Sunday 14 October 2007

Day 69 - Telecom Hell

I'm afraid I'm going to have to have a rant, the state of the consumer tele communcations market is a complete joke and I'm totally fed up with it. Since we moved into our current house we've NEVER had a decent Internet connection. I spent hours on the phone with Onetel doing line tests and still didn't get a better service. Eventually we agree to part company with Onetel and they agreed to ignore any penalty fees I then tried TWICE to connect to Pipex for Internet and phone and they screwed up the order on both occasions. After having to phone up Ontel and beg them for a second MAC key without incurring charges I gave up trying a third time.

A couple of moths ago our contract came to an end with Ontel so I decided to switch again to Pipex (despite the previous cockups they still had the best deal and I was willing to give it one last shot). Due to the fact we had a didn't have a BT line we could move the phone over but I decided it would be just easier to keep this with OneTel.

Fast forward to last week and I phoned OneTel to arrange getting our line transferred to our new house. To my surprise they wanted in excess of £100 to do this, unsurprisingly I declined their wonderful offer. I phoned up Pipex to find out what I had to do to transfer my current ADSL and get phone with them as well. They (surprisingly for a call centre) were very helpful and explained I needed to speak to BT first and get them to put in a new line (as they basically have a monopoly on the infrastructure).

I remembered having to do this when we moved last time, I basically had to take a line out with them and then cease the contract to enable stuff with my new provider. It now turns out they have extended their contract period to 12 months and they penalty clause is £70.

I'm basically being shafted as I've I transfered everything over to BT I will have to keep paying for Pipex for 11 months and if I go totally with Pipex I'll have to shell out £70 to BT.

I'm absolutely raging as I'm being totally exploited as a consumer and financially screwed whatever I go. I can understand the business reasoning on BTs part but this isn't my concern, all the deregulation of the utility markets has done is made the consumer suffer.

Broadband and telecoms in this country is a joke and really needs sorting.

3 comments:

Gillian said...

och, we might as well just get rid of the internet then. i'm not that bothered about it either way.

Andy Comber said...

Oh dear. Sounds like a real pain in the donkey, (I think thats right isnt it?) As you know im with pipex and have had no issues so far but then im virtually on the exchanges doorstep. I hope you get things sorted soon and all the pain and frustration becomes worth it in the end. At least it can only get better right? Good choice of router though!

Dodge said...

Apparently when they did a line test on the new place I can get UP TO 7 MBs, fingers crossed. I'd love to Broadband rather than elastic band which we have now.