BT Reviews

I started working from home about a year ago. I signed up with BT business. Almost immediately I had problems. The router didn't turn up on the date specified. I called BT. It takes a long time to get through the automated answering service. Then you get put in a queue. Eventually you get through to a human being who asks you all the questions you just told the automated system. At this point, the person on the other end will either put you through to someone else, or you'll get cut off and have to repeat the entire process again. It was not unusual to have to call BT 3 times before you got through to the person you needed to speak to. This would take around 40 mins on average.

Anyway, the router arrived finally about a week late. It had the wrong address on it. My name was spelt incorrectly and I was a Miss (even though I'm not actually female)! Other letters BT sent us had the correct address and name so who knows how they managed that one.

I plugged the router in to find the internet was not active. I called BT, went through the usual automated hell and finally got through to someone who told me the line was set up as a residential line not a business line. I asked why and they said they must of made a mistake. Don't worry though they said, we'll get it set up as a business line. It'll just take a week. This is a weeks lost earnings for me I argued. They said they were sorry but there was nothing they could do. I asked whether I could cancel the broadband. They said no I was in contract for two years. I asked to speak to a manager. They said a manager would call me back. I said please can you make sure someone does. No one called me.

I had to move my entire home office to a relatives house to use their broadband whilst mine was in in-active.

This 'service' was costing me £50 per month. The bills are about as clear as mud. On several occasions I had to call BT to clarify issues. On a number of occasions I just gave up. I would spend forty or fifty minutes on the phone, repeatedly been cut off.

I moved house a few months into the BT contract. They quoted a large fee (I think around £100) to get the broadband running at the new house. I decided I couldn't trust them to get the broadband working on time so I cancelled the contract. This meant I had to pay all the remaining telephone line and broadband costs for the remainder of the contract. The bill worked out to well over one thousand pounds. You might think I'm crazy to pay them off but I just couldn't face the stress of calling them over and over, worrying about whether the line would be active on time and making back up arrangements if they did mess everything up again, which I was quite certain they would do.

I sent a letter of complain and they said they'd waver the cost of setting up broadband at the new house if I stayed with them. I decided to leave anyway.

I've been at my new house for some time now and have not received any bill for paying off the remainder of my contract. They've probably messed that up also. I'm just glad I'm not associated with BT any more. It unbelievable a company can treat people so badly.

I can't begin to outline how bad this service has been - its made me sick to my guts

I am posting a short list of the pleasures that potentially await new BT customers

First I was bullied into a £40 deal a month deal because “it’s the only way to avoid a £150 connection fee" - My neighbour got a better service for £5 a month

my first bill then came with a £170 "connection fee" !

But that's just the sweetener

1) Having set me a date for a BT engineer to visit - and organised time off work- they cancelled .

2) Having rescheduled- they changed the date - different to the one agreed - which I couldn't make

3) Got a family member to take time off work for the engineer visit - they texted me out the blue to say they had activated the line remotely, something they had insisted was impossible.

4) 3 weeks into to the service period my phone and line went dead.

5) On ringing I could not get past security because there was another person's name and address assigned to my number - had to spend weekend in the office - 8 hours on the phone - while I got bounced around the world. staff hang up twice on me during this encounter because the problem was to difficult for them to understand.

6) 48 hours later an engineer turned up unannounced and by pure chance I was in, - I was given a new telephone number and had to inform all family and friends that my old number was no longer working

7) the router started rebooting every 20 mins the telephone hissed so bad it was unusable - at times it went dead.

8) I rang their fault line department and after half an hour on the phone was informed that that the fault testing software had crashed

9) 2 days later our telephone and Broadband went dead - and we’re told it’ll be fixed by the Monday -

10) they then texted us to say that it may take an unlimited amount to of time to remedy

11) A member of staff told us we were intentionally lied too.

10) I arranged for a colleague to work from home to make space in an office- and then spend the weekend setting up a new workstation .

11) another ruined weekend -

12) I got laughable compensation - my time is worth £25 an hour - I must have spend at least 20 hours of my life sorting this out - and about 4 hours of my partners time at the same rate - that amounts to £600 worth of our time.

13) the quality of the broadband was always bad and constantly dropping. The Indian tech support could barely speak English just to add to the joy.

14) I saved the worst for last - 6 months after leaving they have reinstated my line and started billing me again!! -

If you want to spend your life being tossed around by BT agents that could not care less that contradict each other hang up on you and bounce you between departments be my guest - personally I will NEVER use them again - use Home Telcom - the difference is astounding - UK tech support - and they call you the next day to check if alls OK

Had Infinity since Feb 2012

Started off with the 40 / 10 FTTC Speeds. Was fine for me.

Couple of months down the road they doubled to 76 / 17.

Speeds have been fine, service has been brilliant. Customer services are pretty good too.

For £40 a month, i highly recommend BT Infinity

Keeping this under 600 words was a struggle.

BT are quite simply the worst company I have ever dealt with, and their customer service (such as it is) genuinely inspired within me a psychotic rage. I would rather insert parts of my body into a salami slicer than ever have any sort of dealings with this organisation ever again.

