[Archived] BT fined 42 million pounds

[chaddyrovers]

http://news.sky.com/story/bt-fined-record-16342m-fine-for-delayed-installations-10815377?dcmp=snt-sf-twitter

[Biddy]

It's about time all companies compensated for missed appointments.  You are expected to take time off work and they hardly ever even apologise if they don't bother turning up.

I am about to moved back to Virginmedia from BT for my broadband.  I have that little faith in the system that I am getting Virgin installed with a 1 month overlap as I cannot afford to be without the Internet for work.

[jim mk2]

More cock-ups by a truly awful company. But don't worry the chief exec and senior managers will still be getting their multi-million pound bonuses. 

[Guest]

I've had really painful dealings with BT and their subsidiary, Plusnet.

I had a Plusnet contract and then moved house. Unfortunately, the house I moved to had its cables cut by the previous tenant, and so an engineer was needed to come and reconnect it all. It took three months and an eventual move to Sky to get it sorted.

Three times, the Openreach engineer failed to turn up. Once is bad enough, particularly when they virtually insult you by sending a text message saying that if you're not in for the appointment, you'll be charged £49.95! Explaining what had happened, or what was going on, was like bashing your head against a brick wall. Furthermore, the Yorkshrie lass at HQ was just downright rude to me. I ended up reporting it to Ofcom, which was a little time consuming, given that you are only allowed to make one submission of all evidence, transcripts, proof of lost earnings, etc., but it was worth it in the end.

I eventually decided to go with Sky, who sorted everything out within a couple of weeks. However, their speed was limited at the local exchange, whereas BT could provide me with fibre broadband. The switch was reasonably smooth, but after a dramatic change in circumstances, I needed to cancel (or offload) the contract, just a few months into it. If I cancelled, the full charge would've been something close to £400, because they would remove all of the "discounts" applied to the original contract. However, if I let the service and Direct Debits just continue on, the discounts would stay. Thankfully, nobody moved into that property until recently, so I took the risk and let it run without any issues.

If you're looking for brain cells and compassion, don't look to BT. They have too much control over the whole network, and exorcise that control at their discretion.

[Baz]

Still cannot believe that Ofcom hasn't totally separated the companies.

BT has manipulated their fibre roll-out to suit their own commercial business interests for years, directly missing areas with no competition to focus on areas where they can rival Virgins network. I don't know what the current map looks like but the initial fibre roll-out maps from BT almost directly overlaid the Virgin network, with the areas being covered in second/ third / fourth phases having no competition.

 

[Paul]

BT certainly seems to come in for a huge amount of criticism. I can't judge if this is justified or not. We've only ever had BT for phone, TV and broadband (or its predecessors) and have never missed a beat at home or work. When engineers have been needed they've arrived on time and knowledgeably fixed the problem. 

I am though deeply sceptical of BT business sales. A few years ago I was persuaded to buy the latest system. It was a disaster leaving us without phone and broadband for 48 hours. We cancelled and reverted to our current position. 

Six weeks ago BT called to sell me BT Cloud Phone. Stupidly I listened, did some further research and signed up. I really should have known better. Total disaster inside 72 hours. Now cancelled and back to our previous system!!

The overall service I receive at work and home is excellent. The moment I listen to BT business sales it goes spectacularly wrong and the sales people have zero interest in putting it right. 

[chaddyrovers]

Ive always found BT are arrogant people who think they are better than anyone. Once a man to attach the phone line back to property we just moved into. He made us feel like it was massive inconvience for him. I think its time BT was split up into different companies. 

Also I'm not massive fan of their coverage of sport. Their PL coverage is very poor. I cant believe they paid so much for champions league and now most fans wont be able to watch it. I have no intention of paying over 20 pounds per month for it. 

[broadsword]

I don't have a landline. I have a mobile phone and a mobile 4g modem .

