Tempted to move from sky who’s router is poor and speed drops to 1 to 1.5 in the evening. BT just offered me free router, bb connection and free calls for £9.70 a month. Plus if I pay the line rental up front (already with BT as only option) I save about £45 for the year. Any thoughts o great collective??

I’ve been happy with the speed of mine, but I have had various issues with the hubs (not tried the latest one)at the moment it keeps disconnecting.
The help with problems is just a joke, everytime you call for each problem they inist on you doing the same thing, the same if they pas you to another person, after following there process through 5 people in one call is a joke, the helplines are based in India or somewhere that way and all seem scripted, But a few minutes on google providing you can get internet access somewhere esle normally sorts the problem.
Also I think there a little expensive.
But that said 99% of the time it’s fine, wouldn’t go as to far as reccomending them, but it’s only when there’s a problem people tend to comment.

The connection will run through the same exchange just through different bits of kit. Whether this works out any faster is anyones guess.

Have a look at Sam knows and see what exchange you are on and how far you are from it.

Depends if you want to talk to a foreign helpline.

Try going to their website and trawling through the endless help options first.

What about Plusnet, they appear to be BT but with a uk helpline?

Utility Warehouse are pretty good had no problems at all with them.
Also they dod good deals on all the other household bills and if you work it properly you can get money back. Too complicated to explain here. Just go on their site. 😀

Just day NO No No no No No No to Bt. once your hooked they wont let you off it under any circumstances and the speed falls through the floor in the evenings (5- 10)

AVOID BT LIKE THE PLAGUE. They are Satan.

My speed is shocking, not even broadband. They are quick enough to let you know when you’re near your download limit. Their call centre is overseas with no comprehension of the English language. Their contracts seem to get longer and longer.

I get my phone through BT and they keep trying to persuade me to get BB as well. Trouble is their website suggests I can look forward to up to 2Mb for the same cost as Virgin manage a reliable 10Mb

AVOID BT LIKE THE PLAGUE. They are Satan.

This, basically, is all you need to know.

Without any doubt the absolute worst company I have ever had the displeasure of dealing with. Had over a year of grief with them; failed to get me connected and online within the specified time when I first went with them, completely screwed things up when I moved house (connected line in new house, left BB running on old place, charged me for both addresses), took 4 months to actually supply a BB service at the new place, tried to charge me full whack for that period, then when they did eventually connect me up, after me having to go via their CEO to get anything done, I had the slowest most unreliable connection [Clarkson voice] In The World [/Clarkson voice].

Truly, truly crap. Then, when I gave up and cancelled the service, citing ‘failure to deliver service as advertised and promised’, they tried to screw me out of another 16 months (yes, they’d sneakily put me on a new 18-month contract when they did eventually reconnect me) fees. Even got bailiff’s to try to recover the ‘debt’. Sent them a warning that if they persisted with such harassment, I would take them to court.

18 months of hell with them. And my story is not uncommon. I would strongly advise anyone against signing up with them.

TBH they’re all crap, but BT are the Worst Company [Clarkson voice] In The World [/Clarkson voice].

I have BT and its fine. reliable, quick and my experience of the indian helpline is reasonable

Well you must live in a parallel universe where everything is perfect, TJ.

If it’s so good, why are you needing to ‘phone the help line? Hmm?

2 1/2 years with Virgin, no problems at all. BT throttle throughput a lot here mind, rather than investing in new equipment…

SATAN!!!

I hear this in my head whenever I hear or read mention of BT:

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Kg5NdwH8zE&feature=related[/video]

No problems running BT broadband for me both at home and business.

However the installation team ‘open reach’ are a bunch of **** morons.

Forgot to mention dealing with BT is a bit random. Sometimes they take the direct debit, then they will forget for a few months, declare I am in debit and triple it for a while, realise I am now in credit and stop for a while before resuming at close the the original amount. Trying to sort this takes hour on the phone to India and has no obvious effect. I should probably go elsewhere, but cannot be bothered.

I’m in the same boat, with Sky at the moment but in the evenings the spped is shocking, upload speed is virtually none existant – I’ve been thinking about switching to BT even though I’m not convinced the speed will improve.

