In reply to a post by BatBoy:

In reply to a post by Mr_Morpheus:

I'm hoping that users after Official Support go to the appropriate channel rather than a community forum.

Do you have any evidence that posters here have not used official channels?

If I looked through all the threads, I dare say I could find more than a few posts where the poster has not gone via Official Channels and expected support from this Forum.

As I've said, I'm not against posting for help, but having been on both sides of the Support fence I personally wouldn't expect any Provider/Vendor support from a Community Forum unless said forum is owned and operated by the Vendor/Provider. That being said, a forum has no guarantee of a response level so in that vein Official Channels exist to provide direct support within a time-frame (which of course varies from Vendor/Provider to Vendor/Provider).

Perhaps, I am being a little old fashioned in thinking that a Support Channel provides support

As someone else pointed out, with Coms you actually get better support on here than you do from their own support phone number. Will save you from my own personal woes with their support but if I get a problem in my last few weeks remaining with them, the first thing I'd do would be to try and speak to their reps via this website.

In reply to a post by aibreeze:

As someone else pointed out, with Coms you actually get better support on here than you do from their own support phone number. Will save you from my own personal woes with their support but if I get a problem in my last few weeks remaining with them, the first thing I'd do would be to try and speak to their reps via this website.

So would you expect the same level of support from this forum from BT or Virgin?

In reply to a post by Mr_Morpheus:

If I looked through all the threads, I dare say I could find more than a few posts where the poster has not gone via Official Channels and expected support from this Forum.

How do you know the posters have not gone via Official Channels?

Quite a few people have received significant help from BT_Care reps here, when BT Retail support has failed. At 14:08 a BT_Care rep viewed their list of PMs here.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 12-Apr-14 14:12:04)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Quite a few people have received significant help from BT_Care reps here, when BT Retail support has failed. At 14:08 a BT_Care rep viewed their list of PMs here.

So they tried official channels, got nowhere and decided to post on a Community Forum. Which is precisely my point. BT_Care are only on here because it provides some level of benefit to them, they don't have to be here.

Perhaps if more people actually told the Official Channels what is going wrong with the Support, Provider/Vendor reps wouldn't need to frequent Community Forums.

Which is my point, a Community Forum may provide a level of support, but it is not and should never be the place for Vendors/Providers to provide support to their customer base.

Let's face it, if every Vendor/Provider had decent support there wouldn't be anyone posting in Community Forums except for those asking for "How To's" or asking advice about which router to get next.

But in the real world, pretty much every Support Channel sucks a$$ to some degree so Forums like this exist. Besides BT operate their own Community Care forum where BT customers do receive a level of support from their "Community Care" Team(s).

In reply to a post by Mr_Morpheus:

But in the real world, pretty much every Support Channel sucks a$$ to some degree so Forums like this exist. Besides BT operate their own Community Care forum where BT customers do receive a level of support from their "Community Care" Team(s).

The BT Community Care forums are Customer-to-Customer forums, not a BT specialist team.

Let's see, on the first page of this sub-forum:

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/otherisp/t/4314455-...

In response to the OP (who did state he opened a ticket) but this chap does not appear (and admittedly it isn't concrete) to have made any effort to go via the Official Channels.

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/otherisp/f/4318340-...

Rather than speaking to the Support Channel, the OP posted here...

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/otherisp/f/4320938-...

Oh yes, this one just asking if anyone else has seen something, but not checked with Support for any assistance....

http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/otherisp/f/4320079-...

Strangely, the quoted examples are all related to Coms - maybe because their Support sucks a$$, or maybe the posters didn't want to/couldn't contact the Official Channel - but that is just the front page of the "Resellers and other ISP" sub-forum.

I think you're confusing normal forum conversation with support requests.

As a regular beneficiary of this well-informed website I have found it useful to know how ISPs are treating their customers; by the nature of things dissatisfied customers are likely to be in the majority here. I hope people will continue to post their experiences, good or bad, so the rest of us can be informed.

I have found the TBB website far better than the BT Community Forums. Over the past year my sadly lowering opinion of BT has been confirmed by the posts of other customers on this website.