On being grouchy with BTOpenworld... Again...
So like a great great many people in the UK who can't get easy access to cable, I get my ADSL from BTOpenworld. BTOpenworld is the online part of that-which-used-to-be-called-British-Telecom before it was privatised twenty or so years ago. Now the thing about this ex-monopoly is that it really doesn't have the slightest idea what it's doing most of the time. I've had £250 phone bills for internet access and then been told I'd get unlimited usage only for it never to work (an offer they actually physically rescinded because they couldn't handle the strain), I've had ADSL packaged with the world's least practical and useful modem and I've recurrently had them say that they don't support Macs even when - let's be honest - what's to support? The biggest problem with them is that they keep thinking "ooh - let's add more shitty services and fluff on our service" while resolutely not doing anything even vaguely useful like:
- Have vaguely easy to search help files
- Provide a simple service that actually works
- Not be dick-heads
My favourite bit always used to be the phone help-lines that they charge 50p a minute for. You ring up and they say things like "Have you got the phone cable plugged in?" and "Is your computer turned on?" before confessing that they actually dont' know what's wrong at all, and - by the way - thanks for the tenner you've just spent on the conversation...
But I have a new favourite bit. They send out these e-mails every so often, telling you how they're changing the terms and conditions and giving you brilliant new services like new dumb-shit-enabled browsers and "Photo and briefcase storage and sharing" whatever the hell that might be. The latest big deal that no one gives a crap about? BTOpenworld is 'fusing' with Yahoo in some totally tedious way. So they send out an e-mail explaining how ace this new service is and it's all HTML enabled and full of crappy images. And at the bottom it has this thing about what to do if you're on a Mac, and - of course - the bloody link doesn't even work if you're using a Mac.
Gah, the sooner there's some decent, practical simple mac-friendly competition the better...
Comments
Please stay on-topic, informative and polite. I reserve the right to remove comments for whatever vague capricious reasons seem reasonable at the time.
Why are you staying with BT Openworld? Surely there are other, better, ADSL ISPs that you can use, like Zen or Pipex?
→ Posted by: Adrian at September 6, 2003 6:46 PM
Might I recommend Demon? They've given me almost no trouble at all.
→ Posted by: James at September 6, 2003 7:28 PM
Ooh - and never have a USB modem; always use an Ethernet router. They're so much less hassle.
→ Posted by: James at September 6, 2003 7:30 PM
Leave BTOpenworld NOW (but they even make leaving difficult!)
Follow the advice about an Ethernet router.
Finally, use Nildram as your ISP. They're brilliant.
→ Posted by: joe gibson at September 6, 2003 7:34 PM
I agree with Joe, switch to Nildram - they are an excellent ISP. You can basically do what you want (run servers, download huge files etc.) so long as you don't abuse the service or break the law.
I would advise against Pipex - they wouldn't even speak to me on the phone when I rang up to enquire about one of their packages (instead telling me to go and look at their site).
→ Posted by: Paul at September 6, 2003 9:44 PM
Have to say, I use BTBroadband (rather than OpenWorld) and have had no real problems. (Although I do use a router rather than a free-ish modem.)
And surely BT can be as bad as they like - change if you don't like the service, ISP-ion is an open market after all.
→ Posted by: excession at September 6, 2003 10:04 PM
I've never gone wrong following the simple maxim: BT are *always bastards* and *never get anything right*.
→ Posted by: fridgemagnet at September 7, 2003 3:34 AM
I'm on a mac too, and on the point of going broadband myself The one ISP I had ruled out of hand before I even started thinking about it was BT. All I hear is hassle and even if you have no problems why pay £30 a month when others with much better reps and lab test results are much cheaper?
Considering eclipse, nildram, zen and plusnet. I'm on a Mac too.
→ Posted by: N. at September 7, 2003 3:35 PM
Just wanted to plug pipex. Been with them 18months, no problems and a pro-active, friendly helpdesk who've even phoned me back for updates.
→ Posted by: adrian at September 7, 2003 5:02 PM
ADSL - some of us can only dream of ADSL! My local exchange goes digital this month, but now BT are telling me I might (don't they know?) have a shared line (whatever the hell one of those is) - so they can't guarantee a connection. This from a company that provide me with a bog standard phone line that managed to break down five times in one year. Living on top of a hill in the Pennines is wonderful, but you don't half feel socially excluded sometimes.
→ Posted by: Richard Carter at September 7, 2003 6:10 PM
ISPs lease their ADSL connectivity for their customers from BT Ignite (who own the network infrastructure). These ISP (Demon, Freeserve, AOL etc.) have a "service level agreement" with BT whereby if connectivity to the customer is lost due to a problem at the exchange then BT Ignite pays a 'fine' to the ISP.
So, for example, if someone using Demon has a fault at the exchange level then BT Ignite will be instructed to fix it and pay a fine to the ISP if it is not fixed within a certain time period.
