BT Infinity sales ...

... still don't know that any other ISPs supply a fibre/FTTC product similar to Infinity.

That is ridiculous so long after general availability.

I'm considering staying with IDNet, or going to BT or Plusnet. Money talks.

I rang to ask about the need for the activation fee as no engineer visit was needed, and no modem. That it was just like an ADSL migration except I would be getting a Home Hub.

The very pleasant chap asked me about the phone socket having two sockets and so on - I don't think he even knew what I was talking about when I said yes it has the Openreach VDSL2 filtered faceplate.

However having admitted I knew more than he, the guy consulted his supervisor/manager who from what came back clearly didn't know either, and it sounded as though he didn't believe me. I got told the engineer visit would definitely be needed to check that the connection was compatible with their service! I managed not to laugh, but assured him it had to be. All that would be different would be the Home Hub.

And! About 3 minutes to get through the options to get to broadband sales and product help. Presumably just as long to get to the right place if you have a problem. Then about 5 minutes on hold waiting.

Your probably better off posting a topic on their forum and using the moderator contact form, they know what's what and will sort you out.

Thanks, I'll probably try that. I'm still interested, but it does worry me about ongoing support. Which I would most likely only need when I couldn't get online anyway.

But how unimpressive is that?

It's only the price that is an incentive. I'm a bit old-fashioned and don't believe BT should have low training standards. Their mass-market appeal is very much based on old-fogey brand belief. It is easily lost, especially as we die off. As is evident from the younger generations not even wanting a landline except when forced into it for broadband.

I know the cold callers from BT don't know about Infinity not being the only FTTC on the market, but the sales people when we ring in??

/me Hello Mr Ford. Please can you tell me what the road tax is for a 1.4litre engined Focus. I want to compare it with another manufacturer's 1.4litre car.

/sales Our 1.4litre engine only goes onto our cars Sir.

/me I know that, but other companies make 1.4litre engines for their own cars. The Ford Focus isn't the only 1.4litre-engined car. The emissions are probably different so the road tax may be.

/sales Oh, I didn't know that Sir.

Maybe in a bit over 100 years, (the time cars have been around, for the people reading who don't know that mobile phones are a very recent invention), the staff will have found out for themselves, or BT will tell them. It doesn't exactly require a day's off-site training .

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 28-Jan-12 09:58:38)

You are considering switching ISP based on cost, ie keeping your costs down.
Sadly, BT and many other organisations have, and do, the same. The cheaper they can keep their overheads, the cheaper they can retail it for, 'cos the average Joe want's it cheap. The real cost to their customers is BS like you have just encountered.

But you know all this.

I wonder, if and when you migrate, that they might shift you on to another port in the cab ? This of course, would require an engineer visit. This is still a fairly new product, so I suppose the idea of migrations hasn't yet filtered fully through yet. [sad]

It isn't that much better at the 'pointed' end. I had FTTC provision support tell me that there was 'nothing wrong with the port I was providing' (only 828Kbps sync upstream under artificial load), and that they had 'no idea', what attenuation was, or what a decibel was. [sad][sad][sad]

Luckily, when I rang off, and rang back, I got a nice lady who did have a scooby.

You get what you pay for.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

... still don't know that any other ISPs supply a fibre/FTTC product similar to Infinity.

That is ridiculous so long after general availability.

I'm considering staying with IDNet, or going to BT or Plusnet. Money talks.

Oh RobertoS - you surprise me. I am also with IDNet and with FTTC now appearing in my area (I say that but after a flurry of activity just before Christmas there isn't a fibre team to be seen) I am looking seriously at the BT offer. There was some talk late last year of IDNet revising its packages but everything has gone very quiet. Some off-peak time in the evenings and at the weekend so that I could use IPlayer without watching the meter would tip the decision in IDNet's favour. For what it is worth, my daughter's experience of BT broadband in Fulham has been faultless - happily, she hasn't chad any issues requiring BT technical support.

In reply to a post by Zadeks:

You get what you pay for.

There is no excuse whatsoever, however much you pay or don't pay, for the sales staff not even being aware of the fact that other companies provide alternative products using exactly the same BT system as they do, barring the Home Hub.

It is a one-line addition to whatever briefing they have on Infinity. The lack of that knowledge can only lose sales.

I'm not saying they should tell customers who are unaware. But it will certainly cost them some migrations in from users of other FTTC. It isn't even a random BT person you speak to. You have to keep pressing option buttons, taking the time I mentioned - and I wasn't wasting time deciding which to press, to get through specifically to broadband sales.

Nor is there any excuse for there being no migration in process that doesn't require an engineer visit.

Yep, you sum up the state of BT these days. You at least can console yourself with the fact they pay your wages .

When you consider the scale of the business and the rather long time it has had to optimise its organisation and product rollouts, through many generations of people and product, it is utterly unbelievable that FTTC migration is not catered for, and that help, (and training of new recruits), provided to engineers can be in any way suspect.

The efficiency of the engineers is crucial to net profit margins, and any failure to support them properly is lunacy.

BT Wholesale charge £50 for a CP migration, there's no excuse for BT Retail not having a pricing schedule for the services they can offer so that end users can get a quick answer on pricing. How a supervisor doesn't know about similar products really just goes to show what service in this country is like these days.

It's not as though it's a new product either as it's been out for more than 12 months in plenty of areas so there must have been quite a few migrations already.

... still don't know that any other ISPs supply a fibre/FTTC product similar to Infinity.

That's because there simply is none, well for the same price anyway. When I was looking the only ISP that came close to my needs was Claranet soho but that would have cost over £40 a month. Most the other ISPs have such an unrealistic view on how much you can download, already downloaded 90GB in 18 days.

It is a hard choice to go with a company that has such a bad reputation but I have found if you go to the BT forums you can contact the Mods and they are fantastic at sorting problems out for you.

With that said I have had.... No wait! I'm not going to say that

Swings and roundabouts.