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BT Broadband Reviews
Broadband Stakeholder Group Member
Internet Services Providers Association Member
© Copyright RichWeb Media Ltd, 2008-2010. All rights reserved.
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Broadband Stakeholder Group Member Internet Services Providers Association Member© Copyright RichWeb Media Ltd, 2008-2010. All rights reserved.
Reviewed by Anonymous on Monday, March 1st, 2010
Have been experiencing unreliable connection and speeds for a few months, but it didn’t interfere too much with my usage. But on 27th February the broadband dropped out completely and never recovered. Phoned up ‘customer service’ (sic) and what a nightmare - was shocked to be told that I would have to wait six days for an engineer to come out and see what was wrong. When I was looking for broadband I asked potential providers what their call out time would be - BT told me 48hours. The ‘customer service’ people told me this wasn’t the case. So I called BT broadband sales to check again (in the guise of a prospective customer) and was assured that normal call out time was 48hrs for any issues to do with broadband. So I called the customer complaints department who told me that ‘the sales team don’t know anything’. I pointed out that this didn’t really make much difference to me - to me it is all BT failing miserably. But this didn’t register at all. They are just con artists, plain and simple.
Reviewed by BT = Big Theives on Monday, February 22nd, 2010
A heaving behemoth of a company. Business exists not to serve and enrich the lives of the massives, but to reap the rewards of our wants- neigh; down right necessities.
BT unlimited suggests just that, but its a load of hoot. IF they were an ethical company, they would label all of their packages with the ‘Throttled to death’ adendum.
Bad company. Bad Telecom. British telecom.
Reviewed by Maria on Sunday, February 21st, 2010
I ordered phone & broadband on 26th January 2010. I received a letter saying that broadband & phone would be connected 15th February. On 16th January after I could not get broadband working I phoned BT. I was told call centre is closing and that I had to phone back the following day. On 17th January I phoned again. I was told that the order had not been completed and that I would receive a call back and compensation £15.99. On 18th January I phoned to chase call back and was told that the first person had not recorded who had been asked to assist but that an engineer would be requested again. I was told that neither my phone nor broadband were connected and that I would definitely have a call back on 19th January in the morning. On 19th pm I phoned again. 21st Feb still waiting.
Reviewed by BT = Bloody Terrible on Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Hmm, BT are misleading charlatans
In December my Internet stopped working every night from 7pm - 7am.
My own diagnostics showed huge packet loss in the BT core network.
This went on for 6 days
I contacted the tech support (never again)
They told me it was my system infected with a virus (NO) a faulty router (NO) a line fault (NO)they even they went on to blame it on EMI from my TV,my central heating,my christmas decorations,street lighting,my neighbors central heating,my neighbours external christmas decorations,my hoover,my microwave,my fridge and even my mobile phone (NO)
It was a fault in BT`s core network 100% but they continued to blame everything as my problem.
I decided i had enough and i am currently out of contract so i decided to request my MAC and migrate.
when i requested it they offered me a discount, a discount for internet that doesnt work for 12 hrs a day? WTF are these jokers on?
They then said it must be my router and as i am out of contract if i sign a new contract they would send me a new hub for free, i said no thanks,if the router was broken (which it isnt) then i would just buy a netgear/linksys.
i was then told NO, YOU HAVE TO USE A BT HOMEHUB TO USE BT BROADBAND..lmfao, thats a misleading sales lie.
they then even said if i signed a new contract this would cure my loss of internet from 7pm-7am LMFAO, thats sales lie number 2
What the f**k are these people on?
After being fobbed off and not receiving my MAC i emailed ian livinston (CEO) and told him everything i had been through including the sales lies, i also told him i would be contacting OFFCOM about these misleading sales lies and how my internet was “not fit for purpose”
I received a call that day from someone who eventually admitted there was a fault on the peterborough BRAS (my first hop into BT`s core network)
Finally they told me what i had know for over 2 weeks!
my advice steer well clear of BT, they lie,mislead and traffic shape customers to the maximum to give priority to BT Vision customers.
They are over subscribed on exchanges and they are delivering service which is a joke.
Reviewed by Stefan on Monday, January 11th, 2010
Giving 1 star to BT, is giving 1 star too many.
