O.K. I’m with O2 and the three times in 5 or 6 years I’ve needed tech. support they have been brilliant. I’m very satisfied with them.
Now BT are trying to get me to change to them and offering me a very good telephone/broadband package giving me a £10ish a month saving for almost no effort. But what’s their tech. support like?
The saving is interesting but not a deal breaker, I’m happy to pay for good service.
I’ll be moving to them shortly. To be honest unless you are commercial then all the support is much of muchness these days.
We were with BT - full package phone, broadband and BT Vision - for about a year but when it came to bill-time they kept trying to overcharge, and we had very annoying teething troubles getting BT Vision to work, and after a while the hub/router developed an issue whereby we kept having to press its reset button several times a day.
The support was fairly useless and difficult to understand. If you go with BT and think you might need to ring their tech support, you had better start learning to speak Hindi.
We switched to Virginmedia, no problems experienced so far 6 months on, and not had to reset the router once (bliss!).
Be careful, as Virgin’s tech support is mostly in India, and they are even more useless than BT. Also Virgin telecom/network infrastructure engineers are not that great. They managed to cut off an entire city for weeks, and it took them week to find the problem.
BT are far far better than Virgin in my experience.
I have to disagree with you Kevin unfortunately I had experience with both, Virgin broadband at home has been down once in 12 years, and support is always brilliant for tv issues that couple of time a year when I needed it.
Bt gives me the creeps and their customer service is diabolical, business or private. spent hours on the phone every time there’s a problem, and don’t get me started on their engineers.
BT are good to work for but thats all
being a customer is atrocious! they treat their customers like crap
Avoid BT!
i hate their adverts, they are the opposite to whjat they portray!
I was with BT once, never again.
I know others who are haveing issues with BT and have also used to.
Im with Virgin, they have been good IMHO. no crap BT line required either
Been with various Virgin services since they started. Very reliable, but God I hate the automated messaging when you ring them up! It is so bloody patronising!
BT - terrible customer service. They are in India and 2-way communication is difficult to put it mildly. You might get a UK call-centre like 1 phone call in 10 but they’re not really much better. Standard response is to tell you to re-set your router and if that doesn’t work then to phone them back… when they tell you to re-set your router and if that doesn’t work then to phone them back… and so on.
It’s nice when the Indians make a stab at some small-talk though - like they’re trying to convince you that they’re really based in a call-centre near you and are therefore able to meet your needs better! Middle of July… “So how is the weather in your part of London today sir?” Me: “Pretty cold, been snowing for days now, going to have to shovel the drive. How about your area of London?” Them: “Ah yes, heavy snow here also sir, very cold, brrrrr!”. :hehe:
BT= bAstard telecoms. Nuff said…
23 Pages of whoa on VM Customer Service for a single major problem. By the time it was resolved, a significant number of Virgin customers, had ordered new serviced which had been delivered.
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33664279-slow-connection.html
I’ve never understood the problem with Indian call centres, i’ve never trouble understanding their accents and instead of getting a 16 year old school leaver from Gateshead, you probably get an IT graduate from Mumbai so presumably more chance of them understanding the problem?
Makes no difference in the long run though, if the company don’t give them the back up to sort problems out.
I guess I will stick with tiscali for now!
Sometimes Indian call centres are OK, but in most of my dealings it isn’t the language or accent that is the problem, but the complete lack of understanding of the problem. Yes I have already reset everything, uninstalled everything, reinstalled everything, reset defaults etc long before I bothered to call. Stop following that script drafted for a moron and listen to me! I find it difficult to believe that Mumbai IT graduates are that robotic. It bugs me incredibly that Indian call centre staff are always instructed that no problem is ever a network problem at the provider end but must always be at the customer’s end and an engineer must come round to my house to fix their network! The first available appointment will be in ten days time in work hours well after they have fixed things at their end so all is working well!
One other thought - What about mobile broadband. I’m about to give Three a go and am going to buy their ‘cube’ for wireless connectivity around the house. £15 p/month for 10Gb which is what I currently get with BT but pay more for. Also expecting similar speeds. There’s rolling contracts available so no tie in.
I have been with BT since 1991 when i bought my first property and never have had a problem with them apart from once when i moved house and they did not connect my broadband for 3 days after i moved in. If i have had an issue if has been dealt with straight away and without hassel. I have everything with BT which may not be the cheapest around but i think i get the best service you can.
If it ain’t broke don’t fix it !!!
Why not try and get your current provider to price match.
Have been with NTL/Virgin for 9 years, a couple of problems during that time scale and was fixed without too much hassle.
Have heard/read horror stories about ALL broadband providers, so I am sure most on here have a story to tell about
their provider at least once.
i was with NTL as well before it became Virgin.
to be fair, i had to wait for them to install the cables before the service went to broadband from dial up, BUT (AND I EMPHASIZE THATS A BIG BUT :D) i was always kept in the loop about what was going on, i kid you not. honesty is always the best strategy when it comes to customer service, imho.
they also gave me free services whenever they screwed up, which is NOT what BT does.
everyone has troubles at some point, as long as you explain how it is people will understand. the only two strategies i found BT to use is a) ignore the problem or b) keep passing you over to different operators until you loose your patience and hang up in dispair.
oh wait, i forgot my personal favorite, c) operator ‘pretending’ to pass you over to another department and hang up the phone on you ‘by mistake’ :laugh:
The times I’ve been with BT I hated it, they’re just useless, in the end I switched to O2 about 4 - 5 years ago. In the rare occasion that I did have to phone their support line, they were helpful and understood the issue instead of rigidly sticking to a script.
Thinking of switching to Virgin too (been pondering that for a while now), mainly since O2 doesn’t have any fibre broadband yet and no ETA on when it’ll be available.
I think they’re all the same, i record my convo’s with them, as most of the time it says in an automated voice that this call may be recorded, i make sure i get whats promised, including start date etc… and get them to void the contract if they don’t keep up good service.
Paranoid, moi, Nahhhhhhh
I’ve been with Talktalk for 7ish years. I’ve now got their Youview, internet and international calls package which is good value at under £30p/m inclusive of line rental.
My services have never gone down in the 7 years I’ve been with them but when I call to add stuff to the package they are usually quite good at giving it to me for nothing after a bit of negotiating/arguing. They recently wrote off the Youview connection fee of £50 when I started moaning about it.
If you have a problem talking to Indians on the phone don’t join Talktalk.
