BT

[DracoM]

Anyone having trouble accessing email via BT tonight? [ Mon 3rd Feb. ]

[gurnemanz]

Yes. Just tried mine and got a garbled screen.

[EdgeleyRob]

No problems here.

[Anna]

Since about 8pm yesterday, and today, seems ok now. Their homepage around lunchtime was also completely dead.

[Hornspieler]

If it's available, consider switching to Virgin Fibre Optic Cable Media; TV, Phone, and fastest broadband - or try Sky TV package. Both offering special deals for new customers and many extra TV channels. (and you can retain your existing phone numbers, etc when you switch.)

Hs

[DracoM]

Tues 4th: seems to be slow but OK this a.m. Thanks for responses.

[gurnemanz]

Seems to be back to normal.

[JimD]

I suspect this is due to the ongoing process of shifting from BTYahoo to BT Mail. So far as I can judge it has been and continues to be a shambles.

[DracoM]

Given that BT are desperate to attract new customers to finance their hubristic bid for Premier League Football etc etc and the launch of their TV Sports service, you'd think they would make sure that the very core of the business i.e. interface with broadband customers would be better able to respond to this ugly shambles which has been going on for nigh on 6 months and more.

Every hacker in the known world must be sitting on the fence salivating like crows watching lambs, ready to pick off the unwary.The labyrinthine and arcane tangle that is BT communication gets more and more ravelled.

[Dave2002]

If it's available, consider switching to Virgin Fibre Optic Cable Media; TV, Phone, and fastest broadband - or try Sky TV package. Both offering special deals for new customers and many extra TV channels. (and you can retain your existing phone numbers, etc when you switch.)

Hs

We switched to BT before Christmas. There are both good and bad points.

Good points:

1. Overall the package we selected seemed quite good value - but with some caveats, to follow.
2. The YouView box in the package seems very good. This is probably made by Humax. We did have a conflict between the remotes for YouView and a Humax Freesat box.
BT customer service help could only suggest moving the two boxes apart, but a query to Humax resulted in a much better solution, as it is possible to move the remotes to different channels so that they don't interfere with each other.
3. We did get the benefit of a Sainsbury's gift card - £100.
4. Data transfer rates are high compared with what we had before.
5. Some of the extra TV channels are, for us, worth having. We're not particularly bothered about football, but the additional opportunities to watch tennis are appreciated. Others would have to consider whether BT's channel offerings are good for them. We haven't noticed any arts/music programmes in the channel line-up.
6. Our package is, we think, a 12 month contract. However this now seems not to be available - most are now 18 months or longer. See point 6 in the section below.

Bad points

1. The transfer to BT wasn't completely seamless. We lost the 1571 message facility because we didn't realise that BT didn't include it, and didn't mention it when we were setting up our order. It costs extra with BT. We may have missed some very important messages because of that. We didn't even notice that we weren't getting any messages for well over a week, though since that was during the Christmas and New Year period we didn't think hard about it. Restoring that service took a little while - it was not merely a few hours.

2. Phone call charges seem much higher, to the extent that we now try to avoid using BT for outgoing calls altogether. We can do this as we have another line with another provider. Not everyone will be able to do that. Others would probably find it cheaper to immediately pay the extra for almost ** unlimited calls. [** i.e not international, or some other premium calls]
Don't wait months to find out that phone call charges are much higher than you expected.

3. The broadband usage allowance appears to get used up quite quickly. This could partly be because BT gets the YouView TV viewing mixed up with the broadband usage, and this is confusing and annoying. We just managed to avoid going over the usage allowance in January. BT really needs to get that fixed ASAP. We don't actually know whether our projected over limit usage was real or not - see also point 4 below. ***

4. Monitoring broadband usage could be important if there are issues with limits etc. However the broadband monitor does not update frequently enough, and sometimes it is several days between updates.

5. Navigation round the My BT website seems a bit haphazard.

6. Most of the interaction to check on the account is paperless - online. There is no clear record of our original purchase order, so it is hard to check the value of any potential upgrades. I thought that upgrading might be useful with regard to both the phone call usage, and the broadband usage, but without a clear and agreed baseline for charges, including any special initial discounts, it is hard to know whether upgrades are going to be good value or not. I know what I thought we were signing up for, but I can't find a definitive document which states this clearly.
There is a considerable lack of transparency in some areas. I have avoided the issues about a possible requirement for upgrade of the package for both phone and broadband by (a) extending the wireless coverage in our home from the other provider, so that non critical downloads are routed through the other provider - with an unlimited download budget and (b) extending the phone coverage in our home by using a 20 metre phone extension cable to move one of our phone base stations to give much better coverage within our house. This is a very much cheaper solution than trying to use some phone extenders, which don't work properly because they don't handle the dialing and ringing tones properly. The "wireless" phone extenders will be sent back to Amazon.

I would advise anyone considering moving to BT to proceed with caution. What they provide may be very good, but watch out that costs don't far exceed what you might imagine.

*** For some it would be advisable to go immediately on to an unlimited broadband contract as this would be cheaper than paying extra for going significantly over the allowance each month. However, many will not go over the monthly allowance, and it would be more expensive to pay for unlimited broadband without good reason. Not being able to monitor the usage properly, due to infrequent updates, and the inaccuracies due to YouView or other usage are an unwanted complication. Take care with that!

[DracoM]

Absolutely top analysis! And certainly in terms of 'haphazard' navigation, opacity of contacts / costs etc, spot on.
It's virtually a monopoly in terms the basic network, and none can say them nay. So busy fighting Sky the ordinary customer's needs, assistance seem to me to have been virtually bunged into the cellar below the back office's outhouse.

[JimD]

I can't understand why such a large outfit is technically so...I'm afraid 'crap' is the word I'm after. As well as the BT Mail fiasco I have tried repeatedly to use the BT Cloud. (Stupid, I know but the auto back-up seems occasionally useful.) At the moment when I try to open it I get a blank window with the Cloud logo. I have tried reinstalling a few times, and it works at first, but then reverts. Occasionally it will function properly for no apparent reason, but then gives up again. Their Help system is also worse than useless.

[PJPJ]

I've found BT until very recently to be very satisfactory, and the fibre-optic service has been almost trouble-free.

Email was out on both Monday and Tuesday for some hours at a time, and for some weeks before that webmail wouldn't remember log-in details. What is worrying, as has been mentioned before here and by me, is the number of btinternet customers who have had their email hacked and stolen. Apparently BT fixes things so they get their address back, but it would better were this not to happen in the first place.

BT has been advertising the fact it's giving up on yahoo for some time now, and promised a new system would be in place by now.It seems no nearer happening.

[DracoM]

YES!!

[mercia]

probably the wrong thread. I'm on BT Infinity 1 - 40gb monthly download allowance. I really think they ought to change the wording of their allowance policy

If you exceed your usage allowance, you'll be charged for additional usage in units of five gigabytes (GB), at £5.30 per 5GB, which will appear in your next bill, and you will be sent a third email to let you know

I really don't think that can mean that if you are 1 gigabyte over you will be charged an additional £5.30. At 41gb I haven't reached one of their stated units which incur an additional £5.30 charge.

I think I may have raised this before and been told that "5gb or part thereof" is the assumed sense.;grrr;