Bye bye BT bye bye.
Posted by: Tony Lockhart on 28 December 2012
I lost about ten hours of my life last year because of BT's lies and incompetence. I managed to keep my calm and kept records of all communications, but somehow they trapped me in another year's contract.
Dealing with Plusnet today was a pleasure, and was only spoiled by BT giving me an invalid MAC number. Useless til the end.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed now that Plusnet and their friendly Sheffield staff can keep me happy and loyal.
Tony
PS. Yes I know Plusnet are a subsidiary of BT.
Hello Tony
Its strange that BT should start another company that is in competition to them. Have you any idea why this is ??
I kicked BT into touch years ago both at home and for the business. Only trouble i get is when i have to ring their call centre in god knows where in India,whilst they are very polite i often struggle to understand them.
Mista H
Only trouble i get is when i have to ring their call centre in god knows where in India,
probably Bangalore.
Cheers
Don
Waitrose sold out to BT but the service still seems to be just as good as before.
Cheers
Don
Hi,
Sorry to hear of your poor experience with BT you are not alone. Customer care goes downhill with some larger organisations, for a long time Ive recommended IDNet & AAISP for service & Eclipse isnt bad of the larger ones - Ive worked for around 30 years in IT.
Whilst Plusnet uses BT infrastructure, you are dealing with an organisation that cares a lot more about its customers & Ive not known anyone have any real grievances with them. I keep a spare router - a trusty DG834 with the MTU set to 1430 so if I ever have snags I see if that can connect as they seem very good at holding a connection with a poor S/N ratio.
N
Hello Tony
Its strange that BT should start another company that is in competition to them. Have you any idea why this is ??
Mista H
Plusnet was going for quite a few years before BT bought them. I must admit that I was sceptical about the buyout but it's one of the very few cases where a small, excellent company has not been completely ruined by a takeover from a huge, dinosaur of a company.
I've been with Plusnet for 10 years or so and never had any issues. In all that time I think I've seen the ADSL drop half a dozen times and never more than an hour.
Ay up Tony.
You will be fine with with the good people of Sheffield (Plusnet) . You will just have to learn to understand Yorkshire.
Regards Graham ' Near Sheffield'
Well I'll go t'foot of our stairs !
Tony,
I switched from Talk Talk to Plusnet last February and have no complaints so far. There customer service has been excellent, a major factor in my opinion.
Ken
I have thought long & hard about switching - 1st consideration was changing e-mail addresses & all the trouble that brings on our private & business contacts.
My service can be up & down like a whores draws, 3 or more times a day & not "busy" times, then its faultless for weeks/months. I get 15kbps at least when its working.
The call centre to be fair is doing there best, but I rarely use them as I am now so familiar with rebooting & all the other tricks I was giving them tips on getting to whatever menu quicker. BTW the call centre pick-up can in any of 3 places, Calcutta, Mumbai & Bangalore.
BT have replaced all the inside/outside house wiring, in-socket filter & over a few years a number of hubs. My problem is unreliable wires between exchange & house & they are reluctant to do more than just fix the break/bad connection as we are promised the optic service sometime in 2013 & finally what good is Plusnet to me when they use the same crap BT wires.
I am with Virgin Cable, used to be ntl.
It is fast and reliable, but expensive. In spite of various haggles over the months, I still pay more than most. The problem is that they keep writing to me, e mailing me, and telephoning saying that I have a right to "free" cable television. When I explain that my wife, a linguist, has hundreds of free channels on her Hotbird satellite receiver already, and we have already enough choice on our conventional television. I complain about the quality of programmes these days, and the fact that I would rather listen to my hifi. They remain unconvinced, and offer me the choice of even more channels. They then put on their "I'm dealing with a quaint old lunatic" voice. This is confirmed to them when I speak about preferring to listen to the "wireless".
I ought to move to something cheaper, but again it is laziness, and the reluctance to change e mail addresses.
Don still wet downtown York
I see your dilemma Tony, if I got lied to I would be gone as well.
But apart from finally admitting they will not replace the wires until Infinity arrives, I can't fault them. ? err change that ...... don't try e-mailing them as that is a black hole.
I will be watching for yr reports with interest.
We have been having trouble since BT Upgraded our local exchange which is 2 miles away!( never had a problem before the Upgrade)
We have intermitant drop outs of the Broadband service for the about the last 4 months now,sometimes it's out for at least 8 hours,it's been out six times since Saturday! doesn't help when running a Tax consultancy service & the returns need to be filed before the end of January! We had an email from them saying they hoped to fix the problem by 4/01/2013 ,not holding my breath!
Another vote for Plusnet, never looked back.
Brilliant and easy to deal with.
Superb online service.
Now back to saving for that Superuniti....
Best thing I did leaving Bt for talk talk last year.I was paying them almost 50 pounds a week for phone and broadband.I now pay 25 with free 1571 and 40 gb broadband compared with BTs 10 g.b.
Even with losing my phone connection.made the phone call to India thinking it would be a couple of hours,when in fact my call was answered in a couple of mins.An engineer was booked for 2 days later.On the day of the visit they even sent a message to my mobile to confirm.
Great company.Hope BT go under.....No chance!
you may have seen the report yesterday , Tesco owning small coffee shops under a different name, simular set up really aimed at attracting customers who are put off by large corperates.
Tabby - if you were paying BT £50 per week for Phone and Broadband, I, as a BT Shareholder, I would like to thank you for your generosity.
One of the survival requirements that all people must be aware of is what the price of the service you are using is compared to the price from other suppliers.
You cannot blame BT for you not understanding what the cost of telephone products.
As for TalkTalk I hope it is a while before you decide to move on again.
I suggest you sign up for the
MoneySavingExpert.com weekly email newsletter.
BT is a number of companies, I think that perhaps the householder facing bit (which is what we tend to see and hear with their call centres in Asia) and broken promises could be disappeared but the rest of the business is essential for the rest of the country to function.
Derek,
Sorry that should have been £50 a month apologies.BT where expensive but not that expensive !
Still £250 a year better off,with a better value package.
Steady on old chap. I have several years of pension fund still tied up in that company.
I enjoyed my time there but glad I moved away nearly 20 years ago. I still have mates who work there and hate it with a passion.
Tony - You do not have fibre in your area yet? I have now got unlimited bandwidth and 64Mbs download and 16Mbs upload. Quite incredible to have an upload speed faster most people's download speed.