In reply to a post by Highland76:

Why do you have trouble understanding that price comparison websites such uswitch are COMMERCIAL websites who are under no obligation to list any particular broadband provider? This is has been pointed out to you many times on this thread but you seem to have difficulty accepting this fact.

And why do you seem to have so much difficulty in accepting that proper competition and rational switching decisions by consumers will only happen if they have access to accurate price comparison data and are not subjected to ridiculously long contract lock ins of 2 years by the dominant fixed line operator that prevent consumers voting with their feet if they are treated badly by their current supplier.

I don't know what you do for a living exactly but I strongly get the impression that you don't seem to respect the right of customers to choose and change supplier if they are unhappy with the deal they are getting.

The point of regulators is to set rules and issues penalties for breaching them that deter dodgy and unethical switching sites from providing customers with wrong and misleading decisions that will cause them to make wrongly based decisions.

Of course I do get the strong impression that you appear to think any dodgy commercial tactic is possibly fair game in the name of businesses making money.

But I think we all saw where that failure to regulate and control things properly in the name of filthy lucre led in the sad case of Grenfell Tower.............

In reply to a post by Capvermell:

Do you perhaps have some reason why you don't like the workings of the price comparison websites to be subjected to public scrutiny

No one is trying to shut your conversation point down.

Several contributors have tried to give their opinions on why the comparison sites don't include FTTP but you appear to accuse them of bullying you because they ain't as outraged as you regarding this matter.

In reply to a post by dect:

Several contributors have tried to give their opinions on why the comparison sites don't include FTTP but you appear to accuse them of bullying you because they ain't as outraged as you regarding this matter.

Actually some of those posting told me I shouldn't be making these points here at all but should be lobbying my MP or making them at Speakers Corner.

I went to Speakers Corner as a child but other than a few obscure cranky religious sects I'm sure no one goes there now as all of these discussion that try to encourage the forming of opinions and political or legislative change have by and charge moved online to internet forms or the likes of Twitter and Facebook.

What I'm detecting here is a number of technical types who perhaps like driving their white vans to install stuff and do stuff but who possibly don't seem to understand about the importance of strong regulation in a marketplace to bring about fair competition and stop bad and misleading commercial practices.

I almost get the feeling that some contributors seem to regard consumers and/or consumer rights as almost being a nuisance and that anything is fair game in making money out of them in the name of commerce and filthy lucre. I can probably guess at the likely personal profile of contributors with these kinds of views and would strongly suspect that many of them are self employed and tend to drive white vans to their regular places of employment and hence the idea of regulation and legislation to bring about a healthy commercial marketplace or indeed even to ensure that self employed workers pay their taxes on all of their earnings rather than only 40 or 50% of them is something of an anathema to people of this kind.

Also what is the excuse for all the price comparison websites claiming that TalkTalk G.Fast services are available on my exchange and phone number when G.Fast services are not and never have been available for any phone line on this exchange?

What I am concerned about is an apparent culture of saying that because broadband is somewhat more technically sophisticated that this makes it quite alright to have highly inaccurate, wrong and misleading data on most price comparison websites and especially in respect of FTTP and G.Fast

...

But this should not include all the monthly broadband line rental they hoped to earn over the next 24 months!!!!

Without access to the different comparisons sites it is impossible to say why Gfast is showing up, they are doing things wrong or basing things on wrong input data, but you need to ask the individual sites as why they are doing what they are. Asking people here will at best have people saying don't know.

Not sure who is saying it is right for the sites to show incorrect data, people have been pointing out that the sites are commercial and the general ethos being that its in their own interests to get things right, since you won't sign up upon clicking through. Have you actually complained to the sites in question to see why they show the wrong things for you?

On the costs, ofcom has mandated changes they cannot charge the full cost of the remaining months of a term, there is a formula they should use that is based on the wholesale costs a provider will incur if you leave early. If you have evidence of BT Consumer not adhering to this then that needs reporting to Ofcom.

Also some providers do do 1 month contracts, not on Openreach FTTP yet as that has a 12 month minimum term from Openreach

As for Openreach pricing, I suggest you take that up with Ofcom who regulate and if they felt it was abusive would act.

In reply to a post by Capvermell:

strong impression that you

On a lighter note

I think you have smashed my TBB forum record of offending the most contributors in one day, I will send you the trophy in the post

Perhaps a more serious error is the Plusnet web site which states that at a particular address:

"Our line check shows that Fibre Broadband's not yet available in your area".

