Warning BT Broadband users!

sWiZzLe

sWiZzLe

sWiZzLe

Associate
Joined
19 Oct 2002
Posts
1,942
Location
Maidenhead
If there some of you out there stupid enough to still be using BT (like me), I just thought id make you aware of a recent contract scam they tried to pull on us ... well its still in progress actually, i ordered o2 yesterday and if they try to bill us we'll go straight to Ofcom!

Last month we received an email from them, thanking us for 'our new order'. It said you line will be activated on April 4th etc etc. So we replied to them asking what this was all about and they replied to us explaining that is was our new contract that was applied for on the 3rd of April at 9.30am. We were like... what the hell :confused: ... as we hadn't ordered anything, so stupidly we ignored it thinking it was a mistake.

Last couple of weeks we've had the slowest connection ever, so this weekend i decided to inquire about canceling BT Broadband and the woman i spoke told me: It will cost £45 for the disconnection fee and £23 a month for the next 12 months of your contract :eek: But our current "12 month" contract started on the 21st May 2007, so how earth do you figure that our new contract starts on April 4th 2008 :confused:

Basically they tried to claim that we had made a new order at 9.30am on the 3rd April and that we had received a call from them confirming our order - which we hadn't!
So off they went to look for this phone conversation to prove to us that this agreement had taken place ... but to our relief, couldn't!

Why on earth would we want to have 2 contracts running at the same time and end up paying twice :confused:

Cheeky buggers!
 
sWiZzLe, that sounds similar to the time I received my 'final bill' from BT, having switched to VM the previous month. Everything was as it should be, except for a charge under the heading 'miscellaneous' which was for £360 :eek: It didn't seem as suspect as your scenario though...we didn't receive any email or anything suggesting a new contract has been started. One simple phonecall and the matter was resolved.
 
I spoke to about 8 different people on Sunday, being passed from person to person till finally i was told that there had been no such telephone conversation to confirm our new contract and he had no idea how it had happened ... hmm sure you didnt! He said he would have to send this problem to the 'offline' department and that they would call us back today - they didn't

I called them back earlier to get my Mac code again because on Sunday they gave me an invalid one :mad:, and the woman i spoke to on Sunday (a rather nasty aggressive cow!) said ... 'You do realise you are on a contract till next year don't you?'

So i had a good shout at her, 'Yes, we appear to have contract until next year, although our current contract does not end for 8 days! A contract that we have no knowledge about, which you conned us into! Now can i please have my ******* Mac code!!

tim80bwi said:
sWiZzLe, that sounds similar to the time I received my 'final bill' from BT, having switched to VM the previous month. Everything was as it should be, except for a charge under the heading 'miscellaneous' which was for £360 :eek: It didn't seem as suspect as your scenario though...we didn't receive any email or anything suggesting a new contract has been started. One simple phonecall and the matter was resolved.
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Hmmm, it wouldn't surprise me if they try that on us :(
 
I had 2 good years with bt when the are area we used to live in just got adsl, superb speeds never had any problems and at that time could dl what you wanted, it seems to me they gone down the tube now.
 
Looking at the Ofcom site it seems i have to make a formal complaint to BT (havent found how to do that yet), and then contact the Alternative Dispute Resolution ....

Watchdog were actually the first people that popped into my head regarding this, so i may try to contact them later.

I've been with BT broadband since the ADSL pre-order days, but recently I've got the impression... well since BT Vision came out that, in the evenings and weekends the bandwidth priority has been directed their way meaning that the rest of us not on bt vision suffer - i may be totally wrong there, but it would explain my painfully slow speeds :(
 
sWiZzLe said:
I've been with BT broadband since the ADSL pre-order days, but recently I've got the impression... well since BT Vision came out that, in the evenings and weekends the bandwidth priority has been directed their way meaning that the rest of us not on bt vision suffer - i may be totally wrong there, but it would explain my painfully slow speeds :(
Click to expand...

BT Vision VOD traffic is given priority on the network.
 
