OT broadband service

Have you actually complained to them? A good provider will help you run diagnostics, suggest a replacement router if they identify that as being the problem, call out Openreach and continue calling out Openreach until the problem is solved. There may be a perfectly good reason for the poor service, so you should tell your supplier about it and give them the chance to fix the problem.

Lightning will cause brief disconnections and with present technology (yes, even FTTC or FTTP) is an insurmountable problem.

Otherwise, the performance you get in terms of speed will depend to some extent on your distance from the exchange. But reliability (arpart from lighting) should be nearly 100% to the extent that you should not notice disconnections. If your current provider cannot achieve this then migrate to another.

Good providers are not the cheapest, although Zen Internet are quite reasonable, and Andrews & Arnold although expensive are justified where a reliable connection is necessary to support a business.

But you must complain to your current provider first. If they cannot help then you are justified in migrating.

Sadly there is no minimum service level, but you could argue the service is "not fit for purpose" and refuse to pay any cancellation charges. Keep notes, with a view to seeing them in court.

Will they allow you to migrate without paying the cancellation charges in advance?

At least he will find the customer service in the UK vastly superior to Germany. When I was living there I dreading having to take anything back to the shop. German sales staff take it so incredibly personally for some strange reason.

I had this with AOL. Originally I had a 2 Meg' connection and asked them to upgrade the line which they did - To 1 Meg'!

No amount of fiddling with the link by their 'engineers' would get it any higher and eventually they lost the link altogether.

I just told them that they were in breach of contract and to shove their bloody awful 'service'. I went with BT Infinity and haven't looked back.

AOL had given me a laptop as a bribe to 'upgrade' and I just kept it as if they couldn't get the service right I couldn't trust them to wipe a laptop with my data on.

I think they were glad to see the back of me.

Not really surprising.

'Here's that bloody Englishman again who thinks we should bow and scrape to him since 'they' won the war.'

Er, no Dave. The Germans themselves encounter the same attitude when returning stuff.

Yeah, I wonder if this ISP is really trying to get rid of me. Broadband stopped working again tonight, I'm writing this using my mobile Labara internet bundle. This intermittent service has lasted for over a week. But I'll call ISP up tomorrow and ask if I can get out of contract, if they refuse then I will raise a storm.

This is why I stick with BT.

But it is also why I do not recommend BT to anybody. There are far beter providers about.

But have you actually told them it is intermittent and let them try to resolve the problem? You haven't told us ...

If it's not fixed you will get the same problem with another ISP. They need to know about the problem before they can fix it. A new ISP will use the same cable between the exchange and you and that is where the problem is likely to be so you need to tell them about it and let them get it fixed.

If you have told them and they can't fix it then pay for a better ISP, such as Zen or AAISP and get it fixed.

Andrews & Arnold will guarantee to fix it, or give your m """"" If you are migrating your service to us, even though you know you have a problem with your broadband line, we'll take on the fault. We'll tackle the problem and get it fixed within one month. If we don't then you can migrate away and owe us nothing for your migration to us and your service charges for that month. """""

Just love the way you generalise about everything.

I've been with several over the years.

Now with BT for something like 5 years - BT infinity.

Can't comment on their after sales service as I've never needed it. Unlike Talk Talk before them where it broke several times a year.

Where you refer to one "bloody Englishman". There are probably another

The after sales service is the key. Almost all the infrastructure is owned and maintained by Openreach, and it is in this infrastructure that the vast majority of real faults occur. (This excludes user error and domestic wiring, which are actually the most common of all faults; but in principle these are within the power of the user to correct.)

So to fix faults your ISP must be prepared to call out Openreach. This potentially incurs a cost, except where Openreach agree that the fault is within their equipment or infrastructure. This might not be an easy admission for them to make! An ISP will take on this risk where it is convinced that the fault is not with the user, his/her equipment, or wiring. A good ISP will help you confirm this, but you must listen to them and follow their guidance. Once you have a good ISP on your side, they will work hard to (get Openreach to) resolve the problem.

-- Graham J

Talk Talk are one of the few companies worse than BT. Forever ending up on DNSRBLs, for a start.

To be fair, if you've not had to use BT's customer "service" you'll probably find them pretty good.

I'd rather never have to find out how good or bad their customer service is. ;-)

They were absolutely first class installing the 'Infinity' equipment, though. Bang on time, and a very pleasant bloke.

I did have one problem - came home to find nothing working. At about 4 in the afternoon. Had noticed an Open Reach van and a man working on the cabinet at the end of the road, so walked up to have a word. He fixed it there and then - even although he was in the process of packing up.

But I realise that's not what people mean by customer service.

Against advice, I moved to Talktalk a few months ago. No real problems

- service much the same as BT, and 40% cheaper. I do of course accept that the problems may well start when I have to report a problem . . .

They did say at the time of sale that if the advertised speed is not met and they can't/won't fix it I can cancel the contract without penalty. And here it is on their web site: