BT Infinity 2 - misleading 'guarantee'

hughtrimble · 4 Oct 2016 at 13:59

Afternoon,

A few weeks ago I upgraded to BT Infinity 2, with download speeds estimated at, and I quote:

"...between 66Mb and 80Mb...The minimum guaranteed speed you can expect from your BT Infinity will be 57Mb."

It's been consistently hovering around the 44Mbps mark since the upgrade, and today a BT Openreach engineer visited to replace some things to try and meet the minimum guaranteed speed, but he noted the work he'd just performed had had no effect, and he said, and I quote:

"There is no way that speeds of 60-80 Mbps can be achieved on the infrastructure here. In this area we only have to deliver around 40 Mbps to BT."

That sounds like BT are knowingly guaranteeing a minimum download speed that is not AT ALL POSSIBLE on the infrastrucutre in the area?

TaKeN · 4 Oct 2016 at 14:02

Complain and ask for a second engineer to visit.

bremen1874 · 4 Oct 2016 at 14:14

Or get yourself downgraded to Infinity 1.

Is a new area for VDSL? From what I've seen initial estimates can be a bit wild. They settle down once they start getting people connected and see what the actual connection speeds are.

hughtrimble · 4 Oct 2016 at 14:16

TaKeN said:
Complain and ask for a second engineer to visit.

Complaint lodged, but if this engineer speaketh the truth, then BT are knowingly selling people broadband packages that BT cannot possibly provide.

It's like some overclocking company saying 'We guarantee you can get 5 GHz' but the CPU's OEM is providing CPUs that can't physically go any higher than 4 GHz...

hughtrimble · 4 Oct 2016 at 14:19

bremen1874 said:
Or get yourself downgraded to Infinity 1.

Is a new area for VDSL? From what I've seen initial estimates can be a bit wild. They settle down once they start getting people connected and see what the actual connection speeds are.

Thanks for this bremen. I've no idea how to check whether it's new to VDSL - any pointers?

Edit: It's BT Infinity, so (I assume) FTTC

On Holiday · 4 Oct 2016 at 14:21

If you downgrade to Infinity 1 then you'll want to make sure you aren't restricted, i.e. 25GB Monthly.

That was my mistake when signing up, I can only get 16Mbps on Infinity so went for 1, however quickly used 40GB in a couple of days.

hughtrimble · 4 Oct 2016 at 14:23

Thank you Plenty O'Toole - definitely would need to be unlimited (even though it's not truly unlimited!).

holdin09 · 4 Oct 2016 at 22:44

hughtrimble said:
Thank you Plenty O'Toole - definitely would need to be unlimited (even though it's not truly unlimited!).

How isn't it truly unlimited? I'm on infinity 2 and never ran in to any problems.

Caged · 4 Oct 2016 at 22:52

So you were given a guaranteed minimum speed and you can't get that, not sure what the issue is here. You won't be held to your contract.

hughtrimble · 5 Oct 2016 at 08:39

holdin09 said:
How isn't it truly unlimited? I'm on infinity 2 and never ran in to any problems.

They have a fair usage policy

Chonky · 5 Oct 2016 at 09:20

Edit - Removed and put in the proper thread

MissChief · 5 Oct 2016 at 10:37

If they can't give you the speed they estimated then you have the right to cancel without penalty.

KIA · 5 Oct 2016 at 18:36

hughtrimble said:
They have a fair usage policy

No.

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10495/~/bt-broadband-usage-policy
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/47278/c/346

holdin09 · 5 Oct 2016 at 20:56

hughtrimble said:
They have a fair usage policy

I have used several 100GB's in the past and never had any slow downs so they don't have any fair usage policy.

hughtrimble · 5 Oct 2016 at 21:05

holdin09 said:
I have used several 100GB's in the past and never had any slow downs so they don't have any fair usage policy.

KIA said:
No.

http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/10495/~/bt-broadband-usage-policy
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/47278/c/346

That's not what they said on the phone. They stated using home broadband for business-type use (however they define that) would be outside of their fair usage policy.

I'd therefore say that they have a fair usage policy. Unless the rep was wrong, which is of course possible.

Kol · 5 Oct 2016 at 21:12

What's business use got to do with anything? Business use is not in the 'fair use policy' it's just strictly against their terms and quite rightly. It's a consumer agreement.

hughtrimble · 5 Oct 2016 at 21:16

Kol said:
What's business use got to do with anything?

As they define what they mean by that, a non-business heavy user could fall under their definition, say if it's determined by downloading XGB within a certain time period.

This won't affect me, but it may affect some.

Caged · 5 Oct 2016 at 22:49

I would take what's written down on the website over what someone on the phone said.

The days of harsh traffic throttling seems to be behind us unless you use Virgin Media - if you have an unlimited FTTC connection then you would have to be a ridiculously heavy user to be asked to leave the service.

MissChief · 5 Oct 2016 at 22:58

As said, 'usage policy' and 'domestic use' are different things. Someone using home broadband for their business is generally accepted by domestic suppliers if that is just emails to and from an office etc but doesn't mean they get any sort of priority response if their broadband goes down.

Gammawolf · 6 Oct 2016 at 11:57

hughtrimble said:
As they define what they mean by that, a non-business heavy user could fall under their definition, say if it's determined by downloading XGB within a certain time period.

This won't affect me, but it may affect some.

Hasn't affected me, usually going through about 500GB a month and a couple times went through close to 1TB. They scrapped that FUP and throttling junk years ago. IIRC it was set to 300GB in the early days, after that you'd get traffic shaped for certain protocols.