Best internet provider?

Allen

Allen

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I'm having problems with BT.
After three days of phone calls they have finally agreed to send an engineer to sort out my faulty phone line.
First I was told "yes there's a fault, we'll send an engineer tomorrow ".
No engineer arrived.
Next day..."there isn't a fault, We'll send you a new modem at a cost of £109".
I refused the kind offer.
Today, they finally agreed there is a fault and an engineer is coming on Tuesday.

In the meantime I discovered I'm paying well over the odds compared to other providers. I'm paying £45 per month.

So...advice please on the best alternative.
 
We've done away with broadband/landline and just gone with 3 mobile 100gb a month, and you can tether it all, best thing we ever did.
 
Talk talk is the cheapest on survays but total crap like bt when things go wrong,as for mobile forget it as fiddly at best and not always able to connect never mind battery life.
 
I've had problems with my line and router before (they replaced it free of charge) but never with BT to be honest... no-one's customer service is perfect and there are far worse imho.

As for the price, yes you're paying far too much Allen... sounds like you might be 'out of contract'. You have to be proactive these days or you stay on everyone's standard tariffs - applies to utilities, insurance, breakdown, everything! Every year you need to call them and renegotiate or say you'll go elsewhere. I've got ulimited download fast fibre broadband, caller ID, basic BT TV and my mobile phone with unlimited free calls calls and texts and plenty of data, all for £36 a month.

I think a good place to start for comparisons is the Money Saving Expert website, where there'll be info about the latest offers too.
 
For a communications company British Teleconfusion/Open Breach has an appalling lack of ability to communicate with customers. We only stick with them because of BT Wifi which we make good use of.
 
I moved to BT last November after 18 months with a dreadful service from another provider that took ages to contact and a service that failed nearly every day (and I do mean nearly EVERY DAY).
BT has been very reliable as far as I am concerned in the various times I am been with them for BB. I choose them again in November for the BT Fon/Wifi feature.
Cost wise, as have been said, you need to shop around and be prepared to play hardball. I took the £29.99 offer for their fastest Unlimited Fibre Option, but went through a cashback site (£120) and a special £90 pre-loaded credit card BT direct intro offer, so effective total is just over £18 a month for 18 months.
In 18 months, when the "New Customer" offer ends, no doubt will negotiate another deal or move again (when businesses offer new customers better deals than existing ones, it means they don't really care seriously about customer loyalty, so why should the customers?)
 
Well, the engineer turned up today (a day early) whilst I was at the hospital.
Another phone call, on hold for 30 minutes, and they are coming tomorrow.
Once the line is sorted I shall be moving.

Any one tried Plusnet?
They have a two year contract including line rental at just £18-99 a month on special offer.
 
I changed provider last year from TalkTalk (abysmally slow speeds and appallingly bad customer service from helpline in India) and went to Virgin. I noticed a Virgin engineer working across the road and asked him when we would get fibre for better speeds as we were currently getting only 3meg at best. He told me fibre was available already and had been for a year or so “can I get HQ to talk to you?”

I gave him my details and waited and waited and waited, ooh must have been a good hour or so ?.

I spoke to a delightful English lass, very useful to me my hearing is very poor and I don’t do accents very well, and I agreed to change from TT to V going down from £49pm to £29. Added to that I’ve got a V sim only pay monthly deal of 2000 minutes, 5000 texts and 8gb data for just £5 per month. An absolute steal I’m very delighted.

Oh, and our speed went from 3ish up to a guaranteed 50, in practice, because I check it now and again, it’s averaging 54meg

I am a number one fan of Virgin.
 
I was with BT for a long time until my daughter in law showed me who she was using and the cost. Either BT were throttling my line or their router was faulty.

Nervously I moved to EE, received a fibre-optic line and router that is superb, a link that shows in real time everything about my system and it's operating speeds, and a bill that is half of that previously paid.

After a few months I lost net connection. EE tested it immediately from their offices, confirmed that it was the fault of Open Reach who had knocked my line off by mistake, and had an engineer correct it the next day.

I'm staying with a reliable provider who listens, solves issues promptly, and charges less. Guess what, BT own EE......... :)
 
Allen said:
Well, the engineer turned up today (a day early) whilst I was at the hospital.
Another phone call, on hold for 30 minutes, and they are coming tomorrow.
Once the line is sorted I shall be moving.

Any one tried Plusnet?
They have a two year contract including line rental at just £18-99 a month on special offer.
Click to expand...

Plusnet is owned by BT !!
 
I know a lot of these companies share ownership but they tend not to share customer service centres. I think that's where they tend to thrive or fail in general... unless you've got a reliable, trouble-free line and can just choose by cost. Until we got fibre broadband here, my Internet was always extremely iffy, often down to half a meg! I think they used inferior cable to serve houses along my road and I got a bad one. Fibre has cured all and is ace! (y)
 
When Open Reach came to repair an outside line fault, I asked him about other providers and was told BT get priority line repairs over the rest.
 
Edina said:
When Open Reach came to repair an outside line fault, I asked him about other providers and was told BT get priority line repairs over the rest.
Click to expand...
I'm certain you were told this. I'm just as certain that it is utterly untrue.
BT used to have a campaign trying to stop their staff telling these lies, because the Competition Commission and OFTEL were looking askance at such practices.
When I was working there, we were told that saying that sort of thing would lead to instant dismassal (though I didn't work for BT, so that was moot).
 
We are on plusnet and yes it is a fully owned subsidiary of British Telecon, but we have been with them for 4 + years and never had a problem (yet!!) £34 a month gets us 24-7 landline / internet (we use the telephone rather that the mobile ones) plus calls to mobile telephones and line rental. One has to be on the ball though at or near the contract end and check again for their best deals
 
As a bit of a postscript to this, I've just renegotiated my phone, broadband and mobile contract with BT. It's now £1 cheaper per month overall - £3 less on the phone/broadband costs but more on the mobile side because I've chosen to up the data to 4GB to save me keep buying data sims for other devices. Plus they're going to send me a pre-loaded shopping card worth £50 to spend anywhere, on anything I want! I'm quite happy with that day's work (y) If you're a BT customer, login online and take a look at their personalised January offers.
 
We've been with virgin for a few years now it's broadband is brilliant a lot faster than the service we had previously with sky I believe virgin is faster than any other broadband that use bt system
 
Steveandjulie said:
We've been with virgin for a few years now it's broadband is brilliant a lot faster than the service we had previously with sky I believe virgin is faster than any other broadband that use bt system
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In all honesty, a physical line can only stream data to you at the maximum speed that line is capable of. The only way you might notice a difference between providers is if one provider 'governs' down the speed it lets you use and another doesn't... plus contention ratio, sharing, etc. It's likely Sky was dragging you back if you're still on the same physical wiring and getting faster streaming from Virgin. Still makes it a better provider in my view though :)(y)
 
Minisorella said:
In all honesty, a physical line can only stream data to you at the maximum speed that line is capable of. The only way you might notice a difference between providers is if one provider 'governs' down the speed it lets you use and another doesn't... plus contention ratio, sharing, etc. It's likely Sky was dragging you back if you're still on the same physical wiring and getting faster streaming from Virgin. Still makes it a better provider in my view though :)(y)
Click to expand...
I thought that virgin used their own cable network and not bt like other providers that's why it's so much faster
 
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