Average speed of 300kbps, despite having reached the dizzy hights of 3.3 megs. ( 1 evening only)
The service from India is beyond a joke. If I told them I had a Plutonium Factory in my shed, they would decide that was the reason for my poor speed. Just as well I havent told them about the flux capacitor then.
Even bigger problem is that having detailed all the issues to the 6 Company Directors, I am still not getting anywhere. It seems the BT management follow the same process of ignoring issues, and hoping it all just goes away. No one at BT does as they say they will, no one communicates, and no one seems to be able to suggest any reason as to why they cannot provide the 3.5 Meg that they have provided in the past.
The Directors of BT are as close to customer service, as is their service department to England.
Reviewed by Mark on Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
I have had two experiences with BT. One
was absolutely awful, and one has been
and still is ok, but still slightly
frustrating as it went off once.
Firstly, for all of you out there who
are complaining that you are only
getting 3.0mbs out of a max 8mbs etc,
get a grip and read the contract you
sign. You should also read up a little
and find out how the Internet works and
that the whole Internet is a shared
resource and is pretty difficult to
manage, but i guess that as a consumer
that still isn’t good enough.
You agree that you are on a contended
connection (50:1). This calculation is
not just strictly 50 sharing one line,
but for the sake of simplicity it is.
There are other factors to contention,
but in its simplest form its you sharing
an internet pipe from the BT exchange
back into the Internet with 49 others
(like i said this is in it simplest form
and contention at this point could be
higher).
You will never get full speeds, because
there are so many factors in the
operation of the Internet. Your line to
the BT exchange form your home is
dedicated, and you get full capacity,
but then as the traffic moves from the
BT Exchange to the POP and the Internet
through the backhauls they are shared
between a pool of users. Fair enough
these shared resources maybe more
overrun than others between different
providers, but unfortunately if everyone
tries to get online at once then what
choice do we have other than to put up
with speed issues.
BT own the backhauls and broadband users
buy bandwidth from them to run from the
exchange to the POP where the broadband
provider operates.
Your only option around this is to get a
dedicated switch directly into a POP and
the Internet backbone. 10MB dedicated
leased line costs about £500 a month in
London.
And even then what use is 10mbs
broadband connection when the resources
you are downloading from probably cant
provide data to you that quick anyway.
The complaining i hear is just lack of
understanding i think.
As for those complaining about traffic
shaping and that its effecting your
ability to use P2P and torrents. Tough,
thats because 95% torrent use is for
illegal traffic anyway so its you
P2P’ers and torrent abusers who have
caused that anyway.
Traffic shaping makes sense for the
greater good and as a business customer
I am glad they do it. I hope the
government introduces laws that force
all broadband providers to restrict
content on P2P and torrent sites. In my
eyes they are a pain in the *ss anyway.
Now onto my BT experience. I am quite
surprised that they are still in
business, because their customer service
is none existent. In my old apartment it
took Open Reach (a BT company) 6 weeks
to turn up. They lied on numerous
occasions that they tried to turn up but
i wasnt in (funny as I work from home
75% of the time), then when they did
they didn’t install properly, so another
2 weeks messing around and it was in, so
the mobile broadband sticks went on
Ebay.
The actual broadband itself was very
good, 6.5mbs on the testing sites most
of the time, uploads were really slow,
but very rarely upload anything of huge
mass. Downloads during peak times would
slow to about 0.5 - 1mbs. But i think
that is ok. I run my own Internet
business and understand that is the
nature of the beast, its just a shame
some people don’t.
BT probably not value for money, but I
think performance and reliability of the
broadband itself was good. After the
problems i had (see below) I shelved the
Hub and used my own (was using it for
the phone).
Then came the problems, someone brute
forced into the BT Homehub and while I
was away at christmas, downloaded masses
of data (700 gig to be more accurate).
The hub was on max security with a
really strong key, so god know if there
is a vulnerability in the Hub, as it was
rebooting at 1am every night so maybe
while its booting it has a bug/flaw.
This resulted in a massive bill, but no
warnings or cut of from BT just a
massive bill, and because the bill is
quarterly I never took it up with them
for about 70 days and they tried to use
this against me. This is where the
customer service was absolutely useless.