Had a lot of problems with bt six years ago. Refuse  to ever deal with them again

[Biddy]

I signed up about a year ago to BT (which is why I am moving as my deal has run out) and I paid their £60 fee for a new aerial to be installed.  The installers came and honestly told me that I actually wouldn't get a better signal as it turns out I live in a crap area.  They told me to tell BT and I'd get my £60 back.  It took 3 months for them to refund the money, each time promising it would be taken off the next bill and it wasn't.  Then on the 2nd bill they charged me £100 for an engineer visit that I had not had and all fees were in the initial cost.  It took a long online chat to sort that out with them being insistent I hadn't paid up front.  It's only when I sent them all my paperwork that they admitted it and took it off.

To be fair though, the service has been rock solid (phone and broadband). YouView is the biggest load of tripe ever created,  The box crashes half the time if you leave it on the one and only 4K channel.  I can't fault the broadband though, I only pay for Infinity 1 but for some reason the installers put me on Infinity 2 and no one has noticed.

BT Openreach though, yeah, for business areas they are an absolute cartel.  Where I used to work, we had a very expensive bonded SDSL system to give us a whopping 20mb line.  We couldn't afford a leased line as that was coming in at over £2k plus £200 per month.  So we waited for BT infinity to be rolled out.  But no.  You did the online checker and every single road around ours could get BT fibre, but not the 3 office blocks around our work.  Basically they had deliberately not enabled office premises to protect their leased line business.

[Neil Weaver]

Interested to read the recent posts.  Might be stating the bleeding obvious but it shows the power and variety of individual experiences.  Based on (residential) dealings with them a few years ago, I wouldn't let BT anywhere near my house even now but I can't speak highly enough of Plusnet (the broadband bit, not voice or mobile and I know they're ultimately owned by BT!) for both product and customer service.

[Biddy]

Bunch of shysters!  Just called them to cancel my service and even though I will be letting the service run to the end, they are charging me £31 for the privilege of BT Wholesale terminating the line.

Unsurprisingly they couldn't match the Virgin Media deal and could give me the amazing offer of upgrading me to Infinity 2 (which I'm already on) for more money!

[DE.]

Have to be honest, I got a great deal from BT last year on fibre & sports, and was offered the same this year but with upgraded fibre. Service is always good. I was with Sky before that and I never had a problem with them either, save for them attempting to reneg on a deal they offered me. Unfortunately for them the phone call where I was offered said deal was recorded and that ended that matter. 

My parents have TalkTalk, meanwhile, and I have very little good to say about that.

 

[K-Hod]

BT have been fine for me, tbh, though I think I need to get a quicker connection as the internet can be painfully slow when I'm watching BT Sport (Internet channel).

[Biddy]

As I say, apart from an initial billing issue, BT have been fine for me.  Helped by them putting me on Infinity 2 but only charging for Infinity 1.

My deal is ending and going up from £47pm to £65 in May plus the new charge for BT Sport kicking in on top of that.  My Virgin deal gets me Phone, 200mb BB and Full House TV including BT Sport and Sky Cinema HD (something BT can't offer) all for £55 pm.  I am also getting £220 cash back from topcashback so effectively £37pm.  So my swap is all based on value for money, not actually on service.

I just couldn't believe the £31 charge when you disconnect.  You don't get charged that if you swap between phone line based broadband providers it appears and that clause is hidden down at #41 in the T&C's. @#/?s.

Anyway, Virgin now in and fully working.  At least the V6 Tivo box is better than my parents massive clunky thing.

[jim mk2]

 

Good luck when you try to leave Sky. They'll tie you in padlock and chains and throw away the key.

[Biddy]

Thankfully I only have a single sky HD box on sky. Box Sets bundle with sky Cinema for £22.40 per month (60% off for 12 months). It's good to haggle.

[K-Hod]

Looks like I can't get Virgin Media in my area, which is a shame. I think I'll have to negotiate with BT...

[Tom]

On 28/03/2017 at 8:52 AM, chaddyrovers said:

Ive always found BT are arrogant people who think they are better than anyone. Once a man to attach the phone line back to property we just moved into. He made us feel like it was massive inconvience for him. I think its time BT was split up into different companies. 