I used to have Virgin fibre optic which is the nutts…….but cant get it at thew new house:( I think BT infinity may be the way forward soon

I’ve got BT broadband. It’s OK. Speeds OK, Price is OK, service has been OK.

I could get faster if I went fibre optic with either BT or Virgin but it would be more expensive but as the current connection of 3.8Mbps is fast enough to stream films which is probably the most demanding thing we use it for it doesn’t seem worth the upgrade.

My mum has virgins cable service as she already had her phone from them and that has been OK too.

For the truly tragic try TalkTalk

[EDIT]
I’ve had to deal with customer support twice. Once I had the indian(?) helpline. The person’s language skills were perfectly adequate but they did do all the normal helpline stuff of leading you through a set script and not really listening to the problem, we did solve it eventually tough. The other time I was definitely through to a UK call centre which did take a while to get to the right department but once there they were very helpful.

If there were an option to pay an extra couple of pound a month for better trained UK based two rings and you’re through type telephone support how many people would think that was a good idea? As I’ve only spoken to them twice in ten years I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t.

[DOUBLE EDIT]
I just got BT business broadband google ad when I played shaven Elf’s omen video.

I’m with TJ on this one. Phoned the helpline twice, once the router was bust (3+ years old) and I got a new one next day FOC, the other time we had a major weather induced power cut and the exchange went a bit loopy. Two events that would happen with any other company I’m sure.

Zen.

its not the cheapest but I honestly can’t remember the last time I had a problem with it.

Did I mention that 12 months after vacating a property, they took £100 from my bank account despite account being paid and closed?

Did I mention that I had to threaten them with the Small Claims Court before they would do anything as simple as supplying me with a phone line that I had requested a month beforehand?

My line terminates at a maximum of 5.9 mbps, this has been tested and verified as I had the whole system redone after a year of crap service from sky. I can achieve these speeds early mornings, and after 10 at night. Basically when I’m at work or in bed, sky put it all down to “traffic shaping”. However their router is becoming worse, signal is very sketchy at times along with the speed!! I can do a speed test on I phone get say 1.9 Mbps test again 30 seconds later and it’s slower than dial up!! Only thing that attracted me to BT was the new channel swapping router and the price!! Could I still use sky’s service but invest in a better router???

The thing is,

Unless you’re on an LLU package (which you will be with Sky unless you’re on their ‘Connect’ offering), then whoever you go with it’ll be BT under the hood anyway. Most ADSL in this country is BT Wholesale resold. See the SamKnows link above to see what LLU providers will service your property.

If you’re having technical issues with the line, I’d suggest getting on to Sky. Once you get past their front line script chimps their actual tech support bods are pretty good.

I’ve been with BT for BB for about 10 years now (all the time that ADSL has been available). Whilst not cheap, they do seem be OK as long as nothing goes wrong.

No problems when moving house, although I did have a speed problem that didn’t get solved until it got dealt with their “High level complaints” centre in South Wales somewhere.

Speed is good. They say I can only get up to 2Mb, but I get 4.2Mb. I dont live in a town though, so there’s less contention.

They’re “OK”

God this is so predictable, give some people the opportunity to be over dramatic and attention seeking and they bite, it’s like there main mission on this forum is to get posts closed.

BT Broadband is fantastic for me, very fast and reliable wireless in my postcode, BT Infinity being installed in July, which gives me 50meg, more than enough. I also got a free powerline adapter with BT Vision so I can connect a PS3 over ethernet in the basement. No complaints.

Satanic references should be saved for the likes of murdoch and virgin.

We’ve used it for years at home and it’s alright but because we live in a small village we don’t get great speeds with any provider.

At uni they were a bit hit and miss. Some times fine, other times absolute crap and we needed multiple engineer call outs to try and fix our line. On the whole they’re not bad though, but more expensive than other providers such as O2 who have ridiculously cheap deals if you’re in their area.

God this is so predictable, give some people the opportunity to be over dramatic and attention seeking and they bite, it’s like there main mission on this forum is to get posts closed

who was it over-reacting?

who was it over-reacting?

good point, but well…

@wrightyson – Yes, a different router will make all the difference for dodgy lines. There’s some good info over here – http://www.kitz.co.uk/index.htm

Certain modems are better at dealing with line noise. I’ve also taken out all of the extensions in my house and only have a DECT phone and the modem plugged into the master socket

Their hubs are shit and disabled if you want to do anything other than basic surfing. I have had no problems with the service so can’t comment on when things go wrong.