That's with Demon. Unfortunately, BT Openworld has no 'service level agreement' with BT Ignite (why fine a company owned by the same parent?) and therefore their exchanges are always the last to be fixed.
I worked supporting BT Openworld customers for a bit and the level of support we were able to offer was terrible. It wasn't our fault; we'd effectively be fined for reporting a faulty exchange and we were encouraged not to do so, even though most faults were at the exchange and not with a particular customers' set-up.
Are you sure it's your USB Modem at fault? Often it's a problem with the exchange.
Have you updated your drivers? :P
→ Posted by: Jez at September 7, 2003 6:24 PM
If you want a reliable ADSL connection, my suggestion is to get two of them :-) After the sting of the installation fees for a second phone line and 50 quid setup charge, two ethernet routers from Dabs for £40 each, you can enjoy the luxury of never ever dealing with an ISP support department again. Because when one connection goes down, who cares? The other should still be up. My business partner and I have our houses linked by a wireless setup and some nerdy Linux routers at each end (optional, but nice) which mean that we don't even notice when one connection goes down, everything gets re-routed to the other connection and carries on.
The connection at my house is BT Openworld (who refused to book a fault with their engineering department becuase "you'll need to send those pings from a Windows computer before we can be sure it isn't your equipment") and at my partner's, Bulldog (www.bulldogdsl.com) who are friendly and helpful people with a responsive tech support department, but have had a couple of network outages in the short time we've signed up with them, so not fabulous, but for under 25 quid a month I'm not fussed (total ongoing cost is �55 for both connections). But who cares, they've never yet gone down at the same time, so we've not had a total outage since we've set the system up.
Obviously it would be nice to get cable instead of a second ADSL connection for proper redundancy, but it's been a while since BT have stuffed up their exchanges so badly that resllers were down as well, it's usually an upstream network problem that causes down time.
→ Posted by: Matthew at September 7, 2003 6:39 PM
It seems like you aren't the only one:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3192055.stm
→ Posted by: Steven at September 7, 2003 11:49 PM
I've been reasonable un-annoyed by Demon's Mac-friendly effort: http://www.demon.net/adsl/expresspackages/expressmac-home.html. A few minor install glitches, but pretty good after that. The ADSL 'current news' recorded message line is useful as well.
→ Posted by: Robert Brook at September 8, 2003 11:01 AM
Thanks for starting this thread. I'm looking into switching to a Mac, but my ISP (ntlworld.com) will only support OSX with broadband, and I'm not convinced they're any help even then. I was just looking through all the other ISPs, and now I've found all the resources I need in one place. Wonderful.
→ Posted by: Dave at September 8, 2003 2:33 PM
Tom,
Repeat after me - P-I-P-E-X.
Actually it's not bad, 12 months + down the line (pardon the pun). Seems to get pretty good ratings at adslguide.org.uk, too.
→ Posted by: Ben at September 8, 2003 3:57 PM
I'm considering 'freedom2surf' when our exchange goes ADSL in November. They look pretty good and they have the one thing that I always rate highly with any technical service: a community-based support forum (freedom2support).
It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for the likes of myself who have enough technical know-how to get out of most jams but just need that little extra input from others who've been there when I don't. (The Movable Type support forums have helped me immensely on more than one occasion in this respect.)
The forums at adslguide are a good place to start to gauge opinion of the biggest ISPs out there. I recommend it!
→ Posted by: s3d at September 9, 2003 12:18 AM
A guy at work was trying to leave BTOpenworld the other day - ended up agreeing to pay-out the last 6 months of the contract just to get away from them...
However, i'm curious - how often do they change their T&C's? Was the Yahoo thing a T&C change? Because, if i'm not mistaken, you can reject any T&C changes and the service provider either has to continue to provide the service under the old T&Cs, or they let you leave the contract, no?
I would ask the guy from work, but he's currently on a press junket to some Caribbean island - so life's not all bad...
:P
→ Posted by: Jamie at September 9, 2003 11:03 PM
I'm with BTOpenworld on ADSL, and to be honest, I haven't had a problem with them. I use the crappy USB modem, but it's connected to a PC which acts as router and firewall. Doesn't give me a lick of trouble and using SSH forwarding I can access my Mac through the internet 24/7. I will change to a Netgear modem/router soon, as I'm so sick of windoze it's not true, but if you know how to play the game it's no problem (never phone tech support, don't plug the USB frog into the mac, etc...). I do agree about the Yahoo crap though. What on earth are they thinking of?
BTW, Tom, check the tabindex attribute on this comment box. When I tried to tab from the Homepage input area above, it sent me to the search input box at the top of the page.
→ Posted by: Brad Brooks at September 10, 2003 9:54 AM
Relief is being able to bollock a person instead of a recording:
http://www.donkeyