Nope. Sky said it was something about not having the right equipment at the exchange to allow the automated transfer of provider. Openreach stuck FTTP in here as well, which my limited understanding now suggests will also be a barrier to getting moved over.

I think we’re paying the thick end of £80 a month for BT TV, BB and land line which is, frankly, bloody mental. My OH likes MotoGP on BT Sport, which is going up another few quid a month soon.

What’s the cheapest way to get decent BB and a land line? We don’t have cable in this neck of the woods.

For those in the know, Zen and ‘Andrews and Arnold’ are what you would hope for.

I’m with Zen for BB (fttc) and LL and have been for years, they are not expensive for what you get. No mucking around with throttling, U.K. call centres etc. people with a brain at the end of the phone. Ticks all my boxes.

Good luck.

So I’ve had a letter from BT putting their prices up. Obviously I’m seeing this as an opportunity to kick them into touch early. Has anyone done similar?

We did this 5 days ago following the same letter. Got Virgin installed within 4 days. BT was giving us 2mb and less most days, our new Virgin connection is 110mb or more. For LESS than we paid BT. !!!!!

We moved from Southampton to Islington, London, and brought our existing connection with us. The BT infrastructure in the building is old and not fit for purpose. We didn’t know this prior to moving of course. We were getting crazy packet loss and stupidly low speeds for £40ish a month. Even the “estimated” speed of 12mb was laughable, but we were regularly in the 0.Xmb range according to BT’s own speedchecker.

5 months of being on the phone to BT every night, engineers rounds, being lied to by incompetent customer service operators, going to the ombudsman, etc. BT would not budge and flatly told us our internet connection was “fine” whilst i’m looking at a screen that say 0.25mb and 400ms ping. They wanted £300 odd quid to cancel the contract, cheeky sods.

Interestingly, our building has modern Virgin Media fibre connection, despite BT’s being ancient.

We phoned them up the MINUTE that price increase letter came through. Good riddance, never again. They’ve lost my custom for life due to the way they handled it all.

As soon as you mention the price increase letter the cancelations team give you no hassle and do the job quickly.

I’m still pretty happy with BT, prices may be going up, but they’re upgrading my TV box for free and last year upgraded my broadband for free so i’m getting 17Mb without fibre.

Service is fine at the moment – getting 50mbps. My problem is the memory of their atrocious customer service last year, and the knowledge that if anything does go wrong, I’ll have to go through it all again.

Zen looks appealing.

The price rise effectively ends your contract if you’re tied, as I was. So I called the BT retention team and got a £15 discount.

I’ve just done that as well ^

So I’ve had a letter from BT putting their prices up. Obviously I’m seeing this as an opportunity to kick them into touch early. Has anyone done similar?

I did this about 18 months ago and switched to Vodafone. Very similar service at less than half the price of BT.

still waiting on a refund that was promised for a freeview aerial
installation that was part of the deal (guy arrives, sucks teeth and
says – 2 man job, you’ll need to rebook and that’ll be £120 on top
of the £60 already paid for the installation) I think my wife said
something like “you can leave now … ” !!!

3 occasions of 2 hours or more talking to “Graham” and “Michael” from
somewhere on the sub-continent. If I could dump them I would. Complete
shower of sh1t3. The only reliable service I have is the landline 🙁

btw – what’s the exec’s email address – I may need that 🙂

worst company I have ever dealt with. They eventually put a derogatory on my credit report for a bill that I had spoke to them 4 times about, and every time they agreed I didn’t have to pay it.
When I called they agreed again that it was a bill I didn’t have to pay and said they would talk to the department that deal with credit report companies but it would take 21 days to do. I waited about 6 weeks and checked again and the derogatory was still there. Had to phone experian and dispute it, they tried to contact bt but they never got any reply so after 2 months they just removed it

I think we’re paying the thick end of £80 a month for BT TV, BB and land line which is, frankly, bloody mental.

That sounds alot. I’m paying £29 for line rental and fast fibre internet, plus £5 for sport + calls.

Little update. Just called BT to see if there was any room for maneouvre on their price increases. Got transferred to their ‘You’ve got Fibre to the Home, so basically you’re f*****.’ team, who asked me if anyone else was prepared to offer me fibre, then, presumably with a smile, asked me that they were happy to let me leave if that’s what I wanted… 🙂

Blatant abuse of a monopoly position. If I’d known that the only way I was going to get fibre would tie me into BT forever, I’d have stuck with ADSL.

Probably worth paying a tenner a month more for Zen. Anyone had any issues, good or bad with them?

And lo and behold, a day after I have dealings with their tech support department, in comes the scam call from ‘British telecom’ again. Their call centre must be leakier than a sieve and supplying recent contacts to the scammers.

We live in a row of five houses. Four of which are listed as “fibre available” – except ours. We’re in a fibre black hole. Despite being on the same bit of string to the same exchange.

Openreach forgot to add us to the fibre database. So we’re screwed for that one.

In a “share you telecomms experience” moment, I’ve had;

Fairly reasonable service from Sky, UK call centres.
Fairly reasonable service from EE, UK & Indian call centres.

Utter gash service from Vodafone. UK call centres.

Talk Talk, Jesus, where do I start? “I’ve run a test and your line is working fine sir”. “can you explain why I have no dial tone and no internet then?” “no”

BT, well, my favourite problem with them was when I received about six different bills for a phone I had never used, on account of only just moving into the flat and not actually having a phone line there. All different accounts, totalling around £2k. Service at other times has been far better, even going so far as to get a rating of utter, utter balls.

Go on, do yourself a favour and get rid of them.

I used Zen quite alot of years ago and they were fine/perfect. The one month contracts should tell you all you need to know.