BT Cust. Svcs: "BT equipment is now degraded"

[Bungaroosh]

(This is FTTC -- Fibre 2. I may have posted it in the wrong forum topic)

I phoned BT to try and clear up the discrepancy between prices I'm being offered for contract renewal via email and on My BT.

There have been issues for the past couple of weeks where the speed dropped to about 30 Mbps rather than its normal 64. I didn't report the fault, but on logging on to My BT it says "Major service outage: Planned engineering work ongoing in the area". On installing a Smart Hub 2 today to replace my very old Openreach modem + Home Hub 3, the speeds have improved a bit -- 60 down, 18 up. I'm fine with this and would like to renew the contract at a decent price with these same speeds.

Anyhow, on speaking to Retentions to discuss the price discrepanies, she told me that BT can only offer me speeds of 35-36 Mbps because "the equipment is degraded". I said I've just installed a Smart Hub 2 today. She said, I might have just installed it, but it might be old and degraded (I received it unsolicited through the post in mid July, and have only just got around to setting it up today). I said, when you say equipment, do you mean the local BT network or this brand new Smart Hub? She said the network equipment is degraded in my area because it's old, hence the slow speeds.

I didn't want to get facetious with her as she probably has no choice but to say this stuff, but I would have said "BT allows its equipment to degrade and only allow half the speeds I've had for the past ten years?"

I don't know what to make of this, but it sounds like total nonsense.

She went and spoke to a manager and then said that their systems only update every 15 minutes, so if I call back in a couple of hours, she might be able to see on her screen what speeds/prices are available to me.

Prior to this, she was in the process of signing me up for EE Broadband, which I didn't want to do. I said, "I don't want to sign up to EE Broadband before you tell me about the packages offered by BT". (EE offers on their website are worse than BT in terms of both price and speed.)

I'm pretty confused by all this. I'll try phoning again tomorrow. But if anyone has any perspectives on all of this, I'd be very glad for any advice or suggestions.

[iniltous]

You do realise the minimum speed guarantee isn’t a limit , it’s purely the point at which , should speed fall below it  , your ISP has to do something about the speed , it’s not a speed cap .

Say a line is capable of 60Mb ,  ( if the line fault free ) and it performs like that consistently , the actual data from the connection is used to calculate the MSG , so probably around 54Mb , but after a while, the line develops a fault and because of that fault, instead of operating at 60Mb the speed falls to 45Mb , if the fault goes unreported and the line  not repaired, the real life connection data is now  45Mb so the new MSG is calculated as 40 Mb , so at renewal ( or potentially changing provider )  , you are offered a much lower guaranteed speed , but it’s still exactly the same equipment, exactly the same line , it’s just the line has a fault on it.
If  you renew with the new MSG ( 40Mb ) and the fault is repaired either by you reporting it , or a common fault is cleared and you benefit, your speed doesn’t stay at 40Mb ( because it’s nothing more than a trigger point ) , your speed goes back to 60Mb ( way more than the MSG ) , and as the ‘real data’ from the line is collected ( operating at 60 Mb again ) and at the next renewal your MSG is 54Mb again as the line has been delivering 60Mb again .

[Bungaroosh]

On that call I was told that all that was available for a new contract was 35 Mbps speeds yet today I'm getting 60.
And on the BT website there is a choice of 3 different speeds for this address.

[iniltous]

You should get hung up on that , are you saying that BT state that even though you are currently on Fibre 2 (  80Mb profile ) they will only sell you ‘ Essential ‘ which is a 40 Mb profile , or are they simply advising you that ( using old performance data ) that 35Mb is all you will get on Fibre 2 , so it’s not a good value connection based on your historical performance.

You need to ask what broadband profile are they offering, Essential ( 40Mb profile ) Fibre 1 ( 55Mb profile ) or Fibre 2 80Mb profile ( the one you are currently on if you are getting 60Mb ), if they are providing Fibre 2 but simply warning that you may only get 35Mb , you already know that’s not the case anymore and you will get 60Mb , irrespective of the 35Mb MSG .

If they are only offering Essential broadband because of the historical data ( while your line was faulty ) you may need to wait until the line data shows your now fixed line delivering 60Mb …or insist they renew what you currently have , Fibre 2

[Bungaroosh]

They seemed pretty clueless, signing me up for EE when all I was doing was enquiring about the costs and speeds to renew my contract with BT Broadband. They didn't give any names of the various packages. They didn't say that they could only offer me a low speed on a contract because there is a temporary problem in this area (which would appear to have been fixed now anyway).

Hopefully I'll get through to somebody sitting in front of a functioning computer tomorrow.

[chrisjp]

The telephone agents want to switch you to EE because they get a commission for doing so. Just answering pesky customer questions doesn't provide any commission, so they'll tell you anything to persuade you to change to EE.