Finally decided to move on from BT ....

[Dave2002]

Today I noticed that our contract with BT has ended. At least they had the decency to let me know not too long after it had expired.

So I looked around (with the help of Which reports) for a new deal, and found that EE have a much better deal. Phoned up the number, and had an interesting chat with one of their sales people.

An interesting comment though - moving from BT to EE - easy - we're the same company!

Hopefully it'll all work, but it looks as though we'll save maybe as much as £50 per month - partly because of not taking extra TV packages we hardly ever use, and the EE contract seems to include most of the features which BT took out as "included", but then added back in as "extras".

In the meantime going back to the BT site to check up on recent bills, I discovered that we have been offered a new competitive deal - but I think I'll let the switch to EE take its course this time.

One other comment about changing suppliers for services. This does seem to quite often give better deals. However, it seems there are also databases of people who don't ever use switching services - and these are used by companies in order to make sure they get worse deals!

It seems it's always worth trying to switch, or at least going through the investigation even if that leads to a renegotiation with an existing supplier.

Sad world!

[Serial_Apologist]

Today I noticed that our contract with BT has ended. At least they had the decency to let me know not too long after it had expired.

So I looked around (with the help of Which reports) for a new deal, and found that EE have a much better deal. Phoned up the number, and had an interesting chat with one of their sales people.

An interesting comment though - moving from BT to EE - easy - we're the same company!

Hopefully it'll all work, but it looks as though we'll save maybe as much as £50 per month - partly because of not taking extra TV packages we hardly ever use, and the EE contract seems to include most of the features which BT took out as "included", but then added back in as "extras".

In the meantime going back to the BT site to check up on recent bills, I discovered that we have been offered a new competitive deal - but I think I'll let the switch to EE take its course this time.

One other comment about changing suppliers for services. This does seem to quite often give better deals. However, it seems there are also databases of people who don't ever use switching services - and these are used by companies in order to make sure they get worse deals!

It seems it's always worth trying to switch, or at least going through the investigation even if that leads to a renegotiation with an existing supplier.

Sad world!

We're told capitalism has the advantages over all other systems in offering genuine choice, but the truth is, they're all in it together.

[french frank]

Hopefully it'll all work, but it looks as though we'll save maybe as much as £50 per month

I could never understand why people bothered to switch providers (for anything) in order to save a few pounds - but, goodness, your potential savings are not far short of my entire monthly bill, broadband, landline, mobile. Don't have TV of course.

[oddoneout]

Loyalty to customers fell out of use a long time ago. This has reminded me that shortly I will have my annual skirmish with RAC, which goes through the same irritating pattern each year, not helped by encountering some unpleasant call handlers who initially refuse to discuss terms and on a couple of occasions have been downright rude. Persistence has paid off the past 3 years, getting extra months for nominal or no increase rather than paying the 'double for 12 months' which is the opening gambit. At some point that won't work anymore, but for now I put up with it. I wouldn't bother at all except that now I am without family at home I have no help if problems arise when I am out in the car.

[Dave2002]

I could never understand why people bothered to switch providers (for anything) in order to save a few pounds - but, goodness, your potential savings are not far short of my entire monthly bill, broadband, landline, mobile. Don't have TV of course.

I don't mind paying a small amount extra each year for services that I/we use. One year our house insurance provider was so greedy that the premium was put up from something like £300 to £800, which prompted action on our part, and some quite interesting conversations - such as "So it's OK to reward 'loyal' customers by charging them £400 more than new ones?" etc. Eventually on that occasion we did renegotiate - can't remember whether it was with the same provider or not - but got the price down to lower than it had been in the first place.

Also, nowadays even going on to online quote sites tends to get noticed, so when you eventually get to "speak to an agent" to negotiate a deal, not only can you say that you've had a quote, but the agent may even say - "oh yes - we can see that", even if that was only a few minutes previously. If you don't interact with these systems you won't get a deal.

The sad thing is that I don't mind paying a reasonable (who decides?) fair price for services, but possibly going for new deals each year does give a very small margin of profit for those doing the work - but on the other hand why should customers/consumers be screwed for a laissez faire approach?

You might find that you can get a better deal on your phone etc. services if you try. I could send you the links if you wanted. On this occasion looking at Which was very helpful - though it's not always. In the past I've found it hard to get a direct comparison, because so many services in the phone/broadband/TV category have so many options (presumably deliberately to confuse) that it's hard to tell which are good deals and which aren't.

[Cockney Sparrow]

Moneysavingexpert is always my first port of call. I used to visit the library (those far off days...) for access to Which for a larger purchase.

We recently relinquished the BT line for a holiday cottage in the Scottish Borders and got a deal from John Lewis (one year, I'll need to switch in the summer) for which I get internet (copper wire from telephone pole, nothing fancy) and a phone line for less than the BT bill. For a few years I'd checked for competitive deals but I think recently the local exchange has "unbundled" (as I understand it non-BT equipment installed) which enables proper competition.
The irony is that it was commisioned by friends staying there in the summer when the equipment was delivered. By the time or our usual October half term visit we were prohibited from travelling, and then prohibited from entering that part of the UK, the (devolved) National Border for which is under a mile away....). I hope we will get to use it before I need to switch providers in July!

[antongould]

I have a tactic with BT ..... When I get to within 4 months of my contract end, I look around for their nationally advertised “new customer” offers and ring up and say can I have that .... initially they say sorry new customers only - so I say OK I am off and for the last 3 years I have got it .....

[Leinster Lass]

Blimey you got a good deal on the cottage.

Clearly can't be accused of being Craven.

[BBMmk2]

We had a very good deal with BT. Then when our contract came to an end, we said we were leaving them, because they couldn’t match our proposed provider but the person on the phone said I’ll see what I can do. What he did was go below by a penny to what our proposed provider said! So we thought a no brainier, plus with other incentives too!

