Just want an internet connection
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BT all very successful organisations in terms of profit and market share
I don't think you can pat BT on the back for being successful given all the benefits they enjoy. The only way they'd make a loss is if you put a bunch of toddlers in charge of the show.
Re:successful .... B&Q agreed, Ryanair agreed, Sky partially .... they don't exactly have much competition.
Part of the problem, as you say, is the stupid rush to the bottom on pricing caused by the idiotic lo to no cost mentality of customers, particularly the residential private individuals.
But quite frankly, companies like BT should know better and should not be structuring and marketing products the way they do to uneducated customers. Sure, make it cheap... but don't hide behind fancy marketing and small print... make it clear what compromises you've made in order to deliver the service at that price point.
Agree with you on Nildram, and have seen what happened to them. Hence my warnings about BT & Plusnet..... one day, it will happen... not might, will.
Over and out from Mixture who has happily never flown Ryanair and only Easyjet once because the nearest anyone else could get me was 200 kilometres away !
Mixture
Some of us are pensionners and cannot afford anything but the cheapest/best value deal available.
Markets have segments.
You are happy in the posh segment with Apple £500 tablets etc. I'm in the cheap segment with my £100 cheapo Android grief-giving tablet, and the cheapest deal I can hassle from BT.
Some of us are pensionners and cannot afford anything but the cheapest/best value deal available.
Markets have segments.
You are happy in the posh segment with Apple £500 tablets etc. I'm in the cheap segment with my £100 cheapo Android grief-giving tablet, and the cheapest deal I can hassle from BT.
What I meant was as a pensionner I am one of these...."Part of the problem, as you say, is the stupid rush to the bottom on pricing caused by the idiotic lo to no cost mentality of customers, particularly the residential private individuals."
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AO,
Ah, well.....pensioners were not included in "idiotic lo to no cost mentality of customers" ....
Surely the whole "rush to the bottom" thing can't have escaped your observation ? So many marketing messages are about cheap cheap cheap.....look at the supermarket adverts for example.
Ah, well.....pensioners were not included in "idiotic lo to no cost mentality of customers" ....
Surely the whole "rush to the bottom" thing can't have escaped your observation ? So many marketing messages are about cheap cheap cheap.....look at the supermarket adverts for example.
It's not all a rush to the lowest price point. I used to work for an fmcg Co and I could bore you for hours about market segments and how to define them using psycho/socio/econ criteria.
When the wife buys Farrow and Ball, (which is technically no better than Dulux) the hubby buys Bose, (I'd buy Denon or NAD) and the kids wear Ugg boots (made in China).............they are just a part of a segment.
That's why Tesco love their clubcard - it tells them more about you than the psycho-phds that they used to employ.
How did you get status on Malaysian?
When the wife buys Farrow and Ball, (which is technically no better than Dulux) the hubby buys Bose, (I'd buy Denon or NAD) and the kids wear Ugg boots (made in China).............they are just a part of a segment.
That's why Tesco love their clubcard - it tells them more about you than the psycho-phds that they used to employ.
How did you get status on Malaysian?
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It's not all a rush to the lowest price point.
How did you get status on Malaysian?
Their satay service is one of the best things I've eaten on an airline for quite some time too !
Usual disclaimers apply!
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So, basically everyone is saying, pick a broadband package and take your chances!
I've been looking to change mine to fibre and can't make up my mind whether to go for just a basic line or get a TV package as well.
The little green box is about 100 mtrs away and I know that has fibre running to it.
JFI I've been with aol since 1997 and I must say its worked flawlessly. I don't have any aol software (desktop!) on the computers and the netgear router is one given to me years ago.
So I'm still no the wiser
I've been looking to change mine to fibre and can't make up my mind whether to go for just a basic line or get a TV package as well.
The little green box is about 100 mtrs away and I know that has fibre running to it.
JFI I've been with aol since 1997 and I must say its worked flawlessly. I don't have any aol software (desktop!) on the computers and the netgear router is one given to me years ago.
So I'm still no the wiser
gas path
for a practical reply.................If you go with BT, who are chasing prices down, as mixture points out, along with plusnet, their "cheaper" brand, then, if all goes well, then it will be fine.
Mixture and others point out that if you have problems, though, BT is an often impenetrable bureaucracy, with too much IT help outsourced to script readers in India, who do not help as they are neither trained nor empowered to help.
As I pointed out above, their inept bureaucracy might allocate the wrong engineer to "solve" any problems........this is frustrating when you have to stay home to let them in.
So you can go with BT, and fingers crossed, all will be well. If it is not well, be prepared for some truly average service. As othewrs have said before, if the service is bad, write to the CEO and/or the Chairman, to get their support units on the job.
