BT/ Openreach.

[KentColin]

My moan today is being promised an appointment by BT and yet once again the engineer doesn't turn up. It's so frustrating.  Aaaaagh !!

[Malc1]

Simply a captive to their whims and foibles

Malc 

[RONNIE W HODGEKINSON]

2 hours ago, KentColin said:

My moan today is being promised an appointment by BT and yet once again the engineer doesn't turn up. It's so frustrating.  Aaaaagh !!

Colin.. Are you not due some compensation if they don,t keep there appointments...Left BT many years ago after being with them a Long time and they charged me £78 for leaving.. They also charged me for paying there bill every quarter By Cash Would NEVER go back to BT Now with Sky And there Service and Price has been Really Competitive...

[Robertdt]

Yes Ronnie you right they are legally bound to compensate you for not turning up or cancelling a late appointment. I ended up getting nearly 18 months free broadband and line rental from Virgin media as they kept not showing up to dig a hole in the road and install my fibre broadband. Better still i never had to chase them up for it, they just emailed me with my re-calculated bill.

Rob

[Boomer54]

I have been with just about every provider over the years. They all have sucked to a greater ,or lesser degree. Until I changed over to Zen. At the time it was a bit more expensive, but actually now since they don't hike mid contract and the others do they have become no more costly than anyone else. However, I have never had a provider like Zen who have basically not dropped the ball even once. They were on it right from the opening and activation of the contract and have stayed that way. No wait on a call, although I have only ever called them twice. I guess there is a reason they have been voted best provider 20 years in succession. Frankly, if they hike 15% now I would stay with them. it's peanuts for the better service.

[Linas.P]

As above - I don't believe there are any "good" or "bad" providers... it is just how much they can get away with. Been with BT, with O2, with TalkTalk, with Sky... and currently with Hyperoptic. If anything in terms of customer service the TalkTalk was best, but that is ignoring the fact that I probably had to call them the most... so their product was kind of shaite. Now I am with Hyperoptic, not because their customer service is good, but only because they are the only ones that provide 1000Mbps downloads/uploads... and they know it! Meaning they are dismissive of any issues whatsoever.

For example in summer they had scheduled like 4 maintenance windows... "2 hours between 8AM and 8PM" in middle of the working day. Meaning that if you are working from home, you internet may disconnect at literally any time for 2 hours Each time I send them polite e-mail stating that "best practice" would be to schedule the work in "more suitable" time like maybe "1AM to 5AM?" and if they have to do it during the day, then they should have tighter window for maintenance and shorter downtime  e.g. "15 minutes between 10AM and 11AM". Also I pointed out that if anything were to happen, their timing meant that they would impact literally every users they have. Obviously that got ignored. First time was alright - maybe 10 minutes downtime at 10AM, second time similar... maybe 20-30min at 10AM... third time they disconnected the internet at 9:10 and it didn't work until 8PM... "they run into unpredictable issues outside of their control"... And that was kind of enough for me... so complain got escalated and they ended-up refunding £100 "as good will measure" and sending and apology (which is kind of mild and I found Ofcom lacking balls in this case, which wasn't entirely unpredictable).

Now sure - I would be long gone considering rather awful service, but I know that they know that I know that everyone knows that my next best option is typical Openreach bunch with woefully obsolete FTTC connection, which is £20 more expensive and offer 86/20Mbps.

I have heard same story about Virgin fibre (500Mbps) in nearby apartment, where they are also sole provider of decent internet. 

So it seems they are only as nice as they have to be... 

[KentColin]

I've spoken to BT about an engineer not turning up today and was told that an appointment had not been " generated  "  despite being told last week last week that an engineer would be with us today between 1000 and 1200. I asked about compensation and he said that as no appointment existed , therefore no compensation can be paid. 

[PRT68]

Where do I start. 18 months ago, my neighbour was having building work, and a digger snapped my line from the pole to the eaves to our bungalow. Called BT to report and explained fully what happened. 

No problem, we'll send an engineer to replace, but there'll be a charge and my neighbour was prepared to pay. 

Engineer turned up and said he couldn't do anything as it was a broken cable, and he'd been sent to repair an internal fault! He called the office in front of me, explained the situation, and even sent a photo of the cable dangling from the pole!!

Another appointment set up, and nobody turned up.

Many calls, and many appointments booked until somebody actually turned up 4 weeks later.

Obviously, during this time, we had no Internet, and I was using my mobile to call them, to find out what was going on, and was never called back.

As you can imagine, I was tearing my hair out at this time. 

Now, 6 months previous to this, I was offered a new free digital home phone as part of their initiative to get the whole country digital. This has caused many problems for people reliant on a cable landline as you may recall from reports in the Press.

When we were finally reconnected, I had many voice mail messages on this phone, from guess who!!!! 

BT/Openreach trying to reorganise engineer appointments. You really couldn't make it up.!!!!!

They did give me 3 months Internet charge compensation, and didn't charge for the broken cable. 

[Malc1]

I had perhaps wrongfully assumed the original Post referred to physical damage whatever the responsibility of BT/ OpenReach to repair ……. for ALL internet providers 

However …… I’ve used TalkTalk for a verrryyy long time and been ok usually ……. Yes I’m peed off with the annual greedy uplift in price BUT that’s more or less the general greed of them all …… bar ZEN it might seem ???
 

