More . . . BT Broadband Data Accounting Bingo

[Huskoda]

Any of these (most commonly BT and Virgin too) that have a return address go back in the post box with 'unsolicited junk mail - return to sender' written on them, so they at least have to pay for it twice. I did do the opt out thing on Virgin's website, which took a lot of finding and I have gotten less of them since.

[cheezemonkhai]

If a company is bad, you vote with your money.

 

While you stay, they won't change, as it's working for them.

[Clunkclick]

My feeling is that most of the retail provided broadband, is ****e, witness my "Customer Service" treatment thus far. I don't need a films service  or sport. 

 

Anybody care to recommend a  commercial VOIP provider who also does line rental and baseline broadband services.

 

Nick

[Dr Zoidberg]

If you want a properly professional, and not at all mass-market, service then try Andrews & Arnold.

http://aa.net.uk/

[Clunkclick]

So that's a premium of £7 a month to avoid BT's *******s marketing department and customer service  and general  City Of London orientated "Money extraction machine" behaviour. I'd say its well worth it.

 

A & A £45 a month for a capped 150GB a month. (Inc line rental)

 

 BT £38 a month for FTTC 52MBps unlimited and *******s customer service (Inc line rental).

 

See this guy is taking BT to task with, I understand, a group legal action:-

 

http://39.org.uk

 

After the ****ing around that I have had both now and five years ago, no contest !

 

Its difficult to understand HMG's envisaging of the dynamic, stand-on-your-own-two-feet, post Brexit economy, when the principal telecoms provider is such  basket case.

 

 

Nick

 

 

Edited 29 January, 2017 by Clunkclick

[cheezemonkhai]

On 28/01/2017 at 19:05, Clunkclick said:

My feeling is that most of the retail provided broadband, is ****e, witness my "Customer Service" treatment thus far. I don't need a films service  or sport. 

 

Anybody care to recommend a  commercial VOIP provider who also does line rental and baseline broadband services.

 

Nick

 

A&A, Zen Internet, VOIPfone are pretty good too.

[Clunkclick]

This is what BT are all about now . . .

 

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-4178060/BT-bosses-wives-buy-shares-price-slumps.html

 

Elite payolla.

 

N

[Mort]

31 minutes ago, Clunkclick said:

This is what BT are all about now . . .

 

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-4178060/BT-bosses-wives-buy-shares-price-slumps.html

 

Elite payolla.

 

N

It's amazing that their customers don't leave them.

[RainbowFire]

It's funny, I breeze back through here after a few months, see a thread by my old sparring partner (Come-QuickNick) and I see nothing has changed.

[Clunkclick]

I wondered when the "Four legs good, two legs bad" wing would pitch-up for a bit of free and open discussion:-

 

I see someone has already posted this link for me 5 hours go - query has gone off to the Administrator.

Nick

Edited 1 February, 2017 by Clunkclick

[x19]

Up until August last year, living in a very rural area, I had the privilege to receive up to 1.5 mbps utilising BT's rickety old above-ground telephone lines. That was on a good day, usually it was more like 0.5 mbps.  It didn't much matter which ISP one used as they all had to use the same old BT infrastructue.

 

This all changed last August when a company called Gigaclear, in partnership with Essex CC, dug up mile after mile of rural roads/lanes/tracks and laid fibre.  I now have FTTP and have entered the land of the living. They offer several speeds from 50 mbps to 1000 mbps in both directions.  I only needed the 50 and there is none of this "up to" rubbish, they guarantee the up and down speed to the router (as the fibre optic goes directly from the Gigaclear cabinet into it).  The only thing that affects the speed is, inevitably, wi-fi.  I therefore receive about 40 ish down and about 35 ish up but the drop is entirely caused by the wi-fi and my equipment.  In fact since I installed a clean version of W10 on my lap top, I'm getting in excess of 50 in both directions on some days.

 

I also took advantage of going VOIP with a company called Vonage.

 

Now this ain't cheap.  The Broadband is about £40 pm and the phone £15 (they do a basic service at £8 pm though), however for about £15 a month more than I was paying I receive what I'm actually paying for which wasn't the case before, so in my view, this is much better value, plus the VOIP offer several features not previously available to me.  

 

The moral of the story is, if you have access to FTTP then take it - it's as good as you can get in the UK..

[Clunkclick]

Glad to hear that you've got free of the "Usual suspect" providers, who, from all indications, haven't and will not commit to the investment necessary for an effective IT system that would enable people greater freedom in work and leisure.

