Broadband Inter-not

theatrically_inclined

Dedicated Member
After 3 months of using public Wi-Fi and a mobile phone as Wi-Fi hotspot, we had broadband installed 10 days ago.
It went down last night.
Engineer due 12:00 - 14:00 today - no one arrived.
He had called ahead (no call received) and the householder said they did not have Broadband, so the engineer cancelled the appointment.

Clearly the engineer was at the wrong address, but instead of calling me or the office, he just aborted.

The offer of £30 compensation does not get my broadband working ...

Every time. It happens to me every time. :02:
 
Sorry to hear this Leigh, sadly some of these communication companies don't do a very good job of communicating
Thanks Terry...
The technician I spoke to just after 2pm promised to phone back later to let me know what they could do. I did not expect a call, so I called at 4pm. They could only offer an appointment for Thursday, but could not put it in the system because there was already an appointment for today. He promised to call back by 8pm. I was just about to phone again at 7:20pm when he called. They had "resolved" the appointment conflict, but now Friday was the earliest they could manage.
There is absolutely no interest in trying to provide customer satisfaction, they just blindly follow the script and won't use intuition or common sense to try and resolve problems.
 
Thanks Terry...
The technician I spoke to just after 2pm promised to phone back later to let me know what they could do. I did not expect a call, so I called at 4pm. They could only offer an appointment for Thursday, but could not put it in the system because there was already an appointment for today. He promised to call back by 8pm. I was just about to phone again at 7:20pm when he called. They had "resolved" the appointment conflict, but now Friday was the earliest they could manage.
There is absolutely no interest in trying to provide customer satisfaction, they just blindly follow the script and won't use intuition or common sense to try and resolve problems.
Oh Dear, do you want to hint at the provider
 
Thanks Terry...
The technician I spoke to just after 2pm promised to phone back later to let me know what they could do. I did not expect a call, so I called at 4pm. They could only offer an appointment for Thursday, but could not put it in the system because there was already an appointment for today. He promised to call back by 8pm. I was just about to phone again at 7:20pm when he called. They had "resolved" the appointment conflict, but now Friday was the earliest they could manage.
There is absolutely no interest in trying to provide customer satisfaction, they just blindly follow the script and won't use intuition or common sense to try and resolve problems.
I feel your pain Leigh Openreach seem to do all the phoneline broadband installs are absolutely hopeless in my experience.

I took a day off work to accommodate their ridiculous 7am - 1 pm time slot and no one turned up for me either. They were at pains to point out beforehand if I was out and they couldn't access the house they would charge me £75 as a no show fee. Therefore I told them I wanted £75 no show fee for my wasted time, you can guess the response I had......:mad:
 
I always think it's better to use the smaller providers as they want to keep customers and will do their very best to keep on top of openreach and keep the customer happy.
The top provider and most expensive is Andrews and Arnold https://www.aa.net.uk/, when my daughter moved into the village they had to stick with B.T. as they were still in contract, they had endless internet dropping out and having to work from home it was a major problem for them, B.T. kept coming out and changing wires etc with no resolve, they finished their contract and went to A&A and within two weeks of running a trace on their circuit got openreach to swop out a multiplexer on the local cabinet and it was solid as a rock after that, as A&A was only a monthly contract to keep cost down after 3 months they moved to Zen https://www.zen.co.uk/ who offer a decent product along with a great VOIP router FOC, as we will all move to VOIP in a couple of years, it is also a great way to save money on calls, VOIP to VOIP call are free if set up correctly, and my last annual bill for outgoing calls was a little over £12, I have not had a landline number for over 2 years reducing my internet cost.

If you have friends overseas then making your outside call via https://www.voipdiscount.com/dashboard can save you a fortune
 
I always think it's better to use the smaller providers as they want to keep customers and will do their very best to keep on top of openreach and keep the customer happy.
The top provider and most expensive is Andrews and Arnold https://www.aa.net.uk/, when my daughter moved into the village they had to stick with B.T. as they were still in contract, they had endless internet dropping out and having to work from home it was a major problem for them, B.T. kept coming out and changing wires etc with no resolve, they finished their contract and went to A&A and within two weeks of running a trace on their circuit got openreach to swop out a multiplexer on the local cabinet and it was solid as a rock after that, as A&A was only a monthly contract to keep cost down after 3 months they moved to Zen https://www.zen.co.uk/ who offer a decent product along with a great VOIP router FOC, as we will all move to VOIP in a couple of years, it is also a great way to save money on calls, VOIP to VOIP call are free if set up correctly, and my last annual bill for outgoing calls was a little over £12, I have not had a landline number for over 2 years reducing my internet cost.

If you have friends overseas then making your outside call via https://www.voipdiscount.com/dashboard can save you a fortune
Thanks for that useful info Terry, I subscribe to Which? and they always rate Zen as one of their best buys. These days you can get free unlimited calls on many sim only contracts for less than a tenner so I'm not sure if there is value in reduced/free calls on landlines anymore.
 
I feel your pain Leigh Openreach seem to do all the phoneline broadband installs are absolutely hopeless in my experience.

I took a day off work to accommodate their ridiculous 7am - 1 pm time slot and no one turned up for me either. They were at pains to point out beforehand if I was out and they couldn't access the house they would charge me £75 as a no show fee. Therefore I told them I wanted £75 no show fee for my wasted time, you can guess the response I had......:mad:
At least I've been offered £30, but that doesn't give me 5 days broadband!
 
I always think it's better to use the smaller providers as they want to keep customers and will do their very best to keep on top of openreach and keep the customer happy.
The top provider and most expensive is Andrews and Arnold https://www.aa.net.uk/, when my daughter moved into the village they had to stick with B.T. as they were still in contract, they had endless internet dropping out and having to work from home it was a major problem for them, B.T. kept coming out and changing wires etc with no resolve, they finished their contract and went to A&A and within two weeks of running a trace on their circuit got openreach to swop out a multiplexer on the local cabinet and it was solid as a rock after that, as A&A was only a monthly contract to keep cost down after 3 months they moved to Zen https://www.zen.co.uk/ who offer a decent product along with a great VOIP router FOC, as we will all move to VOIP in a couple of years, it is also a great way to save money on calls, VOIP to VOIP call are free if set up correctly, and my last annual bill for outgoing calls was a little over £12, I have not had a landline number for over 2 years reducing my internet cost.

If you have friends overseas then making your outside call via https://www.voipdiscount.com/dashboard can save you a fortune
I'm still paying BT ... for nothing, cos I had a 24 month contract...
 
Thanks for that useful info Terry, I subscribe to Which? and they always rate Zen as one of their best buys. These days you can get free unlimited calls on many sim only contracts for less than a tenner so I'm not sure if there is value in reduced/free calls on landlines anymore.
A tenner a month on a mobile is fine Barry, though that is still £100 a year more than my last annual phone bill, mainly because VOIP to VOIP calls are free, many of my friends and family use VOIP so we can chat away with no time limits for no extra cost, you can also divert calls from your home VOIP numbers to mobile for very little cost, handy if you have to pop out and your waiting for a call at home.

I think the problem is the large telecom providers don't want folk to know the options so they can keep as much of the revenue from you as possible, I have been informed that the big companies will charge as much for a VOIP number as the old landline cost to bridge the gap once we all go digital, where in fact you can pickup a VOIP number for home for £1 - 2 a month instead of £8 - 10 a month.

Now this digital platform is not perfect, power cut and it won't work unless you have a backup power supply, internet down it won't work, so keeping a mobile handy is a good idea, if the VOIP provider has server problems that can cause problems, rare but it does happen and can last from a few hours to a few days.

In future we will have to keep both mobile and a home digital service, once the bulk of the UK is switched to fibre or cable internet, then all TV will be delivered via the internet and for most areas, TV aerials and satellite services will vanish, the cost savings to the broadcasters will be massive, though I doubt that will be passed onto the end user, so this will incur extra cost for the pensioner who currently watches strictly via a TV aerial and does not have internet at the moment.
 
Our telephone (landline) died and I called on my cellphone (mobile) of course, and set up a time of arrival. The repairman arrived at the stated time and after much troubleshooting, came up with a workable solution. However, I had one concern regarding his plan and he was able to accommodate my wishes.
 
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