If i had been on a unlimited package,
they would have warned us and restricted
our speed. But since I was on a 20gig
pack they decided it would be more
profitable to charge me. When asked
where my warning email/phone call was to
ask me to move up a package to avoid a
heavy bill they said they emailed me and
tried to call. I man my email 12 hours a
day, and I have a voicemail facility, so
i knew they were talking s**t. First
told that if I got a crime ref (as it
was a computer crime) that they would
wave the bill. They then decided they
didn’t want to do that, because they
said they had a receipt from my email
address that proved they emailed me, but
they refused to send it to me. I sent
them my email sever logs showing all
incoming mail, and low and behold they
weren’t on it. This is when I really
began to get annoyed, because I was
proving everything and they just werent
prepared to budge or prove anything on
their part.
Next step was to pay the bill, because
yes they cut me off, so I had one day
without broadband, because the payment
took 24 hours to clear even though they
promised during the dispute that I would
not be cut off, so I had to buy a mobile
stick for one day.
Next step was to file a complaint in the
small claims court, and before it got
that far I got my money back within 7
days. In this instance they were
breaking contract because they never
warned me like said they did. My luck
was that their terms said “they may
contact us”, so that means they didn’t
actually have to, but because they
admitted they tried to and they failed
they admitted that somewhere their
communication broke down and I had them
over a barrel.
For those who think small claims will
get them out of contract because they
are unhappy with speeds etc, it wont.
You signed the contract, you agree to
traffic shaping and contention ratios
between other Internet users.
My new apartment (temporary until my
flat is built) again has BT in it and
its been great until again I needed to
call BT. The line and broadband went
off. In all fairness they had an
engineer out the next day, but only
after speaking with 10 different people
between the line department and the
broadband department, because for some
reason, they cant be trained in the same
product even though they go hand in
hand. That drove me insane, because as
they transfered me between departments
like a yoyo, I was getting different
operators each time who were starting
the diagnostic from scratch each time.
God knows how many times I went through
taking the front plate of the BT box and
rebooting the router. All very polite
may I add. I have no problem with
speaking with people offshore, its just
the powers and tools they are given to
help us by management/board are useless.
Other than that the performance in my
new place is pretty good too. 3.5mbs on
a max 8mbs line. Busy periods can be a
bit slow, but generally its pretty
stable and only be one 24 outage in 6
months due to a faulty line.
Overall, I think its an ok package if
you never has issues with billing or
technical unless you like to repeat
yourself so many times you dream of the sentences you are saying in your sleep
that night!
Reviewed by steve on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009
BT is the worst service ever. Restricted speed and bandwidth, no downloads between 08.00 and 24.00 to speak of, home hub total piece of junk, help service rubbish, they take over your desktop and wreck your OS. Cram loads of people onto one line. Absolute waste of time and money.
Reviewed by Dan on Monday, December 7th, 2009
A crime against humanity.
In case you’re tempted to call the customer services helpline, I’d suggest that you first try heating up a fistful of needles and, one by one, slowly pushing them into your eyeballs: less painful and more likely to resolve whatever internet-related dilemma you might have been in.
Reviewed by Anonymous on Thursday, December 3rd, 2009
The worst service I have received from any company. They keep cutting me off for non payment despite the fact that I am paying by direct debit and they have received every payment. I have only ever had one useful person on the help desk in over 100 calls. They point blank refuse to check the notes to see what caused the last 5+ disconnections until you have walked through their script (x100). Every time they disconnect me it takes weeks to get the line reconnected. When it is connected it is nowhere near the 8MB it averages below 3.0 MBps and the upload speed is an appalling 0.09 MBps. Plus it took over six weeks to get connected when I moved house because they kept mucking up their internal system. Thank God they do not have the monopoly on broadband.
