[magpie114]

My experience with BT has been awful. I changed to BT (option 3) from Pipex when I moved house and it has been a catalogue of errors since then.

It took weeks to get me connected due to a problem with my phone line - I would spend ages on the phone each evening been talked thro various procedures which I knew were hopeless and I was constantly told that everything was fine and that I was in fact connected. After a few weeks I was finally visited by an engineer who found a problem with the incoming line which he rectified. My connection speed was 0.5 MB which I assumed was due to the distance of my exchange and I was just happy to be connected.

After a few months I started getting billed for broadband talk which was included in the price. This was rectified and I was credited only for it to happen again a few months later.

One day I was talking to someone who lived relatively nearby about poor speed only to find out he was getting in excess of something around 3MB. So I contacted BT only to find out that I was actually capped at 0.5 MB and that I was not on the upto 8MB option I had registered for and paid. This was attended to and my speed increased - however later I received notification of an additional broadband talk number, and received another modem. I phoned again to clarify the matter and was told that I would receive a sae jiffy bag to return the modem and as you can guess it never arrived. The additional broadband talk number was not activated.

Recently my speed has deteriorated to the point where it is worse than my original 0.5MB connection - thoroughly fed up and having no faith in them I decided to go with O2. I registered with O2 and then asked BT for the mac address. But no I couldn't have it because:

" I am sorry to hear that you wish to leave BT broadband however we must advise you that your broadband package is still under contract until the 24/08/09 and as such if you were to leave at this stage you would be charged for the remainder of this contract period plus a £45 early cancellation charge".

Strange as I took out a the contract in 2006 for, I thought, 18 months. I phoned them and fortunately got connected with a sensible and helpful person. Between us we established that when I had previously complained about my speed I was put on a new contract - for asking to get what I originally ordered and paid for! Thankfully this was resolved and today is my first day with O2 and the difference is amazing.

Sorry for the length of this post but it is a shortened version of events and I needed to get it off my chest!!