I’ve never before heard of Zen but I’ll explore them for my end of contract August 24 !

NOW CRUISE Ship Wi-Fi is absolute 100% RUBBISH 24/7 and that peeees me off hugely trying to run my business on a cruise ……. £25 a day for 100% crap sadly 

BUT I’m understanding they’re moving on to Starlink Starburst Stardust or summat like that which I’m told is Elon Musk ……. so then super dooper speed and reliability on the next cruise to somewhere …… NOT the Moon for sure 😂

Thinking Sky new non-box / non-aerial outta the ether firing beams downwards provision might be useful …… anyone using that ? 

Malc 

 

[First_Lexus]

I too have never heard of Zen, but according to their website checker they don’t cover this part of Berkshire near Reading. Very odd!

I’ve been with Sky for a few years and have always found them exceptional, really impressive. When my internet router broke earlier in the year they did a rapid assessment and then sent a replacement by courier. Issue reported about 19.00 on a Saturday evening, replacement router delivered on Sunday.

Tbh I never had an issue with BT or TalkTalk (I was with both over the years). The only issue I had was with PlusNet who really were the worst organisation I’ve ever dealt with. Broken promises and non-existent customer services (despite the ‘cheery Northerner’ adverts). I had a battle with them lasting a year for compensation based on their breach of their terms and conditions. Often they simply didn’t reply to letters, claiming they could only deal with issues by telephone (an outright lie). In the end a friend who happens to work as a journalist for a national newspaper (ahem) started investigating the story and hey presto - one telephone call from her to their PR team and I had compensation in full with an apology and further ‘goodwill’ payment as ‘their service hadn’t met their usual standard.’ Yeah, right.

Just a bunch of cowboys in my experience.

 

[Boomer54]

Zen are a relatively small player although probably not as small as they used to be. Hence, they will not cover every area. The business model seems to be, smaller number of customers, slightly higher charge per customer, more reliable product with better service than the typical provider. As I said earlier they have won the Which award for best provider 20 years in a row. Enough said.

I was wondering why do people not know them then I remembered they are not usually listed on many switch sites!!

[Shahpor]

Another vote for Zen.  Have been with them for years and never had any issues.

Strange that they don't cover all areas though.

[Boomer54]

9 hours ago, Shahpor said:

Another vote for Zen.  Have been with them for years and never had any issues.

Strange that they don't cover all areas though.

Be glad they do not ,because it means they are not overeaching themselves. By that I mean I have seen countless great small companies grow too fast and implode as their systems could not cope with the rate of growth.

[Malc1]

40 minutes ago, Boomer54 said:

Be glad they do not ,because it means they are not overeaching themselves. By that I mean I have seen countless great small companies grow too fast and implode as their systems could not cope with the rate of growth.

here here for that one Stephen .....  I'm presently coping with a load of areshlpe dimwits that have gone to a new IT system without pre-proven it works and badly badly vary badly affected some 400+ businesses in my sector .........  I'm sure some of them might have gone bust with the cashflow implications .......  I won't name them yet but I hope the overarching Govt Body that's controlling us all in this sector of my business tears them to shreds for their utter stupidity and incompetence and negligence and utter unprofessionalism

Sorry, Rant over

Malc

[RONNIE W HODGEKINSON]

17 hours ago, First_Lexus said:

I too have never heard of Zen, but according to their website checker they don’t cover this part of Berkshire near Reading. Very odd!

I’ve been with Sky for a few years and have always found them exceptional, really impressive. When my internet router broke earlier in the year they did a rapid assessment and then sent a replacement by courier. Issue reported about 19.00 on a Saturday evening, replacement router delivered on Sunday.

Tbh I never had an issue with BT or TalkTalk (I was with both over the years). The only issue I had was with PlusNet who really were the worst organisation I’ve ever dealt with. Broken promises and non-existent customer services (despite the ‘cheery Northerner’ adverts). I had a battle with them lasting a year for compensation based on their breach of their terms and conditions. Often they simply didn’t reply to letters, claiming they could only deal with issues by telephone (an outright lie). In the end a friend who happens to work as a journalist for a national newspaper (ahem) started investigating the story and hey presto - one telephone call from her to their PR team and I had compensation in full with an apology and further ‘goodwill’ payment as ‘their service hadn’t met their usual standard.’ Yeah, right.

Just a bunch of cowboys in my experience.

 

Did You Know.. That Plusnet are actually Owned and run By BT Would you believe..I Didnt know that until Recently ...And there prices are cheaper than BT  Does that make any sense..!!!!  BTW As Far as i know Openreach are also owned  By BT

[Boomer54]

14 minutes ago, RONNIE W HODGEKINSON said:

Did You Know.. That Plusnet are actually Owned and run By BT Would you believe..I Didnt know that until Recently ...And there prices are cheaper than BT  Does that make any sense..!!!!  BTW As Far as i know Openreach are also owned  By BT

It is simple market fragmentation. Enables them to saturate a market increasing their overall market share.

As for Openreach, yes they are BT, but there has been talk in recent years of splitting them off. I could see that happening.