I am 1 km from the Green box which has fibre. I get 46 mega whatnots, which is very impressive.......I think I get that because I have a newish copper cable for the last 100 yards.
for a practical reply.................If you go with BT, who are chasing prices down, as mixture points out, along with plusnet, their "cheaper" brand, then, if all goes well, then it will be fine.
Mixture and others point out that if you have problems, though, BT is an often impenetrable bureaucracy, with too much IT help outsourced to script readers in India, who do not help as they are neither trained nor empowered to help.
As I pointed out above, their inept bureaucracy might allocate the wrong engineer to "solve" any problems........this is frustrating when you have to stay home to let them in.
So you can go with BT, and fingers crossed, all will be well. If it is not well, be prepared for some truly average service. As othewrs have said before, if the service is bad, write to the CEO and/or the Chairman, to get their support units on the job.
I am 1 km from the Green box which has fibre. I get 46 mega whatnots, which is very impressive.......I think I get that because I have a newish copper cable for the last 100 yards.
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Rare be it for me to show a degree of agreement with the Ancient one....
Broadly speaking he summarises correctly. By all means sign up with BT, but just be aware of the many pitfalls that come with the combination of a low price point and incumbent carrier. Caveat emptor as they say.
Indeed... only just yesterday I rang up about a fault.... first question that came from the Indian one was "Are you able to make incoming and outgoing calls ?", to which I replied slowly and clearly "yes, I am able to make incoming and outgoing calls" (with emphasis as indicated). Our dear correspondent script reader then attempted to talk me through the script for .... yes, you guessed it .... troubleshooting lines where the customer is unable to make incoming or outgoing calls !
One was not amused. Bearing in mind that I had ALSO pressed the correct button on the IVR to tell their system I was NOT calling about a dead line.
Broadly speaking he summarises correctly. By all means sign up with BT, but just be aware of the many pitfalls that come with the combination of a low price point and incumbent carrier. Caveat emptor as they say.
Mixture and others point out that if you have problems, though, BT is an often impenetrable bureaucracy, with too much IT help outsourced to script readers in India, who do not help as they are neither trained nor empowered to help.
One was not amused. Bearing in mind that I had ALSO pressed the correct button on the IVR to tell their system I was NOT calling about a dead line.
I haven't had to phone BT for a very long time. However, having decided to change ISP on one of my lines to BT, I was recently looking for my router - sorry, home hub - to turn up. What arrived was a special delivery label attached to a folded, empty, plastic envelope slightly larger than the label. Imagine my fun and delight explaining that one to India!
To be fair, it was sorted within the promised 24 hours (impressive as it was pm and I live "offshore") but what arrived was a small box proclaiming to the world that it contained my replacement home hub. [This was of interest to the postie as it transpired he was having ongoing difficulty with his BT internet. But that's a different story...] Among the paperwork was a warning that I might be charged if I don't return the old router.
I confess that I have written them an actual hard-copy letter. Hopefully, this one will not run ...
To be fair, it was sorted within the promised 24 hours (impressive as it was pm and I live "offshore") but what arrived was a small box proclaiming to the world that it contained my replacement home hub. [This was of interest to the postie as it transpired he was having ongoing difficulty with his BT internet. But that's a different story...] Among the paperwork was a warning that I might be charged if I don't return the old router.
I confess that I have written them an actual hard-copy letter. Hopefully, this one will not run ...
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I live on a small island (Stronsay, Orkney UK) and a friend recently moved house on the island - from a small rented private house with BT phone/broadband to a council house whose previous occupant had BT phone/broadband.
She asked BT to transfer her phone & broadband from the old house to the new house on a particular date. The date arrived and my friend found that the phone/broadband at her old house had ceased to work (as expected). However, no dialtone when a phone was plugged into the master socket at the new house.
During a phone call to BT (India) she was informed that there was no line at the new house and an engineer would have to travel out to the island and install a new line. After several weeks of phone calls & emails (including submitting a video of the incoming BT phone line and a sworn statement from the previous occupants) BT said they would send out an engineer. The following week the BT engineer arrived and sorted out her phone/broadband.
But the story doesn't end there. So far my friend has had THREE visits from BT engineers to "install her new line" - these visits involve a 4 hours round trip on the ferry and represent a full day's work for the engineer even though there's nothing for him to do.
She asked BT to transfer her phone & broadband from the old house to the new house on a particular date. The date arrived and my friend found that the phone/broadband at her old house had ceased to work (as expected). However, no dialtone when a phone was plugged into the master socket at the new house.
During a phone call to BT (India) she was informed that there was no line at the new house and an engineer would have to travel out to the island and install a new line. After several weeks of phone calls & emails (including submitting a video of the incoming BT phone line and a sworn statement from the previous occupants) BT said they would send out an engineer. The following week the BT engineer arrived and sorted out her phone/broadband.
But the story doesn't end there. So far my friend has had THREE visits from BT engineers to "install her new line" - these visits involve a 4 hours round trip on the ferry and represent a full day's work for the engineer even though there's nothing for him to do.
I trust that the OP is well content ... and I tip my hat to mixture. (I shall remain silent in the matter of that outfit which once briefly sported a logo which swiftly became known as the Prancing Pederast ... and worse things ... lest, if I vent but a whiff of my viciousness on that topic, I be banned from this place forever).
Copper pairs worked quite well for early, very slow digital stuff (railway telegraph), tolerably well for LF analogue (voice telephone), but thenceforward the higher the frequency, the greater the signal leakage via the cable self-capacitance ... which of course gets worse as the cable gets longer. It follows that you should never expect crackingly good 'broadband' at the end of a long, copper exchange line, no matter how determinedly and fluently the sales people lie to you.
Being at the end of a couple of Km of waterlogged multicore (interrupted not long ago by people who like to recycle such stuff via the scrap merchants) I long looked forward to the day when cellular internet connections might be worthwhile. The creaky GSM services in my rural patch were unsatisfactory, but eventually 3G arrived with an acceptable 2.1GHz signal. I have been pleasantly surprised, and so now pass on my experiences in case they may benefit others.
It would be daft to sign up for a contract before making sure the service was acceptable (or ever, for me, as now I know) and at first I was deterred by the charging structure offered by celluar ISPs who perversely cap both data use and period of use on prepaid deals. (Surely a noteworthy marketing gaffe because that way, whichever expires first, the punter feels he has missed out on the other one). I now wish I hadn't been, and had jumped in sooner.
Although my data traffic is quite modest, because most of my use is for reading, rather than downloading videos etc., I expected that I would scoff my quota long before my first, exploratory 30-day 'trial' expired. Not so! - the traffic metered was ~ ¼ of my estimate, based on my ADSL/WiFi traffic. I was astonished, and I suspect that the difference may be at least partly due to excessive 'dropped packets' (electronic equivalent of "Say again?? ....Say again??") on a poor landline connection (... hmm ... nice little earner, no?).
I was impressed; the only drawback was having to wind back security settings on my email service due to frequent IP address changes.
The upshot is that, now, I have:-
- no "service" "engineers"
- no exasperating conversations with Bangladesh
- no line rental (no line, grand!)
- no damned direct debits
- no router tantrums
- no contract (prepaid SIMcards), ergo, no phishing (full anonymity, no junkmail)
- no 'excess' charges (just bin SIMcard on expiry, have another ready)
- a reliable, hassle-free internet service at last, for less each week than half the price of a good pint.
- ...and, WRT the OP, one I can use in any UK holiday place within range of a suitable base station.
Copper pairs worked quite well for early, very slow digital stuff (railway telegraph), tolerably well for LF analogue (voice telephone), but thenceforward the higher the frequency, the greater the signal leakage via the cable self-capacitance ... which of course gets worse as the cable gets longer. It follows that you should never expect crackingly good 'broadband' at the end of a long, copper exchange line, no matter how determinedly and fluently the sales people lie to you.
Being at the end of a couple of Km of waterlogged multicore (interrupted not long ago by people who like to recycle such stuff via the scrap merchants) I long looked forward to the day when cellular internet connections might be worthwhile. The creaky GSM services in my rural patch were unsatisfactory, but eventually 3G arrived with an acceptable 2.1GHz signal. I have been pleasantly surprised, and so now pass on my experiences in case they may benefit others.
It would be daft to sign up for a contract before making sure the service was acceptable (or ever, for me, as now I know) and at first I was deterred by the charging structure offered by celluar ISPs who perversely cap both data use and period of use on prepaid deals. (Surely a noteworthy marketing gaffe because that way, whichever expires first, the punter feels he has missed out on the other one). I now wish I hadn't been, and had jumped in sooner.
Although my data traffic is quite modest, because most of my use is for reading, rather than downloading videos etc., I expected that I would scoff my quota long before my first, exploratory 30-day 'trial' expired. Not so! - the traffic metered was ~ ¼ of my estimate, based on my ADSL/WiFi traffic. I was astonished, and I suspect that the difference may be at least partly due to excessive 'dropped packets' (electronic equivalent of "Say again?? ....Say again??") on a poor landline connection (... hmm ... nice little earner, no?).
I was impressed; the only drawback was having to wind back security settings on my email service due to frequent IP address changes.
The upshot is that, now, I have:-
- no "service" "engineers"
- no exasperating conversations with Bangladesh
- no line rental (no line, grand!)
- no damned direct debits
- no router tantrums
- no contract (prepaid SIMcards), ergo, no phishing (full anonymity, no junkmail)
- no 'excess' charges (just bin SIMcard on expiry, have another ready)
- a reliable, hassle-free internet service at last, for less each week than half the price of a good pint.
- ...and, WRT the OP, one I can use in any UK holiday place within range of a suitable base station.
