BT Reviews

I am currently using BT Yahoo Option 1 and have been quite satisfied with the service over the last few years. Recently I have been receiving sales pitches (both by postal mail and by telephone) to try to persuade me to switch to BT Infinity (since it is now available in my area). After holding off for several weeks (I could see no point in spending extra money when I was satisfied with my current service) I eventually gave in and ordered BT Infinity. I reluctantly agreed to the £25 one off charge and an increase in my monthly service bill of 20 pence. I was given an installation date of 15th June 2012 and an appointment window of 1pm - 6pm. At 6:10pm I decided to telephone the support line to find out what had happened to my missing engineer. I then spent another twenty minutes on hold until I could actually speak to a human being. At least that person was polite and apologetic, but I was still put on hold another two times before the operator said that they would have to call me back. It is now 7:25pm and I am still waiting for the support operator to call. I could have taken the afternoon off work (if I had been working on this afternoon). If this is how BT satisfy orders that they themselves are trying to promote, then there can be no hope for people who order BT's products that are not being promoted.

My experience with BT for 7 weeks now (after switching from Talk Talk) is that their broadband service is significantly faster and it costs less.

Late April 2012 my broadband went down. In total it was down for about 2 weeks. Talk Talk sent me 3 new routers and would only refer to first line (UK) support after I had insisted (very firmly!) after 10 days with no broadband. Talk Talk India were still blaming my router. The TT UK engineer phoned and ran a simple remote test which confirmed that the fault was with their servers. Service was restored the following day. During this fiasco I received a letter from Talk Talk advising that my service charge was to increase from £20/month to £25/month from May. Time for a MAC code methinks after 6 years with Tiscali (now Talk Talk).

I live in the sticks on standard ADSL miles from exchange. My average speed with Talk Talk was 0.5 mps - hardly usable. With BT it averages 2.5 mps and now I can watch youtube and iplayer. Hardly startling speeds but 2.2 is a heck of a lot better than 0.5, believe me!

I started with BT 10GB/mnth £13 package and that clearly was not going to be enough even with my fairly light usage. For those that doubt BT's usage stats, try downloading Networx (free) to check them - maybe you will be surprised how much you use.

I upgraded to unlimited Broadband for £20/month and am now back to the capacity I had with Talk Talk but with 3 or 4 times the speed so I am happy. BTW, line rental is extra as it was with TT.

I also like the free BTFon and BTOpenzone wireless services which Talk Talk didn't have.

Until it goes wrong I won't know what BT's support is like but I like the fact that they own and maintain my line!

So far so good with BT. Homehub3 router seems to be good kit (free with package) and has strong wireless signal.

So my ratings are average for support issues, because unknown as of now. Speed reflects what is available physically to me.

Bottom line, so far BT is delivering what it said it would.

BT managed to save the day when Sky were unable to install a line and broadband at the property.

I've been with Vispa, ICUK and Eclipse Bonded ADSL and BT has given us the fastest and most stable broadband connection.

The router is of decent quality and does everything it needs to.

The only downsides are P2P and other network throttling at peak times and the out sourced called center.

Price is good, BT vision is awesome, telephone is a little pricey but on the whole happy.

They say we used "40gig" in a mere month, how can that be possible, when All I've done was stream a few animes, reinstall windows 7 (+updates), download Linux ISO and play minecraft??
Just doesn't make sense, we pay for 40mb speed, we get just under 1mb on a wireless connection
and the so called "fibre optic" broadband connected to our main pc receives up to 3MB, but know one uses the PC connected to the "broadband" which makes it less worth it...
and the so called broadband receives its internet through the phone switch, how on earth is that Fibre Optic?? False advertising...

I would just like to say that for me choosing BT as my ISP was a big mistake! It is not an understatement to say that I found them actually deceitful and, as a result, could not recommend then to anyone. I got less than half a meg for nearly 6 years. I complained week after week to their Indian call centres. I was so angry I finally complained to the Ombudsman who said that if I received a decent speed for a day then that warrants as conforming to BT's advertising policy - do not even bother with the ombudsman as they were not interested in my deadlock letter from BT. I was told by BT that the problem in my home was eliminated - it was with the exchange. I switched to Orange after frustration with BT re-setting the line, apologising, faults on the line, etc, etc, no compensation ....and it was like a breath of fresh air with Orange - no more problems - my speed over 6MB. Please do not choose BT FOR YOUR OWN SANITY!!!!!

basically after some 10 years with orange I decided to change to BT as my cousin recommended them to us... big mistake. been with them for less than two months and I'm still getting daily dropouts, and I am having the same problem in my student place too, seriously BT you're rubbish. They cut corners everywhere, when they put the ADSL line into my area they only did it to the box and left the old copper wire to go into the houses and they are going to do the same with the fibre optic so the old copper is still going into the houses, and because I live a mile away from the exchange the speed i receive is rubbish, barely managing 3 megs per second, which is not fun esp when I want to watch on demand TV and my mum wants to play games. it is even worse in my student place. 14 of us have to share a 5 meg connection and it is so slow that I cannot skype my friends or family. BT stop cutting corners as sooner or later you will find your customer base slipping away slowly.

