reduced minimum speed

Good morning
BT availability checker has shown that I could get between 3-9mb with 1.5 minimum assured for months. A week ago it changed to a max of 3mb and minimum assured of 256kb. I contacted BT and managed to get a free engineer visit! Engineer said that this sometimes happens when they try and get more people to take up fibre, they will reduce the standard speed.

Fibre is not available to me, I get 3mb download and 0.3 upload. Recently been moved to a new cabinet that was installed under Superfast Cymru but that is still 1.5 miles away and was not fibre enabled before the project ended.

Are they allowed to do this? A minimum assured of 1.5mb was bad enough but 256kb is practically useless and if I understand rightly, I can't complain until the speed drops below this.

Have you always had 3/0.3? If so it sounds like the checker is just catching up with the reality of the line rather than previous estimates. However, contractually you might be able to hold them to the 1.5Mb minimum as that is what it was at sign up - but you would probably need some evidence of that if the time comes that speeds drop below that.

I don�t think the engineer ought to have said that ...

TBF though, it beats me how they have managed to raise an engineering visit because a customer sees that an online estimate has changed .... ?!?!

In reply to a post by ian72:

but you would probably need some evidence of that if the time comes that speeds drop below that.

Bit late for the OP now, but as I had suspicions that my speed would be nowhere near the estimate I took a screen shot, I would advise anyone to do the same.

Indeed. Especially as it could be 5 or 10 years before an issue develops to take it below.

Speed has always been around that and unfortunately, I did not take a screenshot because I stupidly thought that if there was going to be a change it would be a positive one. I was going to say no to the engineer visit initially because I was complaining about the difference on the checker as opposed to an actual line speed drop.

The only reason I took it was because the person on the line said I should be getting 4.5 -5mb. I would do cartwheels if I could get that. Engineer however confirmed that I was too far from the exchange for that.