Peter's Blog

Where do I begin. This is a long story so better get a coffee.

When I first got broadband nearly two years ago I chose pipex. That saga is documented here. It left me regarding pipex as being devoid of customer service: if I had any problems then tough, I may as well go in the garden and scream at the daisies as try to get information out of pipex.

A few weeks ago I was having disconnections when playing wow. This was frustrating as I knew there was no point in complaining to pipex. To make things worse, a few traceroutes told me that I was going through the Tiscali network. I knew that Tiscali had bought Pipex but now pipex is being firmly swallowed into Tiscali. If you try to sign up for pipex now you are redirected to Tiscali. I have never heard a good thing about Tiscali and their advertisements on the TV are all about price leaving me with the impression that they are bargain bucket broadband. If I wanted cheap crap I would be looking at sky or talktalk.

My disconnection problems went away but I was still in a mood to change broadband providers.

I looked around and was attracted to the BT Total Broadband Anywhere package. For £30 a month you get:

• Wireless-N router (the 'home hub')
• Phone handset to make voip calls
• so many minutes voip to landlines
• their international voip rates would halve my wife's phone bills to her folks
• A 'BT ToGo' which is actually a windows mobile smartphone which typically gets 7/10 in reviews, no iPhone but not worthless. This phone can do wireless voip as well as normal mobile over the vodafone network which has good coverage for me. The phone has a mini keyboard and would be much better for moblogging than my dumb phone.
• 50 minutes mobile calls a month
• so many minutes on BT openreach wireless access points
• membership of the FON network where people share out 512kbps of their bandwidth so that other people can use mine and I can use theirs if I am in range.

A very attractive package that would save me money AND give me new toys to play with.

Before I could do anything I needed a MAC code to get away from pipex so I used a thing on the BT site that automatically sent pipex a byebye email. In a day or so pipex emailed me the MAC, wrote me a letter and rang me to make sure I had it. It gave me the impression that either they were glad to be rid of me or the ombudsman has been slapping them about.

I applied for the BT Total broadband Anywhere package on their website as they said it would be faster than ringing them. I got an automatic acknowledgement email for my order. Then nothing. For five days. The connection date I chose came and went and nothing. Their online order tracker couldn't find my phone number. I was amazed that they could be so useless so for my amusement I tried applying through the website again and the same thing happened. For the third time I tried using Internet Explorer and Windows but again it happened. I thought about ringing them but the thought of having to recite all my details down the phone filled me with dread. They publish no email addresses so there was no way of moaning.

I looked around for an alternative supplier and plus.net seemed promising. Their service is tailored for gaming with low latencies, they are honest about the traffic shaping, static ip address and five pounds a month cheaper than pipex. Their website seemed ok with more technical details than BT so they seemed more on my level. So I signed up for them. Here is a timeline:

7th August

signed up

13th August

connection date. Came home to find broadband broken

14th August

got message from plus.net saying my connection date was being reviewed on 28th August, two weeks later with no indication as to why. This made me flip and I left them some messages telling them to stick it. I wanted out pronto, damage limitation. Later I got a message to say the order was delayed due to a 'Faulty Tie Pair'. They would try to find out from BT what was happening on 15th August.

15th August

Nothing from plus.net. Found that my home landline phone was broken too so registered a fault with BT.

16th August

Land phones started working again. Message from plus.net, addressed to me but one department in plus.net trying to get another department to investigate the delay.

17th August

Got an automated message from pipex saying welcome, my line is now connected. Indeed, my pipex broadband was working. It was probably working the day before but I was optimisticly trying the plus.net username/password.

18th August

Sent message to plus.net saying it was working and to please cancel the order. They replied to say ok but they want to sting me for £40 for the abortive ADSL connection and I will possibly pay £40 to connect to anyone else due to the 'Tie Pair' problem. I didn't answer immediately, they have no problem keeping me waiting. In a way I was happy, my broadband was working, albeit with pipex but that was a problem that could wait for another day. plus.net would soon be out of my life.

19th August

voicemail message from plus.net. They had been on to BT and they said something about a second BT engineer visit having the same outcome as the first. They were going to review the situation on 11th Sept (over a month after my initial order). My broadband and phones were still working so I have no idea what they were talking about but I believe it would be fruitless to ask.

That's the state of play right now. I have two threads of support going with plus.net, one wanting to sting me for £80 for (failing) to connect me to ADSL (which was already connected and is still connected) and another trying to progress a problem that seems to have been resolved on 16th august.

My biggest worry at the moment is that one of plus.net's flailing limbs is still going to get BT to mess around with my connection and break it again, even if I have told them not to.

In terms of customer support, well do I sound like a satisfied customer? Apparently plus.net try to get new customers via a referrals scheme rather than advertisements. I am hoping that this blog post will deter at least one potential customer. If you get any technical problems then be warned you are going to get 'review dates' that will reach further and further into the distant future. They will miss their deadlines in getting feedback from BT by four days. They will charge you for the privilege of getting BT to bugger up your phone and broadband. They offer a 90 day 'risk free' guarantee but there is a risk that they won't be able to progress any problems and you do risk being stung for £40.

I'm tempted by Zen broadband who get very high customer service ratings. I'm not too bothered about price, customer support that gets things done and doesn't cause me sleepless nights is a top priority. I imagine that the root of all broadband woes lie with BT but are there any UK broadband providers out there that have the ability to get firm deadlines from BT and relay them to their customers? I am patient enough to wait but I absolutely hate being kept in the dark.

Sorry to vent but I had to let it out. Blogging for stress relief. Venting here means my final messages to plus.net very calm and dignified.

UPDATE: cancelled now. This made me laugh. And only three years before plusnet were cool with tiscali LLU