Said I’d never go with them, but I could save over £60 a month if I switch now. Can’t be ignored! Tried pricing up ad investigating on their website, but its terrible…And the prices have changed 3 times this morning already!

1. So, what’s the TV box like?
2. What’s the Infinity reliability like? – this is crucial, cos I know how bad BT are with faults!
3. Are they as bad a company to be a customer of as they used to be?

Thanks 🙂

Dont do it. Seriously, dont do it.

the tv box is abysmal

broadband is fine but the TV is so bad it’s borderline unusable. Freezes, switches off constantly, drops the connection, sluggish. If you’re coming from a Sky box you’ll cry.

Go for a Now TV box instead. Much cheaper, way more flexible and a far better user experience, though not without a couple of minor niggles, but still way better than BT TV

Thanks Bob! Very useful… It would be so much cheaper for my sport since BT bought Boxnation – and I object to Sky Sports now having bloody Golf, Football and Darts channels that I have to pay for! But yeah, it all works so well, maybe it’s worth the extra.

I don’t have the TV Box

I have the BB and it’s very good but I did dump their Home Hub as it’s poor.

I’ve got broadband, had the TV and box some years ago when it was a fiver a month,but hardly used the BT stuff so gave it up after a year and kept the box.
My experience is that the BB is very reliable – I live quite near to the box which is good. Only had a few outages over the last 9 years, one being due to works team (not BT) cutting through the underground cable. Another being, BT doing some upgrade work to infinity.
On the whole, can’t fault them – there was some time when you could only speak to an Indian call centre but now it seems when I’ve phoned (only to discuss contract options) that you get through to a Uk centre.
I’m happy with their service and as said I’ve been a customer for 9+ years.
I know others will say they are devil incarnate, but my experience has been great whilst a customer, which has included a house move and a line move due to building work on my property.

FiL has got the Telebox. On ADSL. It’s fine as long as you can run an ethernet cable from the router to the box.

I was with Zen for years on ADSL. This time last year – like you I couldn’t ignore the saving so went for it.

Subsequently I’ve moved from ADSL to Infinity II when it became available in my village. Really happy – 65+ down 22+ up.

That said they certainly throttled my ADSL when Infinity became available I went from ~9Mbps to 6Mbps down a few months after fiber came to the cabinet.

The Homehub is bobbins if you have a lot of wireless devices attached. Be prepared to spend some money on a new router if this is the case.

If things go wrong yes it may be frustrating but fingers crossed it won’t for you if you decide to move.

alanf –
…Only had a few outages over the last 9 years, one being due to works team (not BT) cutting through the underground cable…

Did BT try to charge you for reporting the fault?

I am a BT FTTP Infinity 1 customer and I cannot fault the product service I have had, I’d say it’s been the best internet i have paid for since first getting any domestic BB installed years ago. Not one drop of service or speed in 15 months (new build property) Recently renegotiated a cheaper 24mo- other options on the market were more costly.

I would however under no circumstances defend their broad customer service which completely deserves all the criticism you hear about. The only glimmer of light is that the team who are responsible for FTTP customers like myself are UK based only. This is specific to FTTP customers not regular FTTC fibre customers. If its FTTP, you’re in luck as those teams have been a pleasure to deal with. Anything else, woeful.

During the set up of my service (taking the line physically into the property involving OpenReach) on two separate occasions over 2 months, their overseas call centres attempted to install copper phone lines into the building (this was cancelled on both occasions anonymously without my knowledge-leaving me wondering what was happening as the engineer date(s) rolled by with no engineer-3 weeks of time wasted) despite repeated instructions from me that this was a FIBRE TO THE PREMISES enquiry. Turns out it should have been nothing to do with the teams i had spent the previous several weeks talking to and an entirely unconnected department. They are a shambolic disjointed mess of an organisation on many levels as far as the end user is concerned. And i used to work for them!

cannot comment on TV but i am inclined to believe the horror stories there. I’m a ‘happy’ Sky customer on that front.

2 years with them here, it was the only option where we are.

Broadband is 60mbps, TV box has been reliable. Not as good as previous Virgin box I don’t think, but perfectly ok.

Router did fail, they just sent a new one without too much pain.

The TV box was terrible IMO – I could never get the extra channels to work either, and had a protracted row with them over this.

Avoiding BT wherever possible is my mantra now.

Nick – like you, I am FTTP and it works well. The sticking point comes if you ever want to change supplier. No-one else among the big players will touch it, except for a couple of smaller companies who will want more £££.

Nick – like you, I am FTTP and it works well. The sticking point comes if you ever want to change supplier. No-one else among the big players will touch it, except for a couple of smaller companies who will want more £££.

indeed. this was largely my feeling when we researched the market when the contract was up. BT remained cheaper. We had to install a BT service because they/openreach are the only company in the uk who take the fibre into the building- a BS quirk of the new build experience we learned.. ‘a brand new house you say? with internet?’ don’t be so silly..’ Try a cable sticking out of the mud gaffered to a windowsill on the exterior of the property the day you get the keys.

Not looking good.. oh well. Maybe I’ll do the Sky phonecall anyway, see if they’ll reduce.

Did BT try to charge you for reporting the fault?

The fault due to cut cable was resolved by Morrisons Utility as they were responsible, but it took a few days. The other problem with the infinity upgrade, was down to BT. When I phoned they said it was due to their work so no charge then either. The only other issue I had was when I re-signed for another contract and they reset my system. It basically didn’t come back on line so they had to send an engineer. They said I would be charged if it was deemed to be my equipment at fault, but again it was their end, not checking the right box according to the engineer, so again no charge. Only charge was to get the line moved, which I expected as I requested it.