Which is not true. Fibre has been available from Gigaclear for the past 5 years, just not from Openreach.

The Uswitch shows average speeds for many suppliers which are completely unattainable at that address.

micjhael chare - this is symantics as you well know -- Plusnet are a BTW wholease and do not use Gigaclear) so that wont show that fibre is available (its the same as you ask for virgin media on the BT wholesale platform) -

or you going into sainsbury and asking for tescos own brand


muddying the waters as everything -

The fact that Openreach FTTP is available at an exchange does not necessarily mean it is available to more than a relatively small part of that exchange's coverage.

G.Fast is an even weirder setup as that is only available from a low percentage of the PCP (phone) cabinets that also have FTTC links. Even then G.Fast is only available within 100-200 metres or so (it would be great if anyone with greater knowledge than me could be more precise) of each such cabinet as beyond that it is slower than FTTC.

You referred earlier to ISPreview. Did you notice it provides a list of 200 ISPs? No doubt there are more. How many energy providers are there in the country? A dozen or so? I don't know.

Given that comparison websites rarely just deal with broadband, but with many different types of product, how feasible do you really think it is for them all to keep track of the detailed coverage and price and speed details of that many providers, most of which have many more package variants than energy suppliers do?

Bearing in mind that BT Group itself (BT, EE, Plusnet), Sky, TalkTalk, Vodafone and Virgin Mediashave something like 40,000,000 customers nationwide, with most of the Sports coverage being a monopoly product from one or they other. BT Sport and Sky Sport in particular, and VM being a one-pony-only supplier.

If you want people to engage in a reasonable debate with your, then the post this reply is after is a prime example of why you have got the responses you have.

In reply to a post by Capvermell:

What I'm detecting here is a number of technical types who perhaps like driving their white vans to install stuff and do stuff but who possibly don't seem to understand about the importance of strong regulation in a marketplace to bring about fair competition and stop bad and misleading commercial practices.

I almost get the feeling that some contributors seem to regard consumers and/or consumer rights as almost being a nuisance and that anything is fair game in making money out of them in the name of commerce and filthy lucre. I can probably guess at the likely personal profile of contributors with these kinds of views and would strongly suspect that many of them are self employed and tend to drive white vans to their regular places of employment and hence the idea of regulation and legislation to bring about a healthy commercial marketplace or indeed even to ensure that self employed workers pay their taxes on all of their earnings rather than only 40 or 50% of them is something of an anathema to people of this kind.

Chucking mud at the people who are trying to help you doesn't often work well. Particularly if you are trying to persuade them to change their view.

Also a pretty serious error is the one at www.bt.com/help/broadband/manage-service/thinking-of-leaving-bt- entitled at the top:-

"Thinking of Leaving BT"

That then goes on to say

"The cost of leaving

If you’re still in contract with us, bear in mind you’ll have to pay the remaining charges of contract to cancel early. Most of our contracts are 12 months, but we do have some that are 18 and 24 months.

This is a complete lie by BT Retail when All of their contracts that they actively market for broadband have a 24 month minimum contract, including even moving an old copper line from another ADSL2+ service to theirs (although you would have to be positively mad to do this).

The 24 month contract thing is a complete and total outrage by the dominant landline broadband provider just because so many middle class middle aged or older people wrongly have the impression that BT is the safest or best option when empirical evidence is they provide the very worst customer service and almost always badly screw up and misprocess almost any customer request or order.

What I can't for the life of me see is why we aren't all on the same page here about customers being locked in for far too long on fixed line broadband when 1 month contracts are the norm on SIM only data deals and there is also no equivalent of this all contracts are either 18 months or 2 years long with the big boys and 12 months with even the small broadband suppliers problem with gas or electricity supplies. Yes there are some contract of this length but they are the vast minority and contracts that let you leave on only the few weeks switching notice without any penalty are commonplace.

The telecoms regulator has completely and utterly failed us on on fixed line broadband competition as far as I am concerned but nobody seems to be able to do anything about it. Also totally ridiculous is that if you stay beyond the initial 18 or 24 month contract you then get punished with a higher price unless you accede to the commercial blackmail to be locked in for another 18 or 24 months.

Of course no doubt many of you here just love being locked in for 18 or 24 months broadband terms and I now await your conflicting posts (since there are clearly a large number people on this forum who just enjoy arguing and point scoring rather than just sharing information or forming a united front against telco exploitation) to tell me just why that is........................

Edited by deleted (Mon 25-May-20 15:37:20)