Unhappy New Customer

[petenice]

So far I have to say I'm extremely unimpressed with the service I've recieved from BT.

I moving away from Virgin after 7 years as BT are finally offering FTTP in my area.

I made my order on the 21st Nov and was told that I would be able to be connected by the 21st Dec when my Virgin connection gets disconnected. It's now apparent that was a complete lie just to get the sale.

Since tracking my order it's become clear over the last few weeks that none of my dates for each stage were being hit and it's now incredibly unlikely I'm going to be connected by the 21st Dec.

I decided to phone BT and they are now claiming OpenReach (groan) have a backlog and they're not even going to reassess when I'm going to be able to be connected until the 19th Dec - two days before I'm disconnected. None of this was communicated to me, I had to find this info out for myself.

I also work from home and need a good upload/download speed for work so I'm going to be left in a difficult situation.

Compound that with my kit being sent by Royal Mail - who are striking this week and have told me there's going to be delays in receiving it the whole sorry situation is a shambles.

I forgot that most non-Virgin provider are at the mercy of the mighty OpenReach as it's their infrastructure and they aren't answerable to anyone.

I'm pretty close to cancelling the whole thing and staying with Virgin and have a complaint opened before I've even been connected.

An absolute joke of a situation so far that will unlikely be resolved this side of Christmas.

[rbz5416]

If you want to move to BT then just keep the Virgin connection alive until the BT service is up & running. Worst case you'll have a month of overlapping charges but won't have a period of no connection.

As for raising a complaint, you may as well address your issue to Santa & post it up the chimney... 😁

[petenice]

So the solution is to pay for two connections because of BT/OpenReach incompetence? That hardly seems like a fair resolution to this situation.

So I have to go through the faff of contacting Virgin - cancelling my cancellation order  - I'm sure they'll then claim I'll have to start a new contract if I do.

The onus on me and BT just twiddle their thumbs.

[rbz5416]

Fair or common sense I'll leave for you to decide. I'm simply suggesting a way to solve your issue. But cancelling one service on the same day another is supposed to go live when you work from home seems reckless to me. For the exact reasons you're now experiencing.

[petenice]

So you're saying it's my shortsightedness then? So how long before my 30 days cancellation period should I have ordered my new connection? 6 weeks? Two months?

Is a month an unrealistic timescale to get connected with a new provider?

The average time is 2 weeks for a new provider to connect you.

[rbz5416]

It's called a contingency against an imperfect world. There are any number of reasons why a new installation might fail, unforeseen problems with the infrastructure, Openreach engineer calling in sick on the day, problems with activation, etc.

When you need the service for work, it seems sensible to cancel the existing service after the new one is running.

[petenice]

Ok Mr Contingency. I guess you've got money to throw away.

[garybs29]

If you cancel a cease with Virgin it has no need to start a new contract should just move onto a monthly rolling contract on current terms.

Also the connection date won't have been a lie purely to get the sale, sounds like theres some work needing done that wasn't anticipated hence the change of dates unfortunately

[gg30340]

Are you dealing with the "normal Customer Service" or with the FTTP Team on 0800 587 4787.

If you are not dealing with the Fibre Team give them a call to see what they can do to help. They may be able to give you a 4g Mobile Hub to tide you over until you are connected.

[-Richie-]

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@petenicewrote:

So the solution is to pay for two connections because of BT/OpenReach incompetence? That hardly seems like a fair resolution to this situation.

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Not that it helps much but BT won't start charging for the broadband until it's installed and activated, keep your VM service live until you no longer need it so you don't go without.