Three weeks and still no engineer...that'll be BT then! (BT Broadband)

Member Name: Holidaying

Product:	BT Broadband
Date:	16/03/09 (481 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Generally problem free service.

Disadvantages: Problems, when they arise.

Most people have a computer at home, and most of them want access to the internet. It's no different in my house and the day came when we had to select a company to provide us with that service.

We had a BT phone line and for no other reason than that there are a myriad of providers all offering what I see as 'the internet' (I'm not technologically minded enough to understand what differences different providers might have in their services!) for roughly the same price we decided to select BT to provide our Broadband service.

First of all I should say that we had to check that we were set up with Broadband in our street (this was a while ago and I believe that most places have access to Broadband now) and we were. Apparently the speed was one of the slower ones but we were told it would still be faster than Dial-Up, one of the alternatives to Broadband.

So we arranged for BT to come and set up our internet connection. We were given a day and time that the engineer would arrive and they turned up about three hours late. They had not called us to tell us that the engineer would be late and when he arrived he offered us the obligatory but insincere apology.

I thought that things would look up from there, but they didn't. There was some kind of problem with the line and works had to be done at the main switchpoint and would take a few days.

About a week later another engineer came round, much prompter this time. He supplied us with a router which takes cables from the power socket, phone line and computer, and he installed the program on our computer. Within about an hour we were up and running and all in the house were delighted to have a faster and much more exciting (or so we imagined it to be!) internet connection.

Everything was fine for quite a long time, about eight months if I recall correctly. Then, however, we lost the ability to connect to the internet. We tried the Health Check that comes with the program on the computer but it only told us to check the cables. We did this many times to no avail. Finally I decided to call BT Broadband. I was put through to a call centre in another country and then was passed from one person to another to another. I was asked to do some checks and told that they would call me back. I did the checks (which involved plugging and unplugging cables in the house and checking to see whether we could connect to the internet) and they did clal me back. After establishing that the fault was not within the property, they agreed to send an engineer round, but told me that if the fault was found to be within the property we would be charged almost one hundred pounds for the call out and then extra for any work. I felt that this was some sort of scare tactic and I wondered whether we should do some more checks first so I told them I would call them back to let them know our decision.

We conducted the checks again and couldn't connect to the internet, so I called back. BT had no record of the call or the fact that they'd agreed to send an engineer round, and once again I was passed round between the call centre staff and asked to conduct the checks again. About forty-five minutes later, they once again agreed to send an engineer round.

The engineer did not arrive on the specified day and again there was no telephone call. This was really annoying as I had taken the day off work to be there. Two days later, the engineer turned up and luckily someone was in to greet him and let him in. He did some checks and found out that the fault was indeed not on the property (much to our relief as this meant that BT pay for the work and we didn't have to). The engineer went off to do some work about five miles away and called to let us know that it had been completed. He said we should be able to connect to the internet. We could and we were happy to have the internet back again!

All was well until we had the exact same problem again about three months later. We went through the whole process again, of calling BT, being passed around in the call centre, conducting checks in the house, and waiting for engineers who arrived late and without a phone call. Finalyl, after about three weeks, we had an engineer come out and the problem was fixed. Once again it was a problem outside of our home for which BT were liable. I asked BT to subtract the money from our bill for the time we did not have access to the internet and they refused, despite the fact that it was their fault.

Since then we have not had any problems with our internet connection and thankfully have not had cause to call BT.

In general, the experience is very good. Broadband is quite fast and we haven't had many problems with it. When we have had problems with it however, they have, as I've described, really been a nightmare and for this reason I cannot recommend BT as a Broadband provider.

Summary: Not recommended.