Reviewed by Anonymous on Monday, November 23rd, 2009
very poor
Reviewed by Anonymous on Monday, November 23rd, 2009
please dont give your cash to these criminals, they deceive there customers with there false claims of high speeds when they know there service is over subscribed and slow,,,they have traffic shaping policies that limit your download speed to 10kb/s - 20kb/s on every web protocol apart from http this means that if you use any p2p or torrents you will be downloading at dial up speeds whilst paying £25 per month for fast unlimited broadband LOL. i tried to cancel because i wasnt informed about there download cap on there unlimited package or there traffic shaping measures but was told that to cancel would cost me £11 per month left on my CON,tract. i wrote this review to save you from this. dont bother with them unless your prepared to be very dissapointed as i am
Reviewed by Anonymous on Monday, November 23rd, 2009
british telecom broadband is a load of rubbish,,,,traffic shaping means that from noon onwards you get speeds of 10kb/s - 20kb/s on everything but the web browser ie:http so if you like p2p,, torrents then forget it unless you can leave it on over night ,,,im on the unlimited package LOL,,,ive only been with them for 1 month and feel like ive been robbed. if you want even a half decent broadband stay away from bt there rubbish
Reviewed by Anonymous on Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
I switched from Virgin (adsl) to BT nearly two years ago. Virgin was sow and unreliable. BT has had consistent speeds (its gradually got faster) even at peak times. Old white hub died - they sent a black one out straight away. When my first year was nearly up - they phoned me and offered me a £7 a month discount for another year! Just got a Vision box for £15 + TV package for £6.6 a month now - works great.
Tried to switch to O2 for a cheaper deal before BT - they said my line was not good enough for them! I wonder why they have such a good average speed!
Reviewed by Richard A Butler on Sunday, November 15th, 2009
I recently switched from Virgin Media to BT broadband, and what a mistake it was. Virgin media customer services were most unhelpful, but Bt are 10 times worse.Their broadband service stinks, and customer services is no better, Very Disappointed.
Reviewed by BT will ruin your life on Wednesday, November 4th, 2009
All I wanted was broadband at home. Just regular broadband. Nothing fancy. So I tried BT. Big mistake. Ignorant & dishonest telephone staff, refusal to honour agreements and simple services not carried out. I’m talking about basic stuff here. As a result I still don’t have any broadband service, and now I’m so annoyed that I’m telling the world.
There are plenty of smaller providers out there who actually want customers, BT is just a bloated shambles that consumers use because BT is a household name.
DO NOT USE BT IF YOU WANT A HAPPY LIFE.
Reviewed by Anonymous on Monday, September 21st, 2009
I have been with BT broadband for four years because, initially, there weren’t any non-BT line options available. The speed was pretty bad, even tho I had one of the more expensive options. Also, customer service is very poor, with the staff on the phone (when you eventually get though) being quite aggressive and dogmatic. The final straw was when they upped my monthly bill to approx £60 per month from £35 per month. I have cancelled and gone woth Virgin now, and the speed is noticeably better. Sadly BT are now badgering me for a £25 disconnection fee! It’s in the small print so I will have to pay it, even though I’m well out of the initial subscription period. My advice is stay well clear of BT if you can, they will give you awful service and catch you out with extra charges.
Reviewed by Ann Johnstone on Thursday, September 10th, 2009
I’ve used BT total broadband for nearly two years and although the connection is excellent, the speed is woeful. I just checked my download speed and it’s running at 748kb. This is on supposedly up to an 8meg service. I have asked them to email my migration code as I do not want to speak to their customer service centre, but they still phone and ask if I want to take out another 18 month contract with a two pounds a month reduction.
Seriously, check what you are actually getting before you sign a thing with BT.
Reviewed by Anonymous on Sunday, August 30th, 2009
I have recently switched from Virgin Media to BT as Virgin are a bunch of muppets and the 20mb broadband i paid for were atrocious! BT has been brilliant and when i took out the unlimited package, they told em my line would only support up to 6.7mb and that is what i have been getting, even when we have the desktop PC and laptop using it.
It was very easy to install it all, and when i have spoke to the customer services, they have been extremely polite and helpful (which i was surprised about after dealing with indian call centres through virgin. These people have better training and are taught to be polite, not behave like idiots!)
I highly recommend BT to anyone, as long as they take the speed they are told they will get and not expect more. Its even better now BT have announced they are upping broadband speeds for free of charge.
Well done BT!
Reviewed by Anonymous on Wednesday, May 27th, 2009
never get broadband with bt!! the speeds
are extremely poor (for the 8 meg
package expect to recieve 1meg max!)
thats what i get anyway. last year I was
getting 2.5, but in the last 2 month I
got 0.5 meg!!
i phoned them and told them about this,
they say its all my line can hold!! der!
