BT Broadband Retentions

Hi All,
I have just rung up BT to see what deal they can do for me over a 12 month contract. I have been out of contract since last year just not got round to sorting anything out and with the recent price rises my Monthly bill has creeped up to £66 p/month.

my current my package / bill looks like this:

Broadband and Calls
Calling Plan Unlimited Weekend Calls
Broadband Unlimited BT Infinity 2
Entertainment Plus
£10.00
Access to AMC Channel and On Demand
TV BT Sport
BT Sport Pack
£0.00
Total rental and other charges
£63.99

BT Retentions have just quoted me:

12 Month Contract
Broadband and Calls
Calling Plan Unlimited Weekend Calls
Broadband Unlimited BT Infinity 2
BT Sport / £2 a month

SO
£53.99 p/m on a 12 Month Contract.

I have asked them to remove the TV package its worthless and I have also asked them to give me Internet/App access to the BT Sport only. But still I'm only saving about 10 p/m on my last contract and purely because they have took the entertainment plus tv package off. Doesn't seem like they have offered me anything Great to be honest.

I have not looked at the competition lately, I am happy with BT broadband service and thats all that matters and I wouldn't know who is reliable to jump ship to nowadays. My internet is normally solid, no congestion or down periods so happy to stay to some degree.

Should I take this deal or is there more room to haggle if I give them notice of me leaving?

Has anyone been offered any better deals from BT or elsewhere?

Absolute best would be £44.99 for new customers on BT Infinity 2

If you just need up to 76 Mbps then others are doing 12 month or longer offers at around £30/month, just watch out for cost of 'activation', PlusNet has free activation at present which helps.

Thanks Andrew, £30 a month for a 76Mbps service is pretty good in my eyes. Especially with no activation fee's.

How do they go about swapping the line over nowadays? downtime to phone/internet does the end user even notice other than a quick drop of Sync? or can there be some downtime?

I haven't switched suppliers for over 10 years now.

I am a little nervous leaving BT to another supplier as I don't have any issues with the service.

Do PlusNet throttle speeds? have poor congestion? would I notice the difference in service between BT and PlusNet?

I dont really want to leave BT but £23.99 a month difference £287.88 a year is a LOT.

Migration these days you just contact your chosen supplier.

As for whether PlusNet - best to ask those using the service

If you are considering PN as your next ISP have a look around the Community forum for the various views from members.

https://community.plus.net/t5/Forum/ct-p/Forum

I'll tell you what I am NOT happy with ALREADY from PlusNet is they have just this second called me up asking if I need help signing up with them.

Since I have inputted my Post Code and Phone Number into their website and got as far as viewing the package details page but then not proceeded with the Order just yet they have decided I need help and have called me up.

The advisor said we can see you have been on our website recently and then proceeded to give me the salesman tactics and even when I politely said I didn't need help just checking up packages myself he continued to talk about cash back. So I let him know I have finished considering it for tonight and I would rather call them if I needed help to which he politely ended the call.

This type of sales tactics really annoys me though.

Edited by Scoot (Wed 31-May-17 19:02:06)

In reply to a post by Apprentice:

If you are considering PN as your next ISP have a look around the Community forum for the various views from members.

https://community.plus.net/t5/Forum/ct-p/Forum

Thanks for the link Apprentice but unfortunately the nature of the internet and support forums is, if you go looking for complaints about a companies service you will undoubtedly find them. Not many jump on forums to give good feedback.

I will say this my BT broadband service has been nearly flawless for many years. Would be nice if some PN customers could say the same before I jump ship, but that phone call albeit maybe good natured has annoyed me.

Note sure why you are unhappy about them contacting you

it clearly say the following before you need enter your phone number

"If you don't complete your order we may use your contact details to understand what went wrong or to promote our products or special offers. Contact may be made via phone, email, post or text. Please un-tick the box if you don't want to hear from us."

it's your fault for not un ticking the box or reading what is displayed

Edited by deleted (Wed 31-May-17 19:26:44)

When it comes to following through with purchases i.e clicking Submit or Signing up to services/websites etc I always read and check the tick boxes.

However I didn't notice that text and check box when running my Post Code and Phone number through the Checker and have never known another ISP to do this?

I like to make my own decisions and don't appreciate the hard sell or sales people ignoring you saying "No thank you. I don't need any help" for them to change tactics and speak about other offers or cash back offers.

They should always take the "No thanks" first time and say "No problem give us a call if you do need help". As you say my own fault for not unticking the box.

Back on topic, BT haven't given you an offer at all, really.

When I was with BT I managed to negotiate:

£15 a month for Infinity 2
£5 for Unlimited Anytime Calls
£5 for Entertainment Plus & HD Extra

In addition to the standard £17.99/£18.99 line rental. I prepaid that with Line Rental Saver for the time I was with them, anyway. So you haven't been offered anything any good at all - you should be looking at getting what I got above, less the anytime calls (as weekend calls are included in all packages). Meaning aiming for £38.99 or so.

PlusNet is actually owned by BT nowadays, but their customer support and operations are separate. That said, PlusNet use the BT Wholesale network to get the traffic to and from the exchange (as do many other ISPs), so switching from one to another should incur little to no disruption depending on the way it is done, maximum 30 mins or so. Of course they might mess it up, but that's always a possibilty.

PlusNet support has a reputation for being really slow to get through to, especially at peak times - and they still don't support IPv6 which is ridiculous given how many other major providers do and how long it's been around (since 2000 or so). They seem to have the same "ask again in 6 months, every 6 months" attitude that pervades most of BT.

All that said, if you threaten to leave BT, or actually initiate the process by ordering a migration with PlusNet, you'll probably be given a retentions offer much closer to what I had. If you don't already have a Smart Hub modem-router (Home Hub 6, came out last summer) then you should also negotiate to get that thrown in for free, or at most the cost of postage.

With any of these major providers the customer service, support and technical stuff is never going to be very good, but generally in terms of new customer pricing you get what you pay for in the ISP world (BT excepted - their standard pricing is regulated by Ofcom). That's why I'm with AAISP now...

Any further questions, don't hesitate to ask me.

Edited by deleted (Wed 31-May-17 22:35:34)