Is BT Broadband good?

[raj143]

Hi Folks,

I am trying to get rid of Eircom broadband and looking for different service provider, Would you folks suggest me the best broadband service provider?
Example BT braodband, UTV etc..

My preferences are ;

- Telephone talk time PLUS Broadband (1 MB or 2MB)
- The service and the customer care should be good.


Your advice would help to choose the best, cheers.

Raj

[tomb]

I have bt option 3. 3mps broadband & total talk Package. Ifind it excellent My download speed is over 2.5 mps.

[howfast]

Before you dump Eircon don’t forget that all the other isps’ BT, UTV, Digiweb etc only resell the Eircon Bitstream product. So any DL difficulties won’t necessarily be solved by changing your isp because Eircon won’t allow them access the Bitstream equipment in the exchange. The other isp has to ask Eircon to look into the matter and guess what ‘it doesn’t always get priority over Eircon needs’ [or so ComReg recently found].

However, there might be hope on the horizon if reports that LLU will be up and running from September next then the other isp’s can install their own equipment in the local exchange.

In the meantime there is plenty of comment elsewhere in this forum by which you can judge an isp’s customer service.

BTW I’m a BT customer and have found their CS pretty helpful notwithstanding it took about 4 months for them to get Eircon to fix a download problem.

Howfast

[Sean]

From my experience so far of using their support, it seems like they either don't properly log issues or their database somehow loses them. Before I switched over to Digiweb a few months ago, I tried several times (e-mail, web-forum and telephone) to get someone to look into my poor DSL performance. After getting nowhere, I applied for a DSL transfer, filled and signed the form, received my new modem and was transferred to Digiweb.

Two months later, I got another €80 charge on my credit card from BT. I called to complain and the person said he logged the issue and would refund the €80 due to no usage. After seeing no refund over a month later, I called BT again. This time they claim there is no record of me ever calling BT to cancel my account nor was there a record of me making a transfer and the person said he can cancel my account, but cannot offer a refund as a result. I provided my DSL transfer reference code and while the person said he logged this, it is unclear if I'll get a refund for a BT service I have not had (at least not used) since the DSL transfer.

Just my experience. Up until the time my DSL performance went bad back in March (often getting <500k on a 3Mb package), I have not had any other issue with BT up until then covering two years of their BT Anytime package and two years of their DSL service. However, as a word of warning, if you go ahead with BT and sometime later on decide to cancel or change to another service provider, try calling back at least a week later to confirm they have a record of you cancelling.

I recently received a pricing information update booklet from BT and going by the broadband packages, they offer download limits of 10GB, 20GB and 30GB for their 1Mb, 2Mb and 3Mb packages respectively. However, unlike most services that mention about a fair usage policy or that excess usage may apply, there is a point saying "If you exceed the download limit you will be charged 1c per Mb". During the time I have been with BT, I never exceeded my limit, so am unsure if they do actually charge for excess usage or if this means they now do.

[Francis Gary Powers]

BT are appalling!

Customer service and “Technical Support” are very poor – they really don’t give a fcuk and try to fob me off with bullsh!t

I’ve had an ongoing problem with my 2Mb B’Band connection for nearly 3months
Connection either drops or cannot be established for days on end
Download speeds are appalling
Cannot make connections to ‘basic’ sites (e.g. BBC, RTE, HotMail, Boards.ie) for hours on end

I’m gonna switch to UPC / NTL or 3’s wireless broadband

[mrpotatohead]

I'd agree with Francis Powers, I'm not on BT but just the amount of stuff you read about them makes me agree

[Sean]

Even though I was assured a few times already that BT has cancelled my account, I got yet another €80 charge on my credit card two days ago.

I called them up this morning and again I was told that there is no record of me cancelling my account. Just after I called the company back in the middle of August, I also spoke to ComReg and they said that the next time I call them, I should ask to make a formal complaint. So on this call, I asked once again to cancel my account, made a formal complaint request and at least got a reference number for the cancellation. The person said that as there is no record of me cancelling my account nor has BT been notified by Digiweb of my transfer, they cannot give a refund, even for this latest bill. I gave my transfer ref #, but they said this was of no use to them. As the result, the most the person could do was wipe all my financial details off their system, which has now been done. I must write to my credit card company and BT to stop debiting my credit card in case they do by some chance try charging again, as I tried calling the credit card company but they said I need to write to both them and to BT with a copy of this letter.