I had the same problems as IanR's comments below.
JUNE
Could only get a measly 0.5mb connection for ages and the phone line was all crackly.
I called them to get the problem fixed and was threatened that I would have to pay a large sum of money if the fault was caused by me.
They then arranged engineer dates where nobody showed up. Not good when you take a day off to meet them.
Was promised that they would call me the next day to check if the problem had been resolved. No phone call/s.

NOVEMBER
Passed to a emergency department where I was treated like an idiot again with the threat of a large penalty fine.
The not so caring lady then proceeded to be as rude as possible.
Got promised a compensation payment which they never followed through with.
They also would not pay from the time I first called them. Only from the time I was passed to the emergency department which was decided by them. Oh yeah, and only if they do not fix it within 14 days of this current call.
Engineer finally comes out and makes the line worse.
More phone calls and broken promises.
Another two engineers come round and do their best to sort it out.
Finally I have a 2mb average connection which is a big difference from the 14mb my line is supposed to be able to handle. I am aware of the variables that affect speed but that is just not good enough.
My iphone 3g wireless tethered connection gives me 3mb.

December
Just called them to get my MAC code to change provider and have been informed that I can get Infinity for a couple of pounds cheaper than Total Broadband with reliable speeds of up to 15mb guaranteed or they will not supply it to me. WHY DID NOBODY SAY THIS BEFORE!
They also finally decided to compensate me for the poor service £19.72.
They now want £120 to cancel the rest of my contract.
They are trying to get me to sign into a Infinity package with a new 18 month contract which I would have to pay a bigger cancellation fee when not happy with the service.
Avoid BT like the plague if you are looking for a service provider.
Please use a speed checker if you are a current BT customer and se if you are getting what you have paid for.

Ok so I know BT have had a bit of a bad rap on here and I will preface this review by saying I was previously with Tesco and carrier pigeon would be more use than they were.

My experience with BT did not exactly get off to a flying start. They have an odd policy of not sending out your router until the day your service is supposed to start. I guess this is to make it easy if people decide to change before the service starts so they don't have a router to return. Anyway, come my activation day my router did not arrive, I was not very happy at all. I called up and they apologised and promised one would be with me the next day. Next day comes and goes without a router! So I was really mad this time and the lady on the other end of the phone was very helpful and got a new delivery sorted and also gave me a BT vision box by way of apology so Im pretty happy with that!

The router arrived as she said it would and let me tell you it is a solid piece of kit and is a cut above any router I have been issued with from previous ISP's.

In terms of speed I am getting double the speed I got with Tesco and that is at peak time. I don't seem to have any P2P traffic managment at all and I regularly get 1Mb/s + downloads on uTorrent and around 10 Mb/s on speed tests.

Generally I am very happy apart from the early hick-up with the router and my free Vision box made up for that.

I would recomend BT. Sure they are not the cheapest but you get what you pay for.

Daughter one has Virgin. Service down, 1 week to fix.
Daughter two has Sky. Service down, 2 weeks to fix.
Work has Zen. Service down 2 weeks to date, no idea when they will fix not that it matters now as we are changing to BT. See earlier post.
I have always used BT, apart from a brief period with Demon back in the mid nineties. Service down 3 times in 15 years, time to fix, immediate response and have never left without fixing. Need I say more.
Lesson, you get what you pay for. BT are not the cheapest I know that but when I need service I get it and do not get shifted from pillar to post as they atempt to avoid the problem and blame someone else.
Oh yes, forgot to mention it. I work in I.T networks so do have some understanding of how the systems work, or not, as the case may be.

After a bad experience with a small independant I thought I'd go for the safety of BT.

That was a mistake!

I'm now doing some better research for my next ISP.

Speed and Value are "sub-average", but my real gripe is the Support and complaints process.

BT were unable to fulfill the Bundled Services of the Plan I took with them, namely Broadband Talk, and when I questioned this, sharp practices were used by the Support Team and Customer Services to avoid any responsibility.

I was lied to, shouted at, hung-up upon, told there wasn't a complaints procedure, had a complaint raised and immediately closed (twice) and then when I finally managed to formally raise a complaint entered an 8 week process that achieved nothing bar a "failure to agree letter" that I have now taken to the Ombudsman. Although I was regularly told the BT complaints process is in line with the Ombudsman's regulatory requirements.

Anyhow, at least I can now cancel the 18 month contract they failed to fulfill. But it has taken me 20+ phone calls and an estimated 8 hours of my time to achieve.

I'm shocked our National Tel Co can have this level of disregard for its Customers. I expected, and would have accepted, sub-average Value and Services, but I DID expect first class Customer Service.

Very poor.