End of BT BB Contract

[Orient]

I did not want any of their upgrade paths i.e. wifi or halo. Also their charge for fibre 900 was more than for a new customer! They gave me the EE option which I thought was quite good and not expected and in the end suited my pocket. There was no pressure as I was going to look at other options with providers but decided this was best for me

[Orient]

Re " One could be forgiven that this is the future. I’m such a cynic " I think your probably right 🙂

EE is concentrating more on the home market and BT will be more for business users.

[Kimberlin]

@Orient 

Im genuinely pleased for you. Make sure however that in 24 months time when your EE contract comes to an end, that you don’t just become complacent and just sit there like so many ‘loyal customers’ do, sometimes for years, paying over inflated prices that others are getting for far cheaper. You can obviously talk to Retentions or just switch depending on your circumstances.

To be fair, I’m beginning to wonder why BT are continuing to bother allowing new customers to join as residential customers. Those that wish to stay with BT, great, let them because for some, loyalty definitely pays, not necessarily for the customers, but definitely for BT if those customers are paying far more than they might with an alternative ISP or they’re just too bone idle to pick up the phone and renegotiate.

[Kodikid]

Kimbo 

It's nothing to do with being bone idle. 

There's a real fear over switching providers 

I've managed to sneakily still with BT while maintaining a new customer deal everytime. 

Only because she who must be obeyed would go ballistic if I jeopardised our current brilliant broadband for the sake of saving a few quid 

Better the devil you know

[Kimberlin]

@Kodikid 

Well I too had brilliant broadband with BT for 4 years, absolutely perfect, zero complaints, except for the annoying annual price increases which we all know, are nothing less than a poor joke. I say that because on leaving, I’m currently paying monthly, what I was paying 6 months after joining BT 4 years ago purely because I switched. I’ve had absolutely no difference in speed or service since switching, it was seamless and I’m paying less money. Trust me, my Wife has a very important career WFH and she needs broadband reliability but she trusts me to make the right decision when it comes to renewal. I don’t have time to waste talking to a retention department, it’s easier to switch and get the new customer pricing and rewards cards.

I accept some like yourself are either to sewer content scared to switch in case you end up with terrible BB or terrible customer service, or you have seemingly no choice but to retain a landline and so switching to an ISP without DV, isn’t an option. But I still maintain that there are people out there who most likely are too bone idle to switch or the monthly direct debit goes out every month and they might be wealthy enough to not even care how much they’re paying, but that’s their choice.

[Andrew600]

Not so sure about including customer service in your reasons not to switch @Kimberlin 

For me it has gone steadily down hill since the enforced retirement of the excellent mods who could nearly always solve any problems when all else had failed. Knowing they were there was a major reason to stay with BT for quite a while for me. 

[Kimberlin]

@Andrew600 

To be fair, some customers view of excellent or appalling service may be completely different to another customer’s viewpoint. I see where you were heading with your point and I agree with you.

Concerning the Mods, if you look at the EE forum, it looks very much like they’re double hatting between this forum and that one, so they’ve got plenty on their plates. I’m not criticising the Mods because they clearly have to deal with carp that the call centres ought to be dealing with properly.

[Orient]

I looked at other companies and there feedback and had virgin in the past. No landline here. Never been frightened to change but its just a pricing decision. Also looked at Community Fibre but did want another hole in the same wall!

[chrisjp]

The other issue with moving from BT is if you (probably unwisely in retrospect) have BT email.
You get downgraded to the basic email service which cannot be accessed from an email client, thus ruling out email access from smartphones via their built-in clients.
The option to pay £10/month to keep the full email service exists but this can wipe out the saving from moving ISP, especially if you need to pay another £10/month to get VOIP phone serevice from the other ISP.
The other option is of course to get a new email provider such as gmail and then laboriously change the the email address you have registered with multiple businesses, clients, contacts and friends. A daunting task!

[Kimberlin]

@chrisjp 

I thought for those that were no longer BT broadband/DV customers who wished to retain their BT email address at a Premium level, was £7.50 a month?

Irrespective, paying £90 a year just to keep an email address is quite frankly, ludicrous. There are far better email providers out there that cost on a subscription around a third of what BT charges, I know, I subscribe to a Swiss based email provider that I pay roughly £34 a year for.

Whilst for a lot of people it might seem like a daunting task to notify contacts about a change of email address, again, knowing what human beings are like, it's all about ultimately, whether they can be bothered with the perceived hassle. I've done it myself, it's a PITA but ultimately, for me anyway, moving away from the likes of Gmail and Outlook, it was very much worth the short term pain. But, as evidenced on this forum by the reams of threads concerning problems with BT email from multiple contributors, they are clearly happy to put up with the pain. I accept that there are very many happy users of BT email who seemingly never have a problem and that's great for them.