Immsy said:
BT Vision VOD traffic is given priority on the network.
Click to expand...
You sure about that? ... Bar Stewards! :mad:

Well, looks like o2 will be activated on the 20th - excellent timing! Looking forward to some decent speeds and maybe even the ability to play some TF2 or CSS for the first time in months :)
 
Yeah I have read it on the BT Vision site somewhere. Think about it, it wouldnt be much good if you were watching something on demand over the net with lag would it :)
 
Its funny, but I was with BT for yonks! - since the first time they started providing internet access, I was using them ( BBS's before that of course ) and then I went to Broadband with them, being one of the very first Broadband users in my area, and I stuck with them until only about 3 years or so ago, and not once did I have a single complaint about them,. not once did I have a single issue and I had 100% perfect internet with no lags or dropouts or anything of the sort!- my life with BT was, for want of a better word, just perfect.

I then suddenly got a bill completely out of the blue stating that I had gone over my cap every month since October ( It was April by now ) and that I was being charged a quid for every 1MB over the cap.. or somethign as silly, but for october I had gone £130 over, for November, £150 and Dec, Jan and Feb were all around the £120 to £170 mark.

On tryign to find out WTF was up, they told me that I either cough up or go elsewhere!

It just so happened that the next day, XLN were at my shop, and they gave me an offer I went for and I am glad I did... I promptly told BT to F... Well, I said I will go elsewhere anyway and I have been with XLN for the last 3 or so years and not once have I had even the slightest hiccup with them either!!! - Plus with XLN if I have an issue, I get to talk to an emglish speaking person. I have nothign against indians, but I dont thinks its right to be charged as much as you do to be talked down to some **** who is reading his answers from a computer screen and who clearly does not truly know what they are talkign about and they still treat you like dirt.

I did have one issue about 6 or 7 months ago where I was unablke to access my emails and I phoned them up, they then said that they will have a look and phone me back... in under 10 minutes I had a call where this guy who knew exactly what was going on, asked if I had received an EMail from them on the 15th ( Not sure of the true date, thats just for an example ) where I had a peek and yes I had, but I assumed it was my bill so I ignored it, and it said quite clearly that my POP info was going to need to be changed over on the 18th ( Another made up date ) and it gave me full instructions etc... The guy said that I should follow this and I can EMail him ( He gave me his addy ) to verify it works and if not, then he will phone me back in half an hour!!!

We emails each other a couple of times and this verified that I had indeed made the mistake of not reading the previous emails and he still phoned me back just because it was polite!!!

I mean come on!!!

Oh, and no, I did not get charged for that, its all part of the service.

--

So, overall, I have to say that I have been lucky ... Perhaps very lucky, but I have never had to go withotu the internet for more than a few hours and even then, its often been my own issues!!!

I mean, even when I changed over from BT to XLN, I was still connected by BT and I only realised abotu 2 months later, when I reset the PC for some reason and it would not connect??? - I had a look at my dailup info ( Yes, it was on a USB Modem ) and I saw it was BT still, so I tried the XLN info for the first time and I was on in 2 minutes! - Sweet.
 
Yeah ive been quite lucky-ish with BT, been with them since the days of Wireplay ... mmm the good old days of Half-Life DM and wireplay :p

But i get the feeling nowadays like so many other companies, BT is so interested in getting new customers and keeping 'them' happy with new services like BT Vision that they just sweep they're oldest customers to one side ... they offer all these 'special offers' to new customers, whilst old faithful customers get nothing :(
Just before i went to Rwanda in 2005 i heard that BT were upgrading lines to 8mb .... 2 years later i returned to discover that we were still on 4mb with Total Broadband option 4, and option 4 had not existed for about a year and a half :eek: It had now become option 3 and cost less :mad:
But we're 'old' customers, we don't mind being ripped off for a year and a half do we :rolleyes:

Anyway, BT have removed this recent error saying that it wasn't a new contract, just an update regarding a drop in cost ... yeah of course it was, why did i have an argument with that COW about a new contract then!?

Gaaagh BT!! ..... and don't get me started with their Tech Support.... i hear o2's support are Scots, what a relief :)
 
If you were getting 4Mbps, you were already on up to 8Mbps. Most ISPs do the same with new tiers though - they expect you to watch out for them changing and move yourself.
 
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