 

Unfortunately,  there is not much of a choice where the old service model does work, the providers only want to fill it up with streaming TV and sport for the pacification of the masses -   sort of electronic Mogadon favoured by the Elite,  and to keep technicians repairing copper based infrastructure which should have been scrapped years ago.

 

In this locality, the only choice is the FTTC service which is essentially BT infrastructure, which other providers then lease, or Virgins cable service (Co-ax?) which, again is there to market the electronic Mogadon.

 

For these reasons, the owners of the current infrastructure, might not be happy to accomodate the sort of purely commercial provider I was considering - we shall see.

 

The ridiculous thing with my current situation with BT is that all I initially requested was detailed usage  figures (Down to daily level - who has a net session lasting a month ?) so that I could reconcile  BT's  exceptional usage  record roughtly with my records of usage. To date they have been unable or unwilling to provide this, so the whole thing has been bumped up to a High level Customer Service Team attached to the BT's Chairman's office and, 6 months on, it is sitting there, still unresolved, despite using the "Resolver" service on  the Money Saving Expert site.

 

Unfortunately, the tactical response of walking away and taking your business elsewhere doesn't teach BT anything, as the marketeer advocates claim it does, because the BT marketing model seems to be increasingly geared to "One-off"  attract, extract and dispose customer philosophy using saturation mass advertising i.e  Cynical, short-term and nilhlistic

 

Nick

Edited 1 February, 2017 by Clunkclick

[gadgetman]

3 hours ago, Clunkclick said:

I wondered when the "Four legs good, two legs bad" wing would pitch-up for a bit of free and open discussion:-

 

I see someone has already posted this link for me 5 hours go - query has gone off to the Administrator.

Nick

Colin I believe has answered your query on this 

[cheezemonkhai]

Why don't you just move Nick.

Seriously.

 

The time you spend on here complaining about BT, you'd save enough time to cover the extra cost of AA or somebody else.

Edited 2 February, 2017 by cheezemonkhai

[Ttaskmaster]

On 01/02/2017 at 10:46, Mort said:

It's amazing that their customers don't leave them.

 

Where I live, I have two choices - Pay for BT's 'up to' 0.7Mbps broadband service, or pay thousands to get wireless internet beamed to me.

No other ISP will supply us and we cannot afford to move.

Not every customer can leave... else we would!

 

 

[mac11irl]

4 hours ago, cheezemonkhai said:

Why don't you just move Nick.

Seriously.

 

The time you spend on here complaining about BT, you'd save enough time to cover the extra cost of AA or somebody else.

 

I think its about principles more so than the money... and its a great way to fill time and vent your inner frustrations..

[cheezemonkhai]

17 hours ago, mac11irl said:

 

I think its about principles more so than the money... and its a great way to fill time and vent your inner frustrations..

 

So is getting laid and I know which I'd rather be doing....

[Clunkclick]

So many in favour of running away. 

 

My experience is that running away, at best defers a problem but usually makes it worst on its envitable return.

 

You are sending providers the message that you can be frightened and manipulated.

 

In the Playground situation, that usually means you're now tagged as an easy mark next time anyone wants to have a go,.

 

Extending the analogy to the telecomms providers, if all customers start doing a bunk from one near monopoly, who happens to be the largest provider, because of its poor service/bullying behaviour, in the absence of intervention from the Regulator (We should live that long), what message does that send to all other providers ? . . . . . we can get away with that sort of behaviour too.

 

So ultimately, running away just results in a providers race to the bottom in terms of service provision.

 

Bailing out of BT's formal resolution process, having got so for, is counter-productive for me. I want to see it properly resolved. If that means taking further, i.e. directly to the  BT CEO/Chairman, the HMG appointed Regulator or to the general law, then I'll do it. That's my privilege as a UK Citizen.

 

Further, I was brought up in era when disputing bills or other actions by commercial interests was a legitimate  and meaningful activity. Nowadays, youngsters seem to have been brainwashed into avoiding this at all cost. Some may argue, that's half the reason why the World Economy went off the edge in 2008 - everybody keeping their heads down, not commenting or querying, in the deluded belief that they were privileged customers on the gravy train too.

 

The amount of time and other resources  that I'm devoting to this is next to nothing.  

And quite honestly, all the other competing much vaunted leisure time activities, such as visiting Disney World, viewing another episode of Downturn Manor, ain't on my wish list and can wait.