I must give Digiweb a call later. However, even if it turns out that Digiweb never notified BT, I should not have been charged by BT since the time in June I originally asked BT to cancel my account.

Anyway, after experiencing all this hassle and feeling like I've been robbed again, I would strongly recommend staying clear of BT Ireland for DSL.

[deckie28]

Originally Posted by tomb

I have bt option 3. 3mps broadband & total talk Package. Ifind it excellent My download speed is over 2.5 mps.

I have the same package and find it excellent value for money...... but but but....... their customer care team are a shower of ( I wont say it to avoid a ban.)

For example from January to July this year they didn't even know I had broadband with them even though I have been a customer for about 4 or 5 years.

[Gwasanaethau]

Yeah, I was on BT Narrowband for a while and I also had problems with their lack of communication in their HQ. I'd ask to be transferred from one service to another and be told it would take 5 days, and find out a month later when the bill came in that they hadn't changed me. I'd phone up and they would say exactly the same thing - there's no record of you ever contacting us. When I cancelled the connection, they were still sending me bills (the first on had a full charge for a month's (or was it two months') service, the next three or four were just blank). I had to call them several times and send letters to get them to stop! Their actual Internet service was OK though, I had nothing to complain about.

[Sean]

As advised by ComReg, I made a formal complain to both BT and Digiweb a few weeks ago. I recently got an e-mail from Digiweb which was cc’d to ComReg confirming that they have been notified by Eircom at the time I joined Digiweb that my DSL line is with Digiweb. I also got a phone call from BT saying that they will refund me as far back as when I last logged on to their network. As I tested my old BT account periodically for about a month after I was connected to Digiweb checking if my old BT account was still active, this meant that I could not get refunded back to the time I was connected with Digiweb, but at least I got a refund for the remaining months rather than nothing.

Should anyone else end up with the same double billing issue as me, my advice to start off with is to not test the old ISP DSL logon, but instead to try getting the billing issue sorted with the ISPs and then with ComReg if either ISP refuses to cooperate.

[dickiesam]

BT Customer Care or don't care? Don't use their on-line procedures for cancelling anything. It doesn't work. My experience with BT has been basically similar to all the bad stuff previously posted.

I had a repeating problem with their 2 month billing every 2 months for nearly 2 years, despite their assurances the matter had been sorted before it finally was. At the beginning of last July, when I got my current broadband connection from Regional Broadband, I went to BT's web site to cancel my narrowband connection with them. Got an onscreen message the cancellation had been noted and it would happen within a couple of days and I would receive a confirming email.

No email arrived within a week so I went back to the site to check only to find the agreement had not been cancelled. I repeated this procedure every couple of days for a fortnight with the same result.... no change. I then emailed my request, worded quite specifically, to Customer Care, adding there appeared to be a problem with their web site. No response! Repeated the email and 4 days later I got a reply that a Line Disconnection Application Form had to be filled in!

Emailed again, pointing out my request was specifically to cancel my internet agreement. No response! Emailed again adding my annoyance etc and finally got a reply that cancellation was confirmed but only from the current date because they couldn't trace my previous requests starting well over a month prior on their web site log.

Customer Care? Don't make me laugh!

[finners_99]

raj,

I have BT broadband and it was delivering over 1Mbps on downloads up until quite recently. However over the past 8 weeks the connection speed has been getting slower and slower, it down to sub 500kbps connection now much of the time. I believe I'm running into significant contention and I'm currently working with BT to try and figure out what is going on. Its not going well.

Does anyone have any experience with Cable broadband from Chorus/NTL?

SF

[priji]

The B.T. Broadband (Basic Package) 2.2 Mbps it seems adequate, pretty reliable.

[finners_99]

Hi priji,

Turns out that the slowdown I experienced was due to a hub on my internal network which was dying. When I replaced it I was able once again to get an average speed of 1.750 Mbps down and about 200K up stream. I've had the service from EsatBT for almost 3 years now and have never had a single outage with it.

Cheers
finners