buy additional voip handsets.
We have one customer, which currently uses BT Cloud, and they are not given the account details for the app to register the phone.
This is a good question to ask any voip provider "Can I use Bria with your service" as it offers you a lot of flexibility.
When the lock down first started, all our customers that used our voip solution were set up on Bria, meaning people were able to work from home without their company needing to buy additional voip handsets.
We have one customer, which currently uses BT Cloud, and they are not given the account details for the app to register the phone.
This is a good question to ask any voip provider "Can I use Bria with your service" as it offers you a lot of flexibility.
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