Cerberus rep on this forum?

Hey all, anyone know if there is one on the forum?

Myself and my neighbour are coming to the end of our 12 months FTTPOD very soon and switching provider is a pain, seemingly due to Cerberus not allowing a takeover of the line but requiring a cease which may mean 10 days without a connection?

Have emailed them, called them but their ‘team that deals with this’ is too busy to reply or speak to anyone..

Thanks

David

Pickup the phone and ask to speak with Bob Hendy.

I recently did the same before Christmas, came to the end of FTTP on Demand with Cerberus and moved to IDNet.

Cerberus said migration was supported, I let Cerberus know I was ordering elsewhere in good time, and they said they would be notified by the gaining provider. I had a days downtime at switch over because the new account hadn't been generated correctly so it had to be regenerated, but if it had worked I'd have had no down time.

Note that Cerberus was never notified of the migration, at least that is what they told me, but I had given enough notice anyway and it was just cancelled without any drama after the fact.

This was all dealt with using their ticketing system.

Edited by E300 (Mon 15-Feb-21 16:09:36)

They called me back, stating that it was 100% BT’s issue. (A well-known issue too) apparently a disconnect between BT retail / wholesale / OR.

So I’m back on hold with the BT connections department.

I don’t think Bob can help in this case sadly.

In reply to a post by Tek:

seemingly due to Cerberus not allowing a takeover of the line

I believe you've been advised incorrectly.

The migration process is gaining provider led. It should have nothing to do with Cerberus and you shouldn't even need to contact them.
It's actually advised that you don't contact the losing provider as that can cause issues such as them placing a cease on the line.

If the line is WBC FTTP enabled then it's the same as any other FTTP line.

An ISP cannot prevent you migrating, even if you are within the minimum term.
AFAIK technically you should be able to migrate on day 1 of an FTTPoD service. It would just come with a whopping great big early termination charge.

The gaining provider led FTTP migration process hasn't been around all that long and the likes of BT often have issues with it, but I've seen many migrations go as smoothly as they should, even with BT.

Oh, I’m convinced no one really knows what’s going on (that we’ve spoken to)

After another afternoon of hold music, the current situation.

1. I have an email from Cerberus stating what they can/can’t do, which I sent to BT connections while on the phone.
2. My BT order for 900Mb was cancelled.
3. I was advised to re-order tomorrow at 300Mb because the connections team (actually their manager) says the order is failing because they did not provide 900Mb when I had FTTPOD installed (we had an extremely long install time)

Now I don’t believe this will work, but short of paying to cease my Cerberus line I don’t have many options.

/D

In reply to a post by Tek:

3. I was advised to re-order tomorrow at 300Mb because the connections team (actually their manager) says the order is failing because they did not provide 900Mb when I had FTTPOD installed (we had an extremely long install time)

That is utter nonsense. When you migrate your service to another FTTP provider, you can choose a different speed service than what you had before.

This was a "manager" at BT?! Sheesh.

Now I don’t believe this will work, but short of paying to cease my Cerberus line I don’t have many options.

You do have other options: in particular, you can take a service from an ISP who has more clue than BT. If price is the primary concern, you can get FTTP from Sky or Talktalk (although not at 900M; Talktalk do 500M, Sky 150M). If quality and speed are more of a concern then Zen will do you 900M for £63/month. Aquiss and AAISP are I believe still limited to 150M. Some other smaller ones do 900M.

Cerberus themselves are good, although expensive for speeds above 300M. At least you would get 300/50 instead of 300/30 if you recontract with them, and the term is only 12 months.

But you absolutely should not have to "pay to cease your Cerberus line". You place an order with your new ISP, the new service takes over the line and that automatically cancels the old service. If you're still within contract for the old service then there will be an early termination charge to pay *after* that happens.

If BT can't do this simple process for you, well that's just BT. How much do you *really* want to use them as a provider, seeing what you've now seen?

For normal FTTC previously, even ADSL and going back to ISDN most issues with BT were solved without too much hassle although we did have some interesting ones - eg. Cutting the copper cable to the whole ‘street’ near me 3 times during the digging for the fibre - obviously not BT retails fault but they were helpful.

Talk talk and Sky I don’t think would be any better given experiences of close relatives (who don’t even care about latency...)

I haven’t tried Zen, but I guess they are an option.

Maybe BT connections are right, and it might help the other (few) people that need to migrate after their first year of FTTPOD - we’ll see!

The main thing I wanted from this thread originally was a written confirmation from Cerberus that it was not their end, I got that.

/D

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by Tek:

3. I was advised to re-order tomorrow at 300Mb because the connections team (actually their manager) says the order is failing because they did not provide 900Mb when I had FTTPOD installed (we had an extremely long install time)

That is utter nonsense. When you migrate your service to another FTTP provider, you can choose a different speed service than what you had before.

This was a "manager" at BT?! Sheesh.

Is this a given? In my area, FTTPoD was limited it seems to 330/30 if you believe the OR wholesale checker. Once the area moved recently to FTTP there was a brief period when 1000/220 was the FTTPoD option, and then it actually became 1000/220 on WBC FTTP with no FTTPoD option available (a day or 2 later). So judging by what the OR checker was saying in my area, I could well believe some FTTPoD areas might be limited to the lower speed for some reason.

FTTPoD availability went from 330/30 to 1000/220 almost everywhere(*) simultaneously. However they didn't go round to backfill the database. Hence you'll only see the record update itself when they need to touch the database for some other reason - such as during an FTTP rollout, as you found.

(*) Very tiny exception of areas with ECI OLTs. That covers only about 1% of FTTP-enabled properties now.

The checker will give the precise answer for the OP's property. I presume it says "WBC FTTP up to 1000/220", because they were able to place an order for 900/110 originally.