[gurnemanz]

I could never understand why people bothered to switch providers (for anything) in order to save a few pounds - but, goodness, your potential savings are not far short of my entire monthly bill, broadband, landline, mobile. Don't have TV of course.

Same here. Having BT Broadband I get BT Sport via Sky for £11 and BT mobile sim free for £5 with unlimited texts and phone calls and more than enough data. Total monthly bill is £51, which seems acceptable. Swapping provider might or might not save a couple of quid but would just be unnecessary hassle. I, my wife and two children would have to change email addresses we have used for 20 years and I presume lose access to email history on server if account is closed.

[ChrisBennell]

Same here. Having BT Broadband I get BT Sport via Sky for £11 and BT mobile sim free for £5 with unlimited texts and phone calls and more than enough data. Total monthly bill is £51, which seems acceptable. Swapping provider might or might not save a couple of quid but would just be unnecessary hassle. I, my wife and two children would have to change email addresses we have used for 20 years and I presume lose access to email history on server if account is closed.

BT will allow you to keep your old Email address if you switch away from them. The catch is they will charge you £7-50 a month for the privilege - a cunning plan! That may reduce the savings you see.

[Dave2002]

BT will allow you to keep your old Email address if you switch away from them. The catch is they will charge you £7-50 a month for the privilege - a cunning plan! That may reduce the savings you see.

During the last year we wanted to have additional email addresses, so I set up a couple with our BT account. Turned out to be completely useless. Never got them working properly with our email clients and after not a very long while - perhaps 1-2 months, an email from BT appeared in my inbox saying that as we hadn't used them they were being closed anyway.

Obviously other people do manage to get BT email working, but for us this was very disappointing.

One other thing - given the conversation from yesterday. It it possible (but not guaranteed) that a switch to EE would retain almost all the "benefits" of BT but at a lower price - since that I was assured that the operations were almost identical. I asked about routers, and was told that EE would send a new one. When I asked what it would be like I was told that it would very probably be identical to the one we have, but with an EE badge instead of a BT one. Nobody is interested in having the older equipment back - possibly because of coronavirus, but I think also because these types of operations work on sales rather than service, so they send out kit (routers, set top boxes etc.) and as long as they keep getting payment for services it's more hassle to deal with returns and disposal of kit at the end of contracts than it's worth to the companies.

[french frank]

During the last year we wanted to have additional email addresses, so I set up a couple with our BT account. Turned out to be completely useless. Never got them working properly with our email client

I find a problem cropping up now and again, but on the whole my three BT addresses have worked well - but you take as you find: you may be trying to set up something more complicated than me.

Nobody is interested in having the older equipment back - possibly because of coronavirus, but I think also because these types of operations work on sales rather than service, so they send out kit (routers, set top boxes etc.) and as long as they keep getting payment for services it's more hassle to deal with returns and disposal of kit at the end of contracts than it's worth to the companies.

Don't know about the current situation, but BT has always sent me packaging and prepaid label to return my old router. Every now and again they inform me of their latest whizz-bang router and offer it free if I sign on for another 99 years, so I do. M Vinteuil will inform everyone that I described the following back in July 2011 , but just in case I didn't: last time, an engineer had to set it up. He came by appointment and asked if I understood what was involved (No, of course I didn't) "Only, when they hear some people say they don't want it after all" (Okay, so hit me with it). It meant resiting the master socket and drilling a hole through the wall of the house to the outside. All now works perfectly (at the moment, fingers and toes crossed), and as equipment and labour cost nothing, who was I to grumble?

But you can only judge from your own experience. I'm happy with the cost of my package and the service, so I stay put (for the moment (fingers and &c &c.) To my relief.

[Cockney Sparrow]

BT has offered / continues to offer an email service to compete with others who do the same - in my opinion. (As does my home provider Virgin).
I've seen comment (and it has been the case with the Virgin email facility) that BT is not really interested in the email faciity and failure to put resources into maintaining it as a reliable service will continue to aggravate users with slow response to problems and delay in fixing breakdowns.

My Virgin email addresses are there as repositories for email sent by services which I have hardly ever needed to access - comparison websites that send shedloads of messages after I've already renewed etc etc. When I need to leave Virgin the email aspect won't be any reason to stay with them.

For emails that matter I use a stand alone service such as outlook.com

[gurnemanz]

BT has offered / continues to offer an email service to compete with others who do the same - in my opinion. (As does my home provider Virgin).
I've seen comment (and it has been the case with the Virgin email facility) that BT is not really interested in the email faciity and failure to put resources into maintaining it as a reliable service will continue to aggravate users with slow response to problems and delay in fixing breakdowns.

My Virgin email addresses are there as repositories for email sent by services which I have hardly ever needed to access - comparison websites that send shedloads of messages after I've already renewed etc etc. When I need to leave Virgin the email aspect won't be any reason to stay with them.

For emails that matter I use a stand alone service such as outlook.com

For quite a few years I happily used Mozilla Thunderbird as a mail client, finding it very good, and I used to use Outlook at work but for a while now I have come to prefer webmail, since download speeds are not a factor nowadays and I don't feel the need to store umpteen emails on my laptop - not appropriate anyway since I spend as much time with email on mobile or tablet. BT email works OK but, as you rightly say, could be better and many BT webmail users were very disgruntled with the recent app upgrade. On my phone and tablet I mainly use the inbuilt Samsung mail app which is actually more usable than BT's own one.

I have found BT's service backup pretty good and they have been round promptly when I have mentioned problems. When I wasn't getting the speed I should last year a cherry picker was there the next day to fix a connecting wire on the relevant telegraph pole near our house.