[Wolves] ADSL providers

[sparkes]

Andy Wootton wrote:

> A colleague has just bought the BT service and it doesn't work. He is 
> now playing ping-pong between 'BT' and 'BT ADSL' who both say it is the 
> other one's responsibility to get it working. 'BT' proved that if he 
> takes the front off his socket and plugs his filter into the internal 
> socket it works. This was clearly intended to prove it isn't their 
> problem, not to help. He now has to call the ADSL people during office 
> hours. In a 2 minute conversation this afternoon we established that he 
> probably just has too much kit plugged in. Ironically he went to BT so 
> that he had a 'single supplier'.

The problem is BT offer several services.  One is bare bones where BT 
really is your only supplier but you get no extras (this is like the 
consumer version of the business packages) and another is just like 
going through a third party where one arm of BT sell you a package and 
the actual line is through another arm of BT so you get the same 
potential problems you get with a third party.

A friend of mine has got AOL and is getting exactly the same problems. 
His ADSL isn't even activated yet but BT blame AOL and AOL blame BT and 
BT wouldn't send someone out to diagnose the problem until I called and 
said I connected a working router to the plug and didn't get the DSL 
line connected.  Strangly enough it was connected when the BT man came 
to visit and I got the connection working about 2 mins later ;-) cheeky 
buggers.

I have the bare bones package and can vouch for the fact it is 
excellent.  This is probably the package sold to third party companies 
so they can value add and discount.  It's not as cheap but even when a 
large chunk of the BT network burned down (in Manchester) I didn't see 
any difference, dispite a phone call saying my bandwidth might be more 
congested for a  couple of days (it wasn't).  I probably get such good 
service because everyone in my street is on BY and BT lines are not 
contended but my 1mb connection gives more than one mb constantly.

I do up to 100gb per month and have never had any problems with the new 
limited downloads policy.  I doubt they would have the same policy if 
ten people in my street did the same but they don't.  Also they didn't 
send an ammendment to my contract just a glossy brochure.  My upload 
rates are also excellent.  I frequently have several ftp connections 
each giving ~10k/s and that's with jennies p2p stuff running 24/7

I would recommend taking everything you hear with a pinch of salt as a 
pissed off punter will tell a lot more people that a satisfied customer 
but won't tell anyone unless asked.  But if people on forums are really 
pissed off with a company there really could be a problem.

> 
> Woo

sparkes

-- 
<davee> "Sparkes, the Pete Best of LugRadio"