So, my broadband stopped working a month ago and after having to wait a week for an engineer to come out, it turned out to be the router. That was replaced and all was well…until I’ve opened this months bill! There’s a £99 charge for a ‘home improvement service’. Nothing was explained to me about having to pay anything. Just been in touch with them and the best they can do is charge me £49.50 to cover the cost of the router instead! I’ve been with them for years and have told them I’m cancelling my account once I’ve got something else sorted out.

Would you change your service provider and just pay the bill minus £99? I’ve being thinking BT seems expensive compared to the other deals you see on TV and in the mail anyway.

Almost certainly.

Go to http://www.samknows.com, enter your postcode and phone number, look for an LLU provider there.

make a big fuss on their facebook, it might go viral with thousands of people liking and commenting on it?

tell them you don’t want an upgrade and that they shoudl reinstate the service that you had before the problems started at no additional charge.

Cheers for that. It’s saved me some time as it’s shown my only other options are Sky or TalkTalk (that’s Cumbria for you!).

Edit: The above was a reply to Cougar’s post.

Phil – 😆

Waswas – I spoke to a few differnet folk and they all said that’s the charge! I said I was going to leave, that nothing had been mentioned about paying for the engineer to come, that I thought the charge was ridiculous, etc. etc. They said that charging me for the router instead was the best they could do.

To be fair if your internet is prone to glitches (I know how Cumbria can be) you’re probably better off sticking with BT who ought to “warranty” your repair. BT have the best access to the Openzone guys who turn up and do the fixing.

Talktalk wouldn’t be my first choice, but they have absorbed a lot of “good” ISP’s (Nildram, Pipex) so they should have some people who know what they’re on about. They’d have to be very cheap in comparisson though. Check Plusnet – I dont’ think they came up on our search, but when we tried via their site the cheap service was available (sky actually were’nt)

BT have the best access to the Openzone guys who turn up and do the fixing.

Openreach. They have to treat all ISPs equally, so BT don’t get preference.

Talktalk wouldn’t be my first choice, but they have absorbed a lot of “good” ISP’s (Nildram, Pipex) so they should have some people who know what they’re on about. They’d have to be very cheap in comparisson though.

I have a vested interest, so won’t comment, save to say: it doesn’t matter who the ISP is if the router’s broken. You still need a new router.

Check Plusnet

Owned by BT, so just a BT brand – designed to compete with the value providers like TalkTalk.

You’re in Cumbria – the last mile and chunks of the backhaul are aluminium, not copper. Aluminium is fine for voice, but shit for broadband. Blame high copper prices when the telephone network was built up there (before the internet existed).

I’ve already chose TalkTalk. Less than half the price of what I was paying with BT, unlimited too, which I wasn’t before. I didn’t want to go with Sky as I wasn’t interested in anything to do with TV.

OMITN – Luckily I’m not far from the exchange so I get 9Mbps…TalkTalk reckon it’s now going to average 16Mbps, although I’ll believe it when I see it. Some of my mates in nearby villages only get 1-2Mbps though.

[sales spiel]

If you’ve gone for the TalkTalk Plus package, you can have TalkTalk TV for free.

[/sales spiel]

Just checked out that Sam Knows site and it appears he doesn’t know as much as he claims.

According to Sam I can only get BT at home, where as I know for a fact I can get BT, TalkTalk, PlusNet & Sky to name just a few.

Won’t be looking there when I decide to change….

Just found this thread so may be too late for you. I am in Cumbria and use the post office. Better call package than talk-talk and I have had no major issues since I have used them (4yrs?). Easy to deal with too cos of UK call centres.

I moved house and when I called BT they said they could connect me 5 weeks after I moved in.

I’m with virgin now, and very very happy with the product and service

BT are a complete waste of time. We moved and arranged their free transfer we were told it would be free, keep same number etc. Day of the phone to be working – nothing. Rang them up (via mobile) and was told that I needed to pay 60 GBP. Told them that I was not paying that and explained we were told it was a free service etc. They reduced it to 30GBP, I told them that if they wanted to keep my business then it has to be free. Since then I have been Virgin – Sky (made it clear I was not paying BT) – Virgin I will never go back to BT or ever pay them money. The problem is they have so many little departments that do not talk to each other (like the DVLA). I would change providers and bill them for the time lost, day off to wait for engineer etc when your router was down!

I’m not sure what to do regarding my bill…as I’ve just received it, BT are going to owe me some money back if I pay it (for the next couple of months line rental and broadband charges). They won’t want to give me any back if what I pay is £99 or £49.50 short. My new connection won’t be active until the end of the month either.

???

Keithd – I don’t use my landline for making calls.

£49.50 isn’t an outrageous price for a new router/modem. If the old one was broken you really had no choice to replace it and presumably they set it all up for you as part of the service so seems reasonably fair to me.

I’m in North Cumbria, currently with talktalk. Until recently I was getting around 2mb download, it’s dropped to 0.7 at best now. If they don’t sort it I’ll sack them off and try BT, no good being cheap if it doesn’t preform IMO.

tthew – I agree that £50 for a new modem isn’t bad. I don’t like it when I get an unexpected £100 on top of my phonebill though. Nothing was mentioned about money…I wouldn’t expect to pay a callout charge if any other service to my house stopped working. If the engineer had said there was going to be a charge I would have had the chance to decline (I know 4-5 folk with BT routers they don’t use).

Breadcrumb – are you in a town or a village?

Can I just say, other than needing to sort the ‘special offer’ unsolicited phone calls, I’ve been very happy with talktalk. Speed doubled because of llu, I had a line issue and they were very good, open reach engineer next day, there was no charge but even if there was it would have been £50, half BTs charge. Reasonably priced package too.

A village, just shy of 4km to the nearest exchange as the crow flys. Speedtest.net showed a new lowest record last night, 0.03mb download speed!

I believe the exchange is being upgraded to adsl2 so hopefully faster speeds are on the way. Talktalk are currently doing some line tests for me apparently.

I am in Cumbria and use the post office. Better call package than talk-talk and I have had no major issues since I have used them (4yrs?). Easy to deal with too cos of UK call centres.

Post office is run on the TalkTalk network….

I’m in North Cumbria, currently with talktalk. Until recently I was getting around 2mb download, it’s dropped to 0.7 at best now. If they don’t sort it I’ll sack them off and try BT, no good being cheap if it doesn’t preform IMO.

Contact customer services and tell them you want to go through to second line tech support. If they can’t fix it, tell them you want to speak directly to the Service Management Centre.

Plus net are great, yeah they’re owned by BT but they are run differently. A month or so ago we were told our router needed replacing – it didn’t. I called belkin and we fixed the problem over the phone. Half the time the person from the isp knows 0 about the router unless it’s made by them, and if its made for them and has their logo on it it’s going to be cheap crap 9 times out of 10. Alot of them know that their cheap crappy routers will need replacing as well, it’s just another way of making doe out of you. BT are robbers in every sense of the word, just like British Gas. Ditch them fast.

Well TalkTalk are sending an engineer round today. It felt like I was going round in circles on the phone, very frustrating.

What troubleshooting over the phone did you do before the engineer visit? Surely said troubleshooting would have identified that the router was at fault? Or it should have done.

I think if the fault escalates to a house/home visit and the fault is deemed to be your fault/responsibility* then you incur a cost/fee.

This would or should have been explained to you during your call and you would or should have accepted this verbally before said engineer appointment arranged.

That is the usual protocol were BT is concerned when I’ve raised faults. Thankfully it’s always been wiring outside of the house from my perspective.

*router, internal wiring, etc.

Half the time the person from the isp knows 0 about the router unless it’s made by them, and if its made for them and has their logo on it it’s going to be cheap crap 9 times out of 10.

Er, no ISP makes anything like that – they’re all made for them. Increasingly by Huawei….

Breadcrumb i hope it isnt a talk talk engineer,someone who will faff around try to connect a laptop, put a test phone in your socket and insist its a noisy line, by letting u listen to harmless ,open line background conditions.and then pass it to openreach ,who find no line noise because there is none there,and find your extn wiring is shaged.which tt engineer who wouldve had a weeks training missed.i see it a few times a week.
Also openreach charge your SP not you, alot of the SP stick admin charges in Addition,and can be tripple wot openreach charge

Our exchange went to 21CN in Sep,so I changed to Plusnet who said I could get up to 15Mbs,was getting 6.5 before.A week after the change the speed dropped to 9.5 and stayed there.Went through Plusnet’s problem checker,which recommends trying a different modem,and clearly states that if BT come out and it is a modem problem there will be a charge from BT of £60,so I bought a cheap modem and tried it out,it wasn’t the modem,but at least I’ve got backup.The problem turned out to be at the exchange,and Plusnet had to badger Openreach to get it fixed,but kept in touch throughout the procedure,and now speed back up to 14.5,very pleased with Plusnet service.

Wait so your router died and you didn’t have the technical knowledge to diagnose it yourself, so an Openreach technician came to your house and configured and installed a new one for you – £99 for that seems like a bargain to me?

When my router was dieing, but not dead, I told my ISP that either the give me a new on for free or I would switch providers as they would give me a free one and match my current deal.

It worked.

Going back a bit.

According to Sam I can only get BT at home, where as I know for a fact I can get BT, TalkTalk, PlusNet & Sky to name just a few.

The Samknows site lists available LLU providers, ie companies who use their own equipment to provision your broadband connection. Everyone else that you list there, TalkTalk, PlusNet etc are simply resellers of BT Wholesale (though they may have their own products as well). If you change providers to someone else not listed there, all that changes is who bills you, it’s still BT under the bonnet.

