Safe Speed Forums

BT really are the limit. I sent them a cheque mistakenly for £149 when the bill was £194 (I misread it obviously). They banked the cheque on Nov 6th and then cut off my service on Nov 10th without any warning or contact. Is this how to treat customers in any way or form? Surely any intelligent human being should have realised what had happened and surely the fact that I had paid 3/4 of the bill should have been enough to keep my line open.....obviously not with BT.

So now I am in the market for another provider but as most of my calls are diverted from my landline to my mobile I want something that gives me cheap call diversion (presently it's a lot more expensive than a normal call). Any ideas anyone?

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

If you have a mobile anyway perhaps a non landline solution would be just as easy. Mobile broadband is as cheap as adsl/cable now so unless you are a big downloader it will do the job just as well. If you get lots of minutes then you can call people back that would normally call you instead.

I usually look on comparison sites like uswitch.com.

I'm happy with "Madasafish.com" as my provider, but I don't forward calls.

Best was the advice when I enquired about their broadband - the guy on the phone said "forget the advertised speed of up to 5 mb - in Staveley you are never going to get more than 1 or 2 mb, and we cannot reduce the price."
All the others were still promising 5mb, and the Madasafish guy was wrong - I get 3-3.75 mb! His honesty got them the work.

They also operate a referral scheme which earns you and your referree a discount - my code is cooper.engraving@ic24.net if it helps!

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Time to take responsibility for our actions.. and don't be afraid of speaking out!

Cautionary tale about BT-and their billing dept .
About three years ago ,I had BT broadband and phoneline costing me about £40 a month -OK when my son was at home -we shared the BB costs.When he moved out I looked at costings ,and Virgin offered me a good deal - approx £20 a month .So at the start of the month when switchover was due ,along came a bill from BT for their £40, (payment in advance).I contacted BT billing and they knew that the servicewas about to be stopped .Advice - cancel DD and wait for final bill . Next item to arrive was a final demand for the full month,followed in a fortnight with a demand for the payment plus a default sum . Next to arrive was a bill for the amount as before plus one for the last few days. I contacted BT to be told that all was owed -"VE ARE RIGHT AND YOU ARE WRONG ".So I put it in writing ,asking for the why's and wherenots .
Next response - from a debt colection agency ,adding £25 to the bill ,followed by a soliciters letter 14 days on ,threating legal action .My reply - "carry on - I'll love taking BT to the cleaners for this " - no response ,for some time .Then more threating letters .Eventually I wrote to BT complaints dept , giving them the chance to answer ,and reminding them that this was the start of OFCOM's twelve week period .
Wow - next was acall from BT -"yes weve made a mistake -the bills were wrong - we now reckon you owe us about £15".I paid it and demanded an invoice stating account cleared "account finally paid in full , not further monies owing" .
So if you've got a problem with BT-write , keep a note of dates and remind them that OFCOM consider that twelve weeks later it's time to investigate ( and that gets BT (OR ANY COMPANY REGISTERED WITH OFCOM ) FINED).

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

I made the sad decision to work for genie - BT's mobile phone service although you were never meant to tell customers that it was BT !, for about 18months.
I have so many upsets and problems with BT I could literally write a book! (and by all means quiz me on this ! )

However I will tell you this .... whenever writing to BT and you want action- real action - ALWAYS copy t to watchdog and to OFCOM, then and only then will they start to listen - they literally ignore all others as they have SO many complaints ! - Well genie did anyway ....

Although I sadly have to keep a BT line I use Virgin and although most of their service has been excellent - they did mess up badly when I was going N to S and had to deal with a mess - yes that BT started !

I had had Onetel and it worked fine - but it made no sense to keep both Virgin (B/Band) and Ontel the 'all calls fro one fee' so I dropped the Ontel - well BT's screw up had disconnected everyone anyway ! So I just redid a deal with Virgin, and they have given me a very good monthly deal.
Sadly their size is making a sadder call centre attitude, but they are nothing like BT thanks goodness.
I use BT landines (2) and then have nothing extra on one ( and BE CAREFUL of BT's attempts to get you back ! - the small print shows you are on a rolling 12 mth contract etc), and on the other line which includes 'call sign' (the reason why I cannot change away from the BT line) I then have all calls via Virgin for a one off fee.
I will move the Safe Speed line away from BT when that gets cheap enough and I have complete the next 12 month contract !
Be aware too - if you use a non BT line provider if you ever call 999 your details will NOT automatically appear on their screens, so if or any reason you cannot say much they may not know where you are. It is a small 'point' but .....

