BT Broadband

Don't recommend*

By Zeke Lemongrass 27 Jan 2010 15:50

I've been with BT for a while now; it was really quite good. I have the BT HomeHub and I managed to port forward my Xbox and various other hardware devices with ease and as a result got some acceptable speeds- even though they were no where near as close to the advertised 8mb.

So all was going well- and then one day my internet becomes slow and unresponsive; I leave it for some time assuming that it will sort itself out- as problems can occur and be resolved quite quickly. 6 days later I call BT to see what the problem was, and I am surprisingly greeted with an insufficiently trained technical support employee that could not help me with my simple query. I tried to explain the situation, but the people I was being ping ponged between clearly didn't speak English as a first language. We got lost in the use of the term "Port forwarding" and "This is your fault- fix it". Subsequently I was transferred to a 3rd party group that expect YOU to PAY for the technical support that BT can NOT provide even though we are paying them a good £20 something a month.

A few days after this faith-destroying experience a piece of paper was dropped through my letterbox that read something like "Service upgrades are being performed in your area. Internet speeds will be effected- Please persist with your connection." I thought "Well, okay- I don't know why Technical Support couldn't tell me this- but Great! I'm excited now! I feel as though I can forgive BT for this time consum"- months pass; still this connection and no one to tell me what's going on.

I am not getting my money's worth. I was, kinda; now I'm not. You won't either, unless you have decent technical knowledge- as 'technical support' clearly do not. You also need to not live in an area that is supposedly undergoing a service upgrade.

In retrospect, I may just be impatient. But months! Months with a fluctuating connection that can't even so much as watch a youtube video without having to load every 5 seconds. I assume that this service upgrade has been finished- considering they sent us an email saying:
"We will give you this little piece of plastic, that has a value of £50, for nothing. Just pay a £1 postage charge, then plug in. It will phase out any interference that may be disrupting your line."
Only thing is, our line was fine. It was working- now it's not. All I can do is wait and hope for drastic improvement, because BT doesn't care enough to tell you what is going on.