This topic

End of contract

kinetic747 — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 17:03:35 GMT

I'm coming towards the end of my contract and I can get FTTP, but my god the "offer" I'm getting from BT to stay is shocking. If I want 500mb/s it's £7 per month more expensive than Sky, £11 more than Vodafone, £4 more than Plusnet and £7 more than Virgin. I've just tried to phone retentions but there's a 45 minute wait. Does anyone know the best time to phone, and also if it's likely I'll be offered a better deal than the one I can see in MyBT?

There was a deal showing yesterday at £36/month with complete WiFi but that's now disappeared.

Re: End of contract

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 17:29:31 GMT

What you get from retentions appears to be a complete lottery. My contract expires next month & I've tried retentions twice. On both occasions the "very best price" was exactly the same as that offered in MyBT, an extra 11%.

Having now moved into the final 30 days, the "very best price" in MyBT has now increased by £5 & almost to Zen levels. While every day on these forums we see the continual downward spiral of anything vaguely resembling customer service or support.

I'm just counting down the the last 14 days when I'll place an order elsewhere.

Re: End of contract

kinetic747 — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 17:32:28 GMT

Very disappointing isn't it? It's as though they've given up competing.

Re: End of contract

Anonymous — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 17:49:13 GMT

It's always been BT policy to prioritise the recruitment of new customers at the expense of the existing. You just have to play the game too. Use a cashback site to do a comparison & get a much better deal with cashback too. Then at the end of that contract, maybe come back to BT, where they'll welcome you with new customer discounts & cashback offers. It's madness but just the way it works.

Re: End of contract

pippincp — Fri, 11 Oct 2024 18:24:39 GMT

Hopefully OTS will change that and ISP's will concetrate more on keeping customers. Then again pigs might fly.

Re: End of contract

ney — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:12:53 GMT

I left BT over 18 months ago at the end of my contract and had been with BT well over 20 years. After BT never offered me much of a discount for my FTTC and I would have been paying £7 more a month for a similar package to the one I was on and that was with a 10% discount.

I moved to Sky FTTC and have saved £14 a month compared to BT. Just the other week I got a similar deal with them when my contract had come to an end and on the same FTTC package. So I'm still with Sky for FTTC.
Depends who you get on the phone but BT seem to offer most of there deals and discounts to new customers.

Re: End of contract

kinetic747 — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:33:37 GMT

I've decided to leave now after 30 years as it's unlikely they'll match any of the competition. I now have to decide who to go with and I'm wavering between Vodafone (cheapest) and Plusnet who seem to have the best CS.

Re: End of contract

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 08:58:27 GMT

@kinetic747

I spent 17 days with Vodafone a while back before jumping ship, they were truly awful. I think @naylor2006 had a similarly bad experience.

I've been with Plusnet a few times & they were OK but two things to bear in mind. They no longer provide any telephony & it's still a BT group business. So will likely be subject to Alison Kirkby's hatchet swinging to cut jobs & costs.

Re: End of contract

kinetic747 — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 09:01:10 GMT

If you don't mind me asking who are you with now? My daughter and dad are both with Vodafone without issues, but they haven't had to phone CS yet.

Re: End of contract

naylor2006 — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 09:51:16 GMT

Maybe take a look at Aquiss....you have to provide your own router but it has so many other benefits such as no price increases during contract, a shorter contract period, so you can leave and come back to someone else as a new customer again sooner getting new customer prices again.

The best way to approach Broadband renewal is nearly always moving to a new provider taking up new customer prices, but as @Anonymous I would steer clear of Vodafone. They were consistently the cheapest when I was looking for an FTTP provider moving away from Virgin cable after Openreach completed their network around here. Everyone said their support was bad and entirely offshore, I was coming from Virgin though, how bad could it be....bad, very. There is a reason they are the cheapest and I assume its because their entire support structure for residential is cheap.

If you never need support then great, but if you do whether its about a fault or accounting you are limited to a chat bot before getting through to a human who will, without fail, ask you to confirm the same thing you confirmed 400 times before getting anywhere else. Everytime I reached support it was a solid 45 minutes before anything that could be deemed as constructive occurred. It was driving me crazy. The other thing that stinks is that you dont get access to your account until your broadband goes live, that was what I was told, so you cant log in to My Vodafone to view order status etc, you just get your two emails when you order and a date for install, if anything goes wrong its going to be hell. I left within the cooling off period for my own mental health, I needed to cool off.

You didnt ask me specifically but im am with BT but I am a new customer still ish....I will be going through this in 18 months and ill probably go Aquiss for a year losing my TV and relying on app based TV then returning to EE I expect if they still have the same decent pricing they have now.

Re: End of contract

Anonymous — Sat, 12 Oct 2024 10:38:42 GMT

@kinetic747wrote:
If you don't mind me asking who are you with now?

If that was aimed at me, BT until 9th November. We're probably pushing the envelope of discussing other providers but I'm happy to continue by PM.

@kinetic747wrote:
My daughter and dad are both with Vodafone without issues, but they haven't had to phone CS yet.

I think that's the critical thing. Anyone can provide great service when it's working. The question is what happens when it doesn't? BT/Plusnet were always mid-price with mid-level support. Now they're pushing towards the premium pricing of the likes of Zen, while the CS/support spirals ever downward. The final straw for me was them laying off the Moderators. The last chance to have a sensible conversation about an issue & a high likelihood of it being resolved. In fact it was Mod intervention that got me a reasonable renewal in 2022, after the usual "We couldn't care less if you leave from "retentions".

To me there's no longer any distinction between BT/EE/Plusnet & the bargain basements likes of Now/Vodafone.

Re: End of contract

kinetic747 — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 13:29:07 GMT

I had a better offer appear in MyBT this morning, £31/month for 500 Mb/s, so decided to stick with them. Looking forward to the uplift in speed, and hopefully reliability once the copper line is replaced.

Re: End of contract

kinetic747 — Thu, 31 Oct 2024 08:16:43 GMT

As stated previously I've renewed my contract with BT but still getting phone calls, emails telling me my contract is almost up and asking me to renew. Is this normal?

Re: End of contract

ney — Wed, 13 Nov 2024 21:36:02 GMT

@kinetic747 yes that is normal for a few days after you renew contract then the system will update and show you have renewed.

I myself have not used the landline for phone in well over the last 18 months. Even though I have pay as you go and got changed to digital Voice(internet calls) back at the end of March last year.