2 month ago i was getting a steady 2.5
meg!
anyway there customer service is so
poor, make sure there are no ropes near
by when on hold! it is so annoying to be
speaking and then a bt customer service
rep just starts talking and doesnt let
you finish what u r saying!!AAARRGHH!!
and if I hear the word EXCHANGE again, i
will personaly flie to india and kick
some bt arse! the worst part is that
when i bdo a bt speedtest, it tells me
that they are only sending 0.5 meg down
my line, but can i get them to increase
that? well the good news is that after a
month i did get them to, after a a good
few gruelling phone calls to india!! but
they only put it to 1 meg anyway! so in
about 3 month at this rate i should be
back to 2.5 meg! yippeeee! then 2 month
after that my contract runs out and I’l
be free forever of bt! KEEP AWAY FROM
BT!! PLEASE, FOR YOUR OWN GOOD!!
Reviewed by Anonymous on Sunday, February 22nd, 2009
Can’t complain at all. Chose BT after suffering dreadful speeds from O2 - cancelled within 3 days (it was their access product, uses BT’s network). Since then speeds have been excellent. Sure speeds are slower at peaks times but what do you expect? When it’s the bank holiday and everyone is on the road do you expect to get to your destination as quick normal? Still totally useable for streaming video and downloading. For those with slow connection speeds with BT most of the time it is the distance from the exchange and quality of the line. You will have just the same trouble with another provider. Most other providers don’t have the capacity to support the amount of customers they have. At peak times if you moan about BT then you will be pulling your hair out with others.
Reviewed by Mike on Friday, January 30th, 2009
I paid for the unlimited download package, but it seems unlimited in BT’s terms in 40GB. Speed wise it is variable. At peak times (6pm to 11pm) I get at best 100kb/s (kilobytes per second) and 256kb/s (normally), though I once saw 600kb/s at 2am…either way about 1/10 of what I paid for.
Another problem, is that they throttle bandwidth from certain sites (youtube/tvcatchup/iplayer), meaning popular sites are slow…all the time.
The router that provided is ok, but I would not rave about it (sometimes it just stops working).
Overall, I suggest you avoid BT.
Reviewed by Anonymous on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008
So that’s that then. I mean what can you do. It’s not worth changing provider - it will still be BT Wholesale (unless you’re LLU’d) - and anyway - that’s not the point - the problem is that the line is not up to supporting the higher frequencies required by broadband - only (just) voice frequencies (around 1 to 3Khz I guess). If the phone line cables can’t support it, it doesn’t matter who’s providing the service.
Reviewed by greg on Friday, July 11th, 2008
It is hard to understand how a company like BT could keep going in a developed country.
Their customer service is poor and staffed by a lot of people who pick an English name out of the hat everyday. When you do get a helpful person it feels like god has blessed you as it is so rare.
BT could and should have had the whole broadband market sorted out when you consider that it has when a national company had mine and your money feeding it. BT over fed slow slug like leech company.
But they have a nice logo
Please please if you want to stay happy and not shoot yourself while in a queue on the phone, DO NOT ENTERTAIN USING THEM.
Greg
Reviewed by Jean on Sunday, June 1st, 2008
Getting 1.2Mbps download on what is supposed to be 8 Mbps. Worse is constant dropped connection anywhere from a half-dozen to twenty or more times a day, cutting off downloads, phone conversations, bank transactions everything. Trying to get fix since December from script automatons in India is exercise in pure frustration. Apart from that I like them
Reviewed by Rich Edwards on Thursday, January 17th, 2008
I’ve had BT Broadband for nearly 4 years now and the service just keeps improving! Broadband speeds have been increasing and I love BT vision. Customer service is so much better than some other providers (my girlfriend has TalkTalk and they have been a nightmare).
Reviewed by Preshnar on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008
I get regularly get over 3.5MB which is pretty good in my opinion. Admittedly I am on the 8MB but all the broadband providers state the maximum speed which is never realistically achievable. I’m on BT option 3 Broadband and have no plans to change.
Reviewed by Carlie Murphy on Monday, September 24th, 2007
BT broadband is sooo slow! I’ve called customer service and they say they can’t do anything and that because my flat is quite far from the exchange I won’t get faster broadband from them or anyone else! The connection has been reliable enough, I’m just frustrated with the crappy speeds so will probably change at the end of the contract and see if I can get better speeds with another provider.