Posted 30 April 2024

Cancelled BT B/B to go with Virgin but thinking of changing my mind after hearing bad things about them.

Put in my 30 day notice for BT to cancel B/B after singing up with Virgin but after speaking to a few neeighbours and their not so great reviews I'm thinking of changing my mind and cancel the BT cancellation. Few things include install dates being changed, engineer phoning in sick (cannot be helped), customer service if things go bad.
Never had a problem with BT but I can get better speed for less money and now I'm thinking that if BT drop their price I would stay (even on the 80/20 megs).
Has anyone phoned to cancel a cancellation before and got a better deal.

Cheers

New Comment

33 Comments

sorted by

30th Apr
BT are pigs, recently found out that they horribly oversold my retired Mum when she had poor wifi service. They upped her monthly to £106 and locked her in for 24 months fixing their own problem. Managed to force them to break the contract with 9 months remaining but took ages. DM if you want any help or looking for a provider. Ours now id much cheaper with best customer service in the business
30th Apr
Virgin broadband is light years ahead of BT.... I would plough on and tackle any problems when, or more likely IF they occur.
30th Apr
?

New lines installed by openreach are capped a 1000mbps & virgin do 1130 max

Hardly light years ahead.

I got one month of 1000mbps for free when my line was updated but just transferred to 500mbps. (edited)
2nd May
Their online chat bot is special needs.... Took 20 minutes to get through to a human, who barely understood the issue.
Still, all sorted... Back to sleep for another year
30th Apr
Phone them and cancel and see what they say, as you are cancelling anyway. But if they are that bad, would a better deal make you forget about all the negative stuff you have read!

And in case I have picked you up wrong, Which I may have, and you were talking about being the bt cancellation, and hope they will offer you a better deal when you phone! I wouldn't hold you breath, of you are phoning up to stay with them, why would they want to offer you a better deal, when you were stressing anyway! (edited)
30th Apr
You can always cancel but first ask the neighbours the question is it speed and reliability that is the issue or customer service. Installation there is always issues, general customer service isn’t the best but speed, reliability and discounts when contracts are up at least for us can’t be beaten.
30th Apr
Virgin’s customer service is the absolute worst in the industry unless you go with their business broadband which costs considerably more.

The broadband itself is decent if you’re in a Nexfibre area, and can be ok if you’re in an older cabled area if you get a Hub 5 and on their DOCSIS 3.1 network.

If you’re on their 3.0 packages and given a hub 3 router it will be a miserable experience. You can just about make it work if you use your own router with it but it’s still going to be flawed.

The Openreach network is much more reliable, and typically lower latency too, compared to Virgin Media. And with BT you get good customer service that’s all UK Based too. You’d be swapping one of the best for one of the worst.

There’s lots of other companies out there that use the Openreach network same as BT but can undercut them on price. Even BT’s own brands like their budget name Plusnet which going via a comparison site will be cheaper, despite coming with the same router, same network, same customer service for example. Or with a different company on the same network you can go even cheaper too - Last time I looked £20 a month was possible.
30th Apr
Quick comment on PlusNet; their router is mainly the same, but it doesn't work with the BT WiFi extender disks, sadly.
30th Apr
Any other fibre suppliers in the area, such as Toob or Community Fibre? They knock the spots off both for speed and price
Don't think about staying with anyone for a landline as they are all gradually going to VoIP (edited)
30th Apr
+1 for community fibre been very pleased with them
30th Apr
Virgin Media is great, until there's issues, at least in my case. Customer services are an absolute joke, had to fight them to get out of contract, whuch eventually, i won (Wanted exit fees of £600+..)

As the above comment mentions, any other suppliers you could look into?
30th Apr
I can give you me 2 cents worth - When we moved in to this house some 25 years ago the previous owner was with BT. We got in touch with BT and took out a land line contract with them. They gave us the previous home owners number and wanted to charge us £30 (IIRC) to change it to a new one. They then stated they would send the baliffs in to collect the hardware. They did arrive and I let them in to recover what they wanted, even though I pointed out thast the previous owner had moved and had taken his rented phone with him. What saved me was the NTL branding on my handset! Never got an apology. Any way after that BT rang 6 days a week offering free services. The final straw for me came when they rang at 9am on a Saturday morning to offer "free" calls for the monthly cost of £20! Rather than argue I asked to cancel my contract and took a hatchet to the line (I kid you not - I posted earlier that just this month they have finally removed the overhead copper!). I still have the £6 refund cheque uncashed as a reminder to never again! I switched to NTL as it was back then and never looked back. It became Virgin Media and I was a loyal customer for 25 years. They messed me about last year and I was to get "automatic compensation" (They ended up replacing all the cabinets in my street as the fault was due to their cable run It took them 6 months to resolve and I had poor to no internet access from them. They swapped out my modem I had the 3,4 and 2 5 series! Along with a powered line booster - thank goodness for Lebara 1p internet deals!). I was happy enough when it worked, however they then bumped my monthly bill from £30 something to £75/month with no change of package. I cancelled and retentions could only offer £68/m. So I left, after 25 years! I was going to try openreach service, however none of them offer better than VM so I went back to them. As I am still with O2 I got the Volt upgrade from 500 to 1Gig - the new modem is due to arrive tomorrow (as they gave me a Hub 3). They are also looking £175 for the "non-return" of kit, however I have the tracking details from Yodel and they confirmed VM recieved them. *sigh* Anyway, that felt good to share....
30th Apr
We moved into this house in 1996, with 3 Telewest lines as the renter (only for 6 months while we sold our house) was running a business from there. We decided to stay with them but had nothing but problems (this was before they became Virgin...). One Saturday we called CS to complain and decided after half an hour we had had enough and called BT on a mobile and switched over before they even answered the called ~ 45 minutes. We will never use anything but BT/PlusNet because of that experience.
Author
2nd May
Cheers for info guys, one more question question before I decide at the weekend.
Got a flyer through the door few months back about netomnia coming to my postcode and I get this

Great News!We're working to connect your premises to our network. You will soon have access to 100% full fibre broadband. We will let you know when you are ready to order through our internet service providers.

Does anyone have a rough idea between how long between flyers/postcode info to connection going live, if it's soon then might wait and go with Youfibre who I belive are the ISP who use that network.
2nd May
That's a 'how long is a piece of string' question unfortunately. They build in batches and then connect it up to the wider network in one go. You could be one of the first of many streets, or the last one to be done. Could be a few weeks, or it could be several months. Even over a year if you're unlucky and in an area where there's complexities involved.
Author
5th May
So phoned up today to cancel the cancellation and got offered 500meg for £32.99 per month on a 2 year contract with EE, of course took them up on it. Faster speed for a cheaper price.

Cheers for all replies.
Author
51 s ago
B/B was due to be installed on Wednesday and hadn't recieved my router yet, phoned up BT to check everything was fine and not only had they no knowledge of me cancelling the cancellation but also nothing of my new order from EE.
Now I have to wait 24 hours for the cancellation to go through and to reorder new B/B.