To get fed up with bt broadband

I THINK THERE ALL THE SAME HAVE SPENT HOUR ON THE PHONE TO TALK TALK

With BT Infinity. When it goes down, boy does it go down. Last time had no net or landline for a week, turns out it was THEIR old faulty wiring in a box up the telephone pole (it then runs down and underground to the house). Had to keep nipping to the nearest McD's (10 miles away) to hop onto their wireless!

While they were at it they checked the 'new' hub - that had also had it, so they replaced it there and then; second one in 12 months!

Oops, that should read "has".

I agree 100% with Phoenix and her comments about Plusnet. I was with AOL previously and they were horrendous, leaving me without a phone or computer use for days when I was trying to switch to Plusnet.
I know exactly how much my monthly bills will be as I can trace my calls on a daily basis. Everything, for me is very clear. Even the 0845 and 0847 numbers are free which is a bonus.

The only good thing about AOL was that I did not have to watch the clock when gossiping with friends. I do with Plusnet as it is expensive to go over the hour.

I think that Plusnet have a customer for life.

I like the sound of plusnet. Shall investigate soon....
B.T.are extortionately expensive.

I hate BT too! They're rubbish...we've changed to Sky and they're so much better. :-)

When out hub died, BT wanted to charge us for a new one -we swapped to plusnet ( ironically owned by BT ) paid line rental in adavnce, and now only pay £4.99 a month ! broadband and free evening and weekends calls, plus call centre in the UK preserving employment

I've been with Demon since early days... I remember the thrill of moving from dial-up to 2Mbs broadband - then it was updated to 8Mbs. They suggested I change to ASDL2+ which I did, and now get speeds of 16Mbs, cheaper than I had the 8Mbs service!

I am not impressed with BT. Unfortunately in my area BT is the fastest BB (tested interdependently). The big annoyance I find is that they seem to throttle back the speed for downloads giving me less than 40kb/s and sometimes as low as 10kb/s. normal surfing seems to be mostly reasonable!
I must admit that, being paranoid, I keep my firewall up limiting access to my own computers and NOT the BT hub!

I have sat in, waiting for a BT engineer several times now at DD's house. They go offline two or three times a day! They have finally given up, cancelled the contract ( and were surprised at how readily BT accepted that and didn't charge) and are now waiting for Sky. No cable here yet, but we are very happy with Sky.

DD suspects, given this acceptance, that there is some huge problem about which we are not being informed. Or, to quote her, they are a bunch of T***s. that's. Y girl!

(Actually, that's more a royal "we" because we have every sports channel you could imagine, and they are not for me.....)

My BT wireless connection was very slow. after over an hour on the phone to BT they came up with a plan of sending an engineer to my home to install a new all singing all dancing hub, the one I have is only about 18 months old so it should not need replacing yet. This visit was going to cost me over £100.
I told them not to bother, I brought an Ethernet cable from Amazon for £2. 25p put the one end in the hub the other end to the back of the processer of my desktop pc and success instant internet connection. OK so I no longer have wireless connection on my pc but as its a desktop I am hardly going to drag it into the garden to use it am I

We have recently changed to a fibre-optic service provided by PlusNet, who are affiliated with BT.

It is a BT engineer who calls and fits the new service, and the speeds and service seem very efficient.

The charges are cheaper than BT, and, best of all, if problems arise, you speak to a UK call centre, not offshore.

So far, we are quite impressed with the new service, and recommend PlusNet as a new ISP if problems with BT can't be resolved efficiently.

Switching to another provider does not get around the problem of BT owning the line and BT Openreach being the engineers who deal with faults. Your provider has to get in touch with them over any line problems (you cannot contact them directly) and the end result is chaotic chinese whispers - I speak as one who knows!!

We changed broadband from AOL to PlusNet, then changed phone from BT to PlusNet, very easy, no problems, although to save changing email addresses every time, we both use email addresses not connected to the ISP, if that makes sense?

