Monday 6 February 2012

Who needs criminals when we have the utility providers?

We have been with BT Broadband for a number of years.
We get their Broadband and telephone and also have a TV box ,although we got the box to watch freeview only, we don't pay for any programmes on it.

The hub which is a fancy name for their modem,is glitchy.
It cuts you off in mid telephone call.
It turns off when you are surfing the web.
It leaves you watching buffering on the TV screen.
It displays an unsecure network when it actually is using encryption.

After many ,many moans, including the OH being quite insulting more than once to the telephone 'customer service' in far off India, we finally got the operative to admit that we have a fault on our hub.

'Oh right' says OH, 'so finally you agree it is the hub that is broken'!
'Yes,it is the router' says the operative.
'When will you be sending out a new one'? says OH.
'No it is your responsibility to get the new one' she says.
'You must take out a one year contract and we will send you a new one'.
.........................................................................!
'Okay' says OH, 'so what you are saying is, we are not in a contract any longer and so must either...
Sign up with a new one year contract where you will supply us with a new modem,everything else remaining exactly the same ...
OR
Not sign up with a contract and not be able to get your services which we are paying full price for...
OR
Sign up with another provider for £200 less a year, get a new phone and a new contract with them and they will give us a new modem'.

Decisions decisions!

Can you guess what we chose to do?

The operative had a long think and then said, 'no you are in contract'.
'Oh' says OH 'so when will you be sending us our new replacement modem'?
'No no',she says, 'we cannot give you a new modem unless you sign up for a 1 year contract, if you are not in contract, we cannot help you'!
ARGH!
This conversation went around and around until she admitted she was wrong (or right Hee hee) and we were no longer under contract.

Just then the phone cut out rather sealing the deal and we just laughed.

We decided on a new provider.
To connect with a new provider we had to ring the old one to request the MAC Code ,something like migration agreement code I think, so we can keep our phone number.

A smug sounding Brit came on the phone and asked very treacle voiced ,why on earth we should want to leave.
OH who is a bit gullible sometimes started to explain but I said 'look just ask for the wretched code'.
OH said he would get his wife to talk to the operative :P
He handed me the phone and I said 'We aren't interested in listening to offers any more, just give me the code please'.
He tried to talk over me but eventually the code was read out over the phone and we rang off.
His last words were ' we will be sorry to lose you'!

YER RIGHT!

Who was it told us to like it or lump it?....

I think the phrase is 'We will be sorry to lose your revenue'.

The new contract is all signed for and paid for etc and we are awaiting the new arrangements.

Incidentally , the TV vision box will not work once we don't have power to a BT Home Hub, they have it hard coded so that while it can connect to their servers, it will update its EPG(program guide) and allow recording schedules but as soon as you are not paying them, your free free-view box is a piece of Junk.

Shrug, who wants to be shackled to them just for a free-view box?
We have a new one on order to replace it with as we are not going to subscribe to TV with the new provider.
The new box should do exactly what the old one did without the need to be plugged in to the faulty home hub.


The new provider works out as £60 for the year for Broadband and £147 for the phone line with the free evening and weekend call package (same as BT eve/ weekend calls),so £207 all together.
Instead of £272 for the broadband +£159 phone=£431

Saving      £224

I decided to use some Amazon vouchers to buy a new free view PVR box.
It was £69.74 including delivery.
That still leaves us £154.26 richer.


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