 

I'm sure that many on here, as I do,  from previous experience,  are not unfamiliar with the amount of time and resources that parties devote to  disputes between commercial interests in the real World - considerable. Are all their CEOs simply using an official process to resolve personal issues too ? I think not.

 

As I've said before, in the form BT was configured 35 years ago, this issue would have been resolved in  day by a quick telephone referral to the local technical department. As it should be. As currently configured, BT, as a City of London  "Money extraction device" rather than a well-rounded Telecomms company, we have to suffer a centralised "Customer Service" mechanism, deliberately staffed by people who have yet to master the Queen's English and anything mildly technical, which is unable to resolve (And probably wasn't intended to) a simple issue within 6 months and has to refer it to near board level before any half-sensible comments are forthcoming for the customer.

 

Ludicrous !

 

If anybody is happy with that situation persisting then you must be a bigger bunch of **** wits than I thought you were !

 

Nick

 

 

 

 

Edited 4 February, 2017 by Clunkclick

[mac11irl]

I got bored half way through that.

 

I do t think anyone said "run away" in a scaredy manor. Weve all said leave making sure they know why - ie the carp service and yot paying the excess bill unless they prove its accuracy.

 

Trying to equate this to being the same reason the world economy went down - and blaming "the young folk running away" really makes you seem a petty old whinger of the "its somebody else's fault" mindset... worth remembering most of the people in charge at the time were (funnily enough) actually of a more mature generation of out for themselves assholes. not the young folk who got made redundant or had to emmigrate to get a job...

[gadgetman]

Silly me. Instead of punishing bad customer support by voting with my feet/wallet I should carry on dealing with a scumbag company, especially if ripping me off and charging me more than their competitors as it'll teach them a lesson. 

 

I think you need your head read Nick

[Dr Zoidberg]

Yep, if BT lose a load of customers through bad service, are the other ISPs really going to look at that and see it as the way forward?
 

"I'll show BT how annoyed I am by continuing to give them money" seems an incredibly bizarre way of thinking.

[Dr Zoidberg]

3 hours ago, Clunkclick said:

So many in favour of running away. 

 

My experience is that running away, at best defers a problem but usually makes it worst on its envitable return.

 

 

If you go to a restaurant and get poor quality food or bad service, and when you complain you get told "tough luck", what do you do?

Do you keep going back, or do you look at the reviews for their competitors to find those that sound promising and give one of them a try instead?

[RainbowFire]

Well, let's look at it like this:

 

Nick has been complaining about BT for years. Seems to have some delusion that the chairman actually reads the numerous letters and complaints that Nick has sent him (I wonder if Nck sends him a christmas card too.) Sadly, and I suspect it may even be a sign of advanced, progressing age, Nick is living in the past, when the choice was BT or no phone, and has got it into his head that there is no other provider........to such an extent that he even buys BT branded phones, to help swell their coffers......no doubt complaining about how much a BT Decor costs and how few features it has. He's probably got shares in it too.

 

But, to put it into context about how sad and empty Nick's life is........he's measured the amount of water (in inches, because he's not gone metric yet) there is in the stop-c*ck access outside his dwelling. I mean, yes, Disneyland or getting laid mst seem exceptionally dull after that.......where do you go from there for exctement?.....taking pictures of broken pavements maybe?

 

Personally, I can't wait for the next installment of "Old Man Shouting At The Clouds", especially now that The Grand Tour is between seasons.

 

Oh, and Nick.......car tax is due at the end of this month.

Edited 4 February, 2017 by RainbowFire

[@Lee]

35 minutes ago, RainbowFire said:

 (I wonder if Nck sends him a christmas card too.)

I got an e Christmas card from Kim Mears and Gavin patterson. And an e Birthday card. Lucky me

[Clunkclick]

 I for one,  appreciate that things have changed and we are living in a World  dominated spivs, cheats, gross inefficiency and greed.

 

What Can you do ?

 

You can't be that dim.

 

BT are still showing £270.00 outstanding on my last bill (Of which £120 is disputed and £150 already paid) and they control the hand-over of the last-leg of the connection from the exchange to the house. Even if I select a new  Broadband provider, ideally  commercial source rather than the retail crap, how are they going to get last leg access - BT won't let them unless I pay -up the disputed amount or I get someone i.e. Regulator, Courts to force them ?

 

That's clearly unfair.

 

So the only alternative would be Virgin - I'm not going with that bunch of numpty spivs.

 

Nick

Edited 4 February, 2017 by Clunkclick