I think BT is ever so expensive. I have complained ad nauseam and they have reduced their charges occasionally. I would quite like to change but am afraid of complications which might arise with a new broadband supplier.
Any upset with my broadband would cause me to turn into a headless chicken..... so I will shut up and pay up, I suppose.

Aka I know they are owned by BT, but you wouldn't believe the things BT offered us when we first told them we wanted to move!

I suppose it's speak as you find, and I have always found PlusNet brilliant.

In addition, I just can't stand those awful adverts with the 3 flat sharers that BT have. I'm sure the one with the fringe has body odour problems and makes odd noises when having sex, if of course he ever does.

We have had no problem with BT. When our internet kept dropping out and we were having long periods when it was down, we were blaming BT but when we googled the problem we discovered it was a router problem. We bought a new router and installed it and immediately had 24/7 online service and no dropouts.

Just switched back to BT from Plusnet. I found the customer service deteriorated over the year I was with them and ended up so fed up with all their mistakes I left. Then I found out they were owned by BT!!!

Think they're all as good/bad as each other except for TalkTalk who are the absolute donkey's armpits.

when I thoroughly recommend them, not only are they very reasonable on price, they also score well for their after sales customer service.

When you look on some comparison sites, some companies offer brilliant deals, but fall down after (orange can be a bugger to get hold of, unless you're buying!) but PlusNet are so good.

They do a referral service, whereby if someone you recommend joins, you get a discount, but I've never actually used it, just happy to tell others how good we have found them.

I think it may depend where you live. We had big issues with BT in Surrey but when we had a problem shortly after moving here they came and fixed it quite quickly and the engineer sorted out the problem which was in the loft but we were not charged!

We have BT Internet and have no problems and it does allow us to pick up the Internet at various BT hotspots as well.

I heard that PlusNet is owned byt BT, is better and cheaper so when our contract runs out we will investigate changing to them.

Galen I don't think they treated you like that because you are a woman, I think they assume we are all idiots and that it is an 'IDtenT' problem!

AOL is a pain - on the round robin I regularly send out, 3 people are on AOL and they bounce back every time.

Up to now our BT has been fine and our broadband much quicker - which was what we hoped for. Our village is now 'fibre optic' and we are about 200 yards from the box.

We were with AOL and had been worried about the change but decided that, as one could go and make a cup of tea while waiting for something vital like GN to 'appear', the time had come for change.

We knew that we had signed up for a contract with AOL but had no idea when or for how long. We looked on 'Your Account' on AOL but could find no trace. I rang them to cancel and they told us that we had 6 months left but when I asked why we couldn't find out from the site, I was told that they don't put personal information on the site because of all the fraud that is happening in the UK

I was also told that we would lose our phone number (which also happens to be the business line). I said that BT were the only people who could take the number from us and that I didn't like being threatened in that way (I was angry by now!!) and was told, in no uncertain terms, that I had not been threatened and the girl could take action against me for saying she had threatened me

She also said that, if we did not pay the rest of the contract 'action' would be taken.

The BT engineer who changed us over was lovely and did everything possibly to ensure that things were working well before he left.

Just going to bolt the door in case the bailiffs are around.

That's helpful, Phoenix. I've been thinking about switching to them.

We have had PlusNet for our broadband for quite a few years now, and I switched to them for my phone as well after getting fed up with my ever increasing phone bill.

We have free anytime calls to standard numbers, unlimited broadband and the highest my bill has been since we switched (over 6 months ago now) was £15.85. I've just had advance notice of the amount for this month - £11.34.

They are also very easy to deal with if you do have any problems or queries.

Even when your provider is not BT, they own and service the lines. We had endless trouble a few years back. I will not bore you with the saga, but what I did discover is that when you have to have several visits to cure a fault (and we had dozens and dozens) the engineer at your house at any moment has no idea what previous engineers have tried as they do not pass that info on - how stupid is that! It is the policy apparently.