Pathetic speed. Lying salesman. Expensive but reliable. (BT Broadband)

Member Name: DarkestGrey

Product:	BT Broadband
Date:	14/08/08 (404 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Reliable line

Disadvantages: Slow, expensive, lying staff, may try to penalise you if you move

This is the experience I (and others I know) have had with BT:

Signing up to their service is simple. It takes anything between 2 to 8 weeks to get connected. Once connected things are easy. You plug an ADSL modem into your phone line (BT ususally supply you with one) and you are away.

Problems may occur if you decide to move. Signing up with BT locks you into a contract (usually 12 or 18 months) and moving house is something BT regards as cancelling your old line and starting a new contract. I was not charged a cancellation fee but my sister has recently been threatened with court action over her £300 cancellation fee. She didn't cancel, she moved house and has BT Broadband in the new house. She told them she was moving, she didn't cancel and reorder the line.

Personally I think that is disgusting. If you are in rented property, be wary of this tactic that BT are trying to pull.

One other consideration is the speed they tell you. When I moved house I checked the telephone number was suitable for my BT Broadband and it was, although only at 1MB/second. This wasn't too bad at the time, so I moved in to the house taking up BT Broadband with me.

When my contract came to an end, they phoned me and asked me to be locked in again for another year and for the privelidge, they would offer me 8MB/sec and various other items. I said yes, happy the broadband would be faster and cheaper.

Some of the items they offered did turn up (a router) but other bits and pieces never did.

The increase in speed was noticable. Noticably slower. And then slower. Until I went onto the BT website to check the maximum speed they said my line could handle.

It said my line was not capable for broadband. No wonder it was getting slower.

One day I went into the Post Office and they were offering their new broadband service and the lady checked my speed (as they go through BT lines, the speed would be the same). The speed came out as 256kb/sec. This is one quarter of one megabyte per second.

Or - 32 times slower than advertised. And not the TV advert - what their salesman told me directly.

I wouldn't be happy to buy a sports car and the salesman tell me that it can do 200mph, only to buy it, drive it away and find it only does a maximum of about 7 miles an hour.

But this is what BT offered.

On the other hand, once connected, I have had very, very few problems. The line has stopped working on occasion. Usually for just a few minutes and this has probably happened only once per year. I can't remember it being off for any length of time and certainly never more than a few hours.

The biggest problem is people don't realise who uses BT. I have had friends recommend both the Post Office Broadband and Sky broadband, but since they both use BT lines, this won't solve the slow speed.

There really are only four choices of broadband:

BT and affiliates (Post Office, Talk Talk, Sky and a million others)
Virgin
USB/Mobile connection
Satellite

Summary: Go to the post office and ask for them to check your real speed for you. They'll tell you.