BT is getting slower and slower. I had faster 2MB speeds 7 years ago.

Every speed jump has been mostly successful. But local uptake has meant it has actually just got slower over time. I had 20MB for a few months after fault diagnosis at the exchange but it has now dropped back to slower than dial up.

Re complaints – Just follow their process and get it over with ASAP to get to the UK based team who will activate engineers.

I’m sure Virgin tech support can be just as bad but I’m moving over to them.

The new router the bt hub3 is great the old one was always dropping it’s signal, the new hasnt dropped once.

After all the problems with sky they eventually got open reach out to sort it! So now I have one master socket in the house with two “holes” one that is a normal phone line and the otherwhich is adsl. So no extensions no pre filters, just one cable into the socket for the phone and one cable into the other socket for the router. The engineer tested this at the socket and the line can achieve 5.9 if only at 4 in the morning!! I’m aware sky basically rent the equipment in the exchange and its then up to sky ( in lamens terms ) how many people they put on each server? ie the traffic shaping!! So I’m probably right in thinking BT will just be as choked up at the same time. The only other company with their own equipment in my exchange is orange. So which router is worth a try? Is it just a case of remove sky router plug in new one, or does it need to be configured or whatever??

If you want a better router – buy one. Surely you would not sign a long term contract on the basis of such a cheep freebe?

My weekday digs have a BT business connection in them, and due to some awesome incompetence on the part of them and my employer I got disconnected, then it took almost 3 months to reconnect. That time was roughly half BT and half my employer, but was entirely a pain in the area.

Once connected I had one instance of needing some tech support (not BTs fault, but my employers) and they arranged to call me at a suitable time. The chap on the phone was prompt, patient and incredibly helpful, which is more than I can say for the TalkTalk people I spoke to for my mum’s broadband.

BT are the worst bunch of **** **** ****** ***** ******* * fill in your own blanks they all apply! Plus they aren’t very helpful on the phone!

I moved from BT to o2, more reliable and much quicker, I would definitely recommend if they cover your area.

Worst internet service I have ever used. Slow speed and terrible customer service also like to try and charge you just to send a technician out to check why there there service is slow when it’s just them throttling the speeds.

Just go with virgin through there optical service and you will have fast and reliable service.

If you want a better router – buy one. Surely you would not sign a long term contract on the basis of such a cheep freebe?

Sky tie you in to their router. (It’s hackable, but that’s by the by.)

A better question might be “what’s wrong with the router?” I thought the same thing when I moved to Sky, but their supplied router does the job just fine. (I did have to have it replaced at one point, but that’s not a failing of “Sky routers,” just a faulty unit.)

I would avoid all contact with BT I possibly can and go for O2 broadband. if you are an O2 mobile customer already you will get it half price.

BT = Satan, as mentioned above. I have never had the displeasure of dealing with such an inept buch of retards in my life and would never deal with them if I didn’t have to due to their monopoly on the telecom industry.

C U Next Tues. The end

o2 here for broadband and phone (we don’t really use the phone but the packages do include free calls). We were on BT for phone but left after they consistently messed up the billing.

No complaints with o2 speeds, router or pricing (especially if an o2 mobile customer).

Thought as much regarding the sky router being part of the package. I think however the general gist of this thread is don’t join BT!

Left BT to go to o2.O2 Briiliant.BT well dont get me started!!!!Changed over phone and BB on 3rd may and they charged me for a full month of internet despite it all being disconnected and in a box under the bed.I get home last night to find a bill from BT wanting another months money for the internet!!!I have an email from them saying that from the 3rd may the phone line will be no more.I was worried as it did not mention anything about the BB so i phoned them.They said as my phone line was not connected then i would not have BB.but a few weeks later i receive another email telling me about some great deals becuase i am still a bt customer!!!!I have phoned them and they said i should receive a FINAL bill soon,but they could not tell me what it was going to be!AND they want to charge me for £30 for changing becuse i am still in a contract.I have had BT BB for about 4 years but was not aware i was in a contract anymore. 😯