Is there any way out of a BT contract?

Hi there,

I have 10 months left on an 18 month BT Broadband Option 1 contract - and I just can't stand it any more.

The 10GB DL limit was bad value for money when I took it out, and it is even worse value for money now.

The speed is atrocious in the evenings. I use Netmeter so that I can use right up to my 10gb, unfortunately BT doesn't always seem to see it that way - video streaming will often freeze and stutter to the point of unusability. Apparently this is due to deliberate throttling, which I never signed up for.

Their customer service is the worst I have ever seen from any company. I have never once achieved anything over the phone with their Indian call centre. Once it took me 4 hours to get to speak to someone in the UK, and even then it took several more calls to get the issue sorted.


If I wasn't tied into a contract I would drop em like a hot potato and go over to O2. The difference for what you get for the same price isn't even funny. I guess that's why they have such long contracts.

Is there any way I can get out of this? If I had the money I would buy my way out I am that sick of them. Unfortunately they have not done anything blatant like dropping my connection etc. whereby I could claim breach of contract.

Would protesting about the throttling work?

Thanks for any help.

If you can't do better than this re complaints, you're stuck. This is why it's vitally important to do your research before signing to any contract, but especially so where it's a lengthy one.

Somehow at the time I had got it into my head that they would have better customer service than my old ISP (TalkTalk). Turns out my information was coming from reviews written by old biddies who were scared of t'interweb and who were comforted by the "BT" brand. That, unfortunately, was not the kind of definition of good service I was looking for.

Even setting it up was a nightmare, took almost a month. They had my phone line locked up and tied in knots so I had no choice but to sign up with them. I was so exhausted dealing with them that the thought of trying to cancel within the "cooling off" period was unthinkable - I had other things on my plate at the time and I knew it would take days of difficult phone calls.

In hindsight I wished I had just cancelled when I saw how bad their service was.

They shouldn't be allowed to sell a service that is this bad.

This is of no consequence to you now but for others who may be looking for an ISP and reading this, avoid the popular comparison sites etc at all costs. They are often paid to promote a given ISP. Only TBB and a handful of other sites are impartial.

The best way out is if they change the terms and conditions, if you don't want to accept the change, they have to let you leave.

I believe they recently did change the T&C's so there's your way out.

Do you know the exact change? My mother would also like to escape, since they're so slow in the evenings, and since they're now sending around an engineer who will doubtlessly find nothing wrong and charge her over £100 (as they don't count BT's own throttling/profiling as a "problem" with their equipment)...

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Relieved to be with Be*, and not one of those other suppliers

Someone posted this:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/t/3654201-c...

Thanks -- I've sent the link to her, so let's see if it works! She's only been there a few weeks, so I reckon they'll try that out first to try and stop her...

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Relieved to be with Be*, and not one of those other suppliers

And this:

http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProduc...

These terms and conditions come into effect from 27 June 2009.

34. If we have made a change which is to your material disadvantage, you will not have to pay a charge if you decide to end your agreement early, unless the relevant price terms say otherwise. However, once we have told you about such a change, you must let us know that you want to end the agreement within 10 days. When we make a change that we reasonably believe is to your material disadvantage we will also let you know that you may end the agreement early without paying a charge for doing so.

And this:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/general/t/3661255-c...