Not looking good.. oh well. Maybe I’ll do the Sky phonecall anyway, see if they’ll reduce.

its a shame this, and i wish i didnt have to be negative as an ex employee! i think BT have got it right with the newest fibre customers like myself, but we are lucky. The BB is genuinely good imo. Everything else including customer service and TV? still, a lottery.

Not looking good.. oh well. Maybe I’ll do the Sky phonecall anyway, see if they’ll reduce.

Worth doing this, obviously, and say you definitely want to leave.

I would say BT Broadband might still be the way to go, just as long as you are prepared for bureaucratic horrors if anything doesn’t work. And you can always get a Freesat/Humax recorder for your telly, supplemented with Now TV for Sky-type stuff or Netflix etc.

The fault due to cut cable was resolved by Morrisons Utility as they were responsible

That’s as maybe – but they tried to charge me £75 for calling them out to a lightning strike last I was a customer. One of the reasons I left.

The broadband is interesting – currently on Virgin fibre, because there’s no line rental. BT says (at the moment!) price includes line rental, but I asked on online chat and that’s just for 18 months, so could be hiked after that. Website doesn’t make it clear.

No sure why so many people have had issues with the TV box. I got one last year, their latest box at the time and it is very good in my experience. Has crashed a couple of times but far less frequently than the Sky box it replaced and has been a lot more reliable than my dad’s Sky Q box which has left him without any TV many times.

I guess if you’ve got an older box they may have been dodgy but the later boxes are very good at least as good as the standard Sky + boxes.

I have no issues with BT TV. I mostly watch stuff that is available on freeview anyway, but it is handy to have all the apps and smart features on one box instead of spread on all the other devices plugged into my tv.

BT BB is OK, does what it says. It underperforms relative to the advertised BB speed, but it is fast enough to stream HD content and I live in an area of an expanding housing estate so the BB infrastructure is probably lagging behind the growth in houses and people. I’ve not really had much need to call BT and experience their famous customer service style (or lack of). So far everything has worked fine so no need to. Not looking forward to it if anything should go wrong as it is meant to be a truly horrendous experience, but we’ll see. Sky had a pretty terrible reputation, but when I rang them up to cancel after about 15 years of continuous membership, they were fine, very helpful and courteous and very efficient. Either I was lucky or maybe another classic case of only dissatisfied people making a lot of noise compared with the vast majority of people who have a very different experience.

Don’t forget to go through Topcashback/Quidco etc. if you swap providers, BT Infinity with TV looks like £100 TCB at the mo for new customers.

That’s not helping! 😆

For those with issues around the TV losing broadband connection where your TV is not directly connected to your router, have you considered trying new mains adapters?

COntact BT customer service and tell them your connection keeps dropping out, they will run a test from their call centre, possibly identify your mains adapters as the source of your issue and send you some new ones and only change £4 p+p.

That’s what happened with me and it now works perfectly. No buffering when watching Netflix, BT Sport in HD never loses connection when streaming, all issues I had before.

I’ve found the current tv box to be great, much better than previous BT ones.

Been with BT since about April, have got BB and TV. Have to say that I really love the TV box. Having used Virgin’s Tivo for the previous few years, I have to say that I think the BT box is way better, nicer looking menus, much faster, and the HD channels are much easier to find in the EPG than Virgin! Also, all the on demand stuff is a doddle to get to through it. Only downside is that it needs to be connected via ethernet, not an issue for me as my router is next to my TV, but I can see how it could be an issue. I can’t really comment on the box when comparing to Sky as the last sky box I used was pre sky+! (although it is obviously a lot nicer to use than that!)

I’ve not really had any issues with the broadband either, I think the router froze once, but a manual restart and it was all good again! I’m getting at least the advertised speed, and usually at least 10% higher, had no issues in terms of reliability on that front.

The one major issue with BT is, as pretty much everyone else has said, their customer service is an absolute pain in the arse. Having said that, when the £100 mastercard that I was meant to be eligible for when I signed up was never available, they did credit my account for the amount instead. Just took several very patient conversations on their online chat thing.

Oh and another annoying thing is that they don’t give you your broadband data usage if you’re on unlimited, as apparently you don’t need it as you’re on unlimited! Again, they will eventually give it to you over the online chat.

TV Box UI is worse than SKY/Virgin. Quality of picture etc is fine, but actually finding anything on the system is a pita

Fibre has been great in the 6 months I’ve had it – no downtime and fast as hell

Cheers fellas, all very useful info. Looks like it’ll give me some sway with Sky and if not I can tell em to go swivel 🙂

Nick – like you, I am FTTP and it works well. The sticking point comes if you ever want to change supplier. No-one else among the big players will touch it, except for a couple of smaller companies who will want more £££.

We got stung by this, stinks to high heaven. Openreach install a service that only BT and some random commercial only suppliers can use. Suits the new build developer as Openreach install for free, suits BT as we have to suck up the £50 a month for a FTTP service we have no use for (we would be perfectly content with basic copper which we had previously).

Seems that Sky are now entering the fibre game though? They emailed me saying I could switch to Sky for fibre and save £££s over BT. Suspect that once I call them they’ll hum and haw and realise that in fact they can’t supply our area, but worth a shot. Otherwise we might just go for a 4g dongle to spite BT, we’re still on the introductory £30/month rate but it’s going up to £50 shortly 🙁