For instance, you say you can get Sky, but I’ll bet it’ll be the “Sky Connect” package rather than, say, ADSL Max, which is BT Wholesale resold. It’ll also be more expensive than their own options on their network, because BT take a cut. That’s the point of looking at Samknows, if you want to change providers because your service isn’t up to scratch then there’s little point in changing from BT to BT.

randomjeremy – Member

Wait so your router died and you didn’t have the technical knowledge to diagnose it yourself, so an Openreach technician came to your house and configured and installed a new one for you – £99 for that seems like a bargain to me?
BT first told me it was a problem with the line and when I checked the fault from another line it was supposed to be the exchange. If I’d know it was the router I would have replaced it myself. All this talk of configuring things too, you just plug the BT router in and it sorts itself out.

When the BT engineer had sorted things out he asked me to do a speedtest and I was happy that it was 1Mbps faster than before (now 9Mpbs)…I’ve just received my welcome pack from TalkTalk and they reckon this is the slowest speed my line can handle!!! I should be getting between 16-19Mbps next week. 🙂

sparkyrhino
Breadcrumb i hope it isnt a talk talk engineer,someone who will faff around try to connect a laptop, put a test phone in your socket and insist its a noisy line, by letting u listen to harmless ,open line background conditions.and then pass it to openreach ,who find no line noise because there is none there,and find your extn wiring is shaged.which tt engineer who wouldve had a weeks training missed.i see it a few times a week.
Also openreach charge your SP not you, alot of the SP stick admin charges in Addition,and can be tripple wot openreach charge

I hope its an Open Reach engineer but I should find out soon.

Talktalk performed the line test three times from there end, lines ok apparently. I had to perform 3 speed tests at least 3 hours apart and send the results to TalkTalk to escalate the matter. The last technician I spoke to said it looked like portal didn’t look correct? Or maybe it was something else, I was lost in technical jargon.
I was informed if its something my end the cost would be £50, which I can live with. The router is only about 6 weeks old and is plugged into the master socket.

A bit of digging around has shown my exchange is upgrading to ADSL2 and goes live end of the month, off chance they’ve buggered it up there?

Er, no ISP makes anything like that – they’re all made for them. Increasingly by Huawei….

I said ‘Made for them’ with their logo on.

CEO Email addresses

Google is your friend!

I ditched BT last year after paying for a landline for 3 months which never worked. I refused to pay my bill. They tried to make me, I emailed their CEO who, to be fair, replied 11am on a Saturday morning with a ‘this is appalling, I’ll get someone onto it straight away’
His exec complaints team did get onto it. I still had to negotiate my way out of the contract they’d failed to deliver on but it got me out of the relationship.

I would have thought they’re obligated to tell you in advance of any fees that will be charged – maybe you should ask them for a copy of those communications as evidence…

I had to have an engineer out a while ago – they made it pretty clear that if the fault was with my equipment after the junction box or something I had done wrong then it was a £99 fee, but if it was a line fault then it was free.

I had to have an engineer out a while ago – they made it pretty clear that if the fault was with my equipment after the junction box or something I had done wrong then it was a £99 fee, but if it was a line fault then it was free.

I remember them saying that to me. I told them all I’d done was plug the router in and how was I, not being a trained telecommunications engineer, supposed to know if the lines inside my house were knackered, and therefore avoid a punitive charge… struck me as taking advantage of customers’ lack of being to do anything about it, that one…

Lines of demarcation, innit. That’s what the master socket is for. You wouldn’t expect your electricity supplier to come and fix a faulty power socket. As you’re not a trained telecommunications / electricity expert, you get someone in who is.

It’s a bloody pain though when there’s a problem, knowing where to start. I had this with a customer recently, almost certainly a line fault but the ISP refusing to deal with it in case it was an internal issue. Grr.

Well the TalkTalk engineer(contractor) has just left.

Said my phone line was one of the clearest he’s heard. My profile was set incorrectly, and bumped it back up. He said it looks like TalkTalk will charge me the £50 even though the fault is not my fault. Put a new facia on the master socket and a new router “FOC”.

I’ll ring TalkTalk at some point to try find out how I can be charged when it wasn’t a fault at my end.

Back upto 2mb download speeds now.

My profile was set incorrectly, and bumped it back up. He said it looks like TalkTalk will charge me the £50 even though the fault is not my fault. Put a new facia on the master socket and a new router “FOC”.

So there was nothing wrong with the router? Exactly what happened to us. BT are criminals. They set our broadband incorrectly but what was more odd is how it started fine – we never touched it, it just stopped working, as if they hit a kill switch and broke it intentionally to try and sell us a new router and charge us the call out fee. /rant