nathanb

iTrader: (1)

Has anyone got a good reason NOT to switch to BT?


I must be honest and say I've been totally lazy with moving broadband and am paying too much for an inferior service!

I'm currently with Tiscali and only get 2MB for £15 per month. Shocking isnt it!!

I was thinking of moving to BT option 1 which is 8MB download speed and 10 GB monthly usage which would be fine for me for only £15.65 a month on a 18 month contract.

Any comments welcome!! Thanks

slipstream_uk

iTrader: (1)

Worse provider Ive been with, their call centre's are shocking as well.

nathanb

iTrader: (1)

What was so bad with them?

do you have any recomendations?

tarmac terror

iTrader: (2)

ZEN internet - no contract, no hassle - good reliable service, and helpful UK call centre manned by engllish speaking brits!!!!

Been with them 4 years and never missed a beat.

LostUser

It depends what you're after.

If you want a super fast connection (up to 24Mb) and no throttling so you can do alot of downloading then I'd highly recommend Be (www.bethere.co.uk)

If you only want broadband for basic surfing of the internet then I'd recommend Zen. They are very good and it's obvious why they've won Which? best broadband supplier for the last 4 or 5 years

mike1210

SamKnows Broadband - Availability - Exchange Search

See what you can get here, echo above for Zen as I've been using them for 3 years no issues and great support. Be there is great if of course if the LLU is in your exchange

and p.s. Not sure about the new Home Hub (router that BT provide) but the old one was dreadful

SierraTangoIndia

I was with BT for years, very reliable but also very expensive. There are cheaper products out there for far less money.

STI

adehook

i'm with bt and have to say there hubs are crap. i have to use my old white one as the black one wont work right with my macbook, and there mac support is gay

boxst

BT are fine. They are not as reliable as someone like Zen or as fast as BE*.

They are most likely to use throttling / restricting speeds at certain times of the day.

As for support --- I'm not quite sure why you would ever need to call it? Generally speaking if there IS A problem it is at their end and they are already sorting it out.

Steve

StickyMicky

Hubs are crap
Peaktime throttling is crap
Unlimited service is anything other then unlimited

Geezer

Really? Cheaper products for less money eh? Now there's a surprise......

Better products perhaps?

Geezer

urban

iTrader: (1)

For what its worth, I'm on Sky broadband.
Can't complain - £5 per month.
I normally get approx 5Mb connection.
Speed does vary for whatever reason, I've have speeds of 7.8Mb and down as far as 3.7Mb, but as I say its usually around 5Mb.

No problems - so far.................

Shaun

nathanb

iTrader: (1)

Thanks for your advice so far guys. I think I'm gonna give BT a miss.

I've seen a company called Plusnet and they seem to have good reviews on broadband comparison sites etc. I'll check out Zen too.

Anyone heard of, or use Plusnet?

gallois

whoever you go with, with the exception of virgin cabled areas, it will be routed over openreach's network, serviced by openreach engineers, the difference between broadband suppliers is in the customer service, capping, throttling and pricing side of things, some service providers are notoriously reluctant to send out an openreach engineer as in most cases, they have to pay openreach, the cost is more than the rental they get from their own customer in a year. some service providers deliberately throttle their customers and forbid the openreach engineer from telling their customers that that is what the problem is. from an engineering point of view, who is the best? well surprisingly, there is no one that shines.

Ant

If you can get virgin! You'll get the speeds your actually quoted not the famous "up to"

gallois

that is not true, virgin is also "up to" although the upto 50mb service is pretty damn quick, most people wont notice a small dropoff in speed, and, like most other providers, even though they say "unlimited", the have an "acceptable use" policy, which in effect limits the service for people they deem are using it excessively. they also throttle users, the same as other providers

Gordo

BT are fine as long as you don't use one of their home hubs (which are sh1te and unreliable). BT with a netgear router works very reliably. Their call centres are pants but, as posed above, whoever you go with (unless you're on a cable connection) is using the BT network so you end up relying on them to sort any network issues anyway.

Gordo

Ant

I've always had guaranteed speeds at 3 propertys. My 50mb gets 49mb on speed test.it's not as bad as when you subscribe to a 24mb adsl and your area can only get 3mb.

Azz230988

BT are a good provider, if your getting the home hub though and have an XBOX 360 be prepared for a annoying job getting your XBOX to get a wireless connection, however when i phoned the call centre they were very helpful and actually offer to take over your PC remotely and fix the problem, they couldn't fix the problem of my XBOX connecting and blamed it on microsoft but the port forwarding wasn't working, nothing to do with microsoft so i just disabled the firewall on the homehub, not reccommended i know but i had to play fifa online haha!

Ray T

dare I mention TalkTalk? I get about 6-7 mb on average from there upto 8Mb line and 40 gig "limit", lot better these days after the mad rush they caused when they first started the "free broadband" circus.

mike1210

A risk going with them, while people may have had a good service with them, the support is beyond a joke. Just wait till things go wrong.......

I have had dealings with them looking my mams mates line. The line itself was dead, no ADSL coming through it at all

So she rings support and at first they tell her the printer was to blame

Couple more phone calls ended with "sorry we can't help you so tough" basically

I go to the house armed with another router to make sure the one she had wasn't dead. On the phone to support for an hour. The guy had me check settings which were of no rellevance at all to the problem which I pointed out. Things like hardcode the DNS servers on the router which would take 10 mins to work then the modem dialer settings (FFS it was going through a router).

Then I said "no there is a line fault, there is no ADSL service getting to the house". After more arguing of him going through router settings then saying they don't support routers... Then me saying I'm not aking you to support the router I'm asking you to raise a line fault with BT, he stated he took what was saying onboard but that wasn't the problem. Then said to ring Netgear because the router is at fault. Then I stated I have another router which also didnt work and the Talk Talk modem.

After more arguing and him realising he couldnt fob me off what did he then say..............................Im going home now sorry!! WTF????

Then I said no problem transfer me to someone else to which he replied we are all going home

Mams mate send complaint mails and threatened to take it further, then they sent an engineer who confirmed what I said, then he tried to charge her....I could go on, but you are probably bored of reading this by now

p.s they used to traffic shape IPSec VPN connections