Also I'm not massive fan of their coverage of sport. Their PL coverage is very poor. I cant believe they paid so much for champions league and now most fans wont be able to watch it. I have no intention of paying over 20 pounds per month for it. 

Yep based on your one dealing all of BT are arrogant and think they are better than anyone else.

 

[Guest]

So I cancelled my BT service at my old property last week, as it looks like somebody may be residing there soon. I understood that my final bill would be £49, but it's come through at £69. Looking at the breakdown, it seems that the cost to CANCEL the service is £49, and is then ADDED to my final bill. If I'd have known that, I think I'd have just let it run for another month without that charge... £49 to cancel a month before the service expired! I swear that I checked with the phone representative that £49 was the final bill.

That's the sort of company BT is - vague on charges, and you can be sure to pay more than they let on. In my experience, Sky are much less like that, because they have always advised me what my final bill would be whenever I've cancelled, rather than being vague or misleading.

BT are now making me wonder whether I can really be bothered putting their wrongs to right yet again. I really should follow this through, but I just don't know if I have the energy to go through a time-consuming battle with them for the sake of £20. I really should, because they just get away with murder.

[Biddy]

Just dragging this back up as a warning.  I've been back with Virginmedia now for just over a month and I am about to shout at a call centre person until they let me cancel.

They are currently running shiny adverts saying how wonderful their service is and you can stream on their "crazy fast network". Well that's half true.  Right now, during "off peak" I am getting 210Mbps which is actually slightly above what I am paying for.  Come the peak hours 6pm-midnight week days and all weekend, I get anything from unusable (literally) to 20Mbps.

The attached picture is my stats from last night. 0.9Mbps!!!!! My upload is almost 10 times quicker which is unheard of.

Their community forums are awash with people in the same boat.  You get given a generic Fault Code and they unhelpfully give you similar stock answers.  Mine was 

"From checking your connection, I can see a high peak time traffic fault in your area which is causing slow speeds. The reference number is F004613468 and has a review date of 3rd January 2018. As this is a review date it can be subject to change".

3rd January next year!!!!  An going off other posts, that is a moving review date.

I urge anyone thinking of going with VirginMedia to call them and explicitly ask if there is any "high peak time traffic" in the area.  Or better yet, just don't.

 

[Kamy100]

I was with Virgin Media and had the same problems Biddy.  There peak time throttling of speed was atrocious, this coupled with their "superhub" having very poor wifi range drove me crazy.  I had to stick it out for a year but changed to BT as soon as that year was up.  

[Biddy]

I only left Virgin a year ago when I was on their 70Mbps package and it was fine. It appears they have upgraded too many people to too many stupidly high packages and the network just can't cope when everyone is using it.

I'm now thinking about either going back to BT or going to Sky. BT i know is a good service and they are currently doing infinity 2 for the price of infinity 1 (£34.99 for 12 months but which £50 sign up). Sky have their fibre Max also for £34.99 per month but with only £20 sign up.

Anyone got any experience of Sky's fibre broadband? 

Still not sure I can get out of virgin, but hoping so.

[Mike E]

Only ever been with Sky, absolutely superb and never feel patronised to when complaining (3 times in 9 years).

Longest it took to sort an issue was 48hrs when there was a general fault around mine and neighbouring postcodes.

[Glenn]

I've been with Sky for many years and I've always been happy with everything bar the price (and the fact they misspelt my name years ago and won't change it without evidence I've changed my name) .

They used to claim they did no throttling, traffic shaping or oversubscribing, I've no idea if that's still true, but I've experienced nothing that makes me think it isn't.

 

 

[Biddy]

I've already got Sky TV at a 60% discount so if I go with Sky for broadband, would it be seen as a different account as such? I don't want to be tied for all products in one as I like to be able to haggle or leave. I also don't want signing up for  a broadband to affect my TV discount. Not sure if that makes sense?

Still wish we could have broadband without a phone line as we really don't need one!