Where to start? From the online line checker which gave me wrong information (which BT then blamed me for) which led to my order being cancelled the day before installation without any form of notification? How about when they rearranged the setup, repeatedly confirmed that I would be getting broadband installed on that day, and then waited until it was exactly too late to tell me they had only installed a phone line and not provisioned broadband? Or even the time when they were offering an Amazon voucher if you signed up online, then went back on it because the order they placed to replace the online one they cancelled wasn't placed online?

How about when I (thankfully, sweet lord) managed to get out of my contract with them, and they then terminated the phone line after it and the broadband had been switched but continued billing me for a broadband service they could not physically provide? What about when they then claimed that this was my fault because I didn't supply O2 with a MAC code, even though a) I did supply O2 with a MAC code and b) it was irrelevant because both the phone and the broadband were being switched and therefore I didn't actually need one?

The cherry on the cake was that my final bill should have showed a credit balance to be returned to me (as I had paid for services in advance). They SAID they'd refund any incorrect charges and return the remaining credit balance to me with a bit on top for my trouble. Instead, the Twitter support team very kindly just zeroed the balance on the account. No extra bit on top, but more importantly no money that was ACTUALLY MINE. I pressed for this and was told I would get this money back but no more, as a "gesture of goodwill", with no "bit on top". That BT consider the return of funds legitimately owed to a customer "a gesture of goodwill" is probably the neatest example possible of what a moronic company this is.

For what it's worth, the broadband was COMPETENT. That is the nicest thing I can say about it. The BT Home Hub is pretty, but breaks Windows 7's home networking. Immediately after I switched, line speeds jumped a full megabit on the same line, with no changes other than to use O2's router and service. This simply made the fact that I'm currently paying O2 less than half the money I was paying BT for a superior level of service sting just that little bit more.

In case you haven't guessed, my suggestion is to please, for the love of Christ, do not go with BT. The fact they own the lines is irrelevant, because they still have to go through Openreach like everyone else anyway, only you have to deal with BT's utterly idiotic front-line support in the mean-time.

I didn't think I would like Infinity.. I even keep my old BE service on another line as I still don't trust BT not to muck things up.

However Infinity, for me, is fantastic.
I am right next to the cabinet so get the full 80/20 service, it's reliable and traffic management doesn't affect the things that I use.

Reliability has been better than my BE line over the same time period.

Their major down fall is telephone and email customer services. It is still absolutely worse than bad.

I have no complaints about my Faster Total Broadband Package 3 - due to the low quality of the local network, Infinity is not available to me but the upgrade from ADSL to Faster Total Broadband has resulted in speeds around 5x faster at 5-7mpbs. It is not as good value as Infinity but that is expected in a rural area. I have had no problems that require support and the ordering process was simple.

Hi,

I have just changed to BT Infinity in the last 1 month, I was with BT Broadband Buisiness before and was getting 1500kbps Downstream and maxed out at 448kbps Upstream. Now changed to Infinity and get some great speeds now, I get 69999kbps Downstream and 3800kbps Upstream, as you can read that is a massive improvement!!! I am really pleased now with BT, the connection is a 100% stable now and never drops and also great speeds all day and every day with no drops. It has also got good P2P speeds if anyone is interested. If I was you dump BT Standard broadband and go with Infinity soon as it becomes available in your area, you will not be disappointed again, ever!!! that's a fact!!! :)

Rejoined BT back in Janurary due to infinity which sadly has not become available on my line (that i'm not bothered about) what bothered me about BT was their customer services. Appalling to say the least at times (and funny enough they we're all nice when I wanted to rejoin) amazing how things can go downhill quickly) messed up billing constantly.........refusing to admit to their errors......not apologising to me for messing up either and almost ruining my holiday for forcing me to pay out on a bill for 3 months when my bill was always monthly (but due to a cockup from Bt it had mysteriously switched to 3 months) also found their service intermittent at the best of times. Only a email to the very top (and I mean beyond ian livingston) has got me out of my contract with no penalty. Sad that BY still seemingly like this after all these years.

Turned out disastrous and I'm still under contract. Yours is the only email that reached me
instantly, but neither a friend's test message, nor BT's engineer managed it, and I have no emails
since 28th June(apart from yours!

How can I terminate the account ?

MY rating for the BT router is also low - they sent me replacement but it still switches broadband off every other day.

Ok I must admit they used to suck bigtime. Again I agree that the call centre technicians are hopeless and totally unskilled scripted sales rejects.
Thing is though they do have a very good product in the Infinity fibre to box (cabinet). Someone said that P2P was not throttled (managed / shaped) smirk! ah ! it is you know.
One thing B.T does throttle / manage is P2P.
If you are not a torrent user or you are a smart one (and I am not going to tell you how to do anything) then Infinity is a very good product just like Ipod was for Apple.

My score is only for Infinity and no other package offered by B.T

A common mistake by people is to think that fibre to cabinet needs fibre to the house.
Not true it would be nice but much more expensive.
Twisted pair can carry 10 gigabit Ethernet so it is capable of running at very high speeds cost effectively. The speed and delivery to the cabinet is fibre so the length of twisted pair would not be that much to the household. Its the length of the twisted pair which would be the limiter.