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Safe Speed for Intelligent Road Safety through proper research, experience & guidance.

They have been bad for a while .... they must have been working real hard at getting worse to get any worse

Last dealings I had with em went something like this .... bought a house with working phone line but as wasn't using house right then cancelled the connection. While later wanted it re-connected ....... over 7 hours spent on phone (this is not an exaggeration and is probably conservative) to BT had failed to secure the re-connection .... would ring for half hour, then whoever answered couldn't deal with the request and would pass to someone else who couldn't deal with it and eventually the line would just go dead. Oh and apparently they had no record of the line ever existing and it would need a complete installation ... I used the phone several times before it was disconnected and I'd swear blind I had a conversations with people I know ... maybe I was dreaming of course

Called madasafish.com .... phone was answered in 2 rings .... can you re-connect my line? .... yes .... when? ... would next week be ok .... yes but i won't be in .... no prob just leave a key with a neighbour in case engineer needs access .... job done .... total time taken .... approx 5 mins

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You only need two tools - WD40 and duct tape. If it doesn't move and it should, use WD40. If it moves and it shouldn't, use duct tape. :0)

I had big problems with BT about 15 years ago but as soon as I sent them a letter and a copy of it to OFCOM, they soon changed their tune. It's nice to hear that ofcom still has some teeth unlike ofwat who seem to side with the water companies.

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My views do not represent Safespeed but those of a driver who has driven for 39 yrs, in all conditions, at all times of the day & night on every type of road and covered well over a million miles, so knows a bit about what makes for safety on the road,what is really dangerous and needs to be observed when driving and quite frankly, the speedo is way down on my list of things to observe to negotiate Britain's roads safely, but I don't expect some fool who sits behind a desk all day to appreciate that.

Sounds normal for BT. I had broadband with them when it was still a novelty. I had to write to the CEO to get the barstewards to disconnect it so I could switch to another provider. Their service quality was dismal. Tech support was useless. They even sent me a virus in one of their emails!!! They had continual service failures. They cut off the phone line when they did the broadband too so I had no phone for several days of one Xmas.

They are rank amateurs compared to British Gas though. I have never known a company which is so thoroughly incompetent.

Virgin are a bit useless. They send their engineers out without them knowing what they are supposed to do as their job sheets are blank. I kid you not. CS is fairly hopeless. Original broadband installation didn't work and it was ages before it did. Only one welsh lass managed to know what was wrong and fix it within minutes. All the others I spoke to were hopeless. One guy even hung up on me when I said I had a Mac!! The engineers also complain about the CS people being useless and not doing what they are supposed to. If they can't even give their own staff decent support what hope is there for the customer?!

Have had a few problems with Virgin -mainly trying to get hold of them .On occasions trying to get hold of telephone faults takes almost as long as the wait for the engineer .Then -the problems then start with the call centre .Suspect that these people arenot at fault -it's the system which I suspect uses computerised fault finding -which IMHO tries to clear the fault from the company's equipment ( similarly to that practiced by BT).In my case the fault was loss of caller ID -and on thre differing phones, and incoming calls from three different networks - .
Similarly with my broadband -speed varies from 1mb to the promised 10 at different times of the day ,on three different OS and two different browsers .Firsdt time I waited 25minsto get through .Followed that up with an e mail - and the subsequent next two times - it's now been escallated -to a UK fault team .

So it seems with Virgin -got a complaint - use their feedback proceedure -it's on the site .
As for BT -it used to be a joke ,way back in the old GPO days, that the customer got service in spite of the company.Seems that's now true .

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lets bring sanity back to speed limits.
Drivers are like donkeys -they respond best to a carrot, not a stick .Road safety experts are like Asses - best kept covered up ,or sat on

Only problems I've had with BT (touches wood) is it sometimes forgets my email accounts passwords.

I've oft wondered if the fact my Bro was a BT engineer for 30 years and then flew a desk for BT as the fat controller had anything to do with it ?

Quite ironic though as he got kicked off BT ISDN anytime for using it...... anytime !! (He's been with Virgin ever since.. must be 10 years min)

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The Box said "Windows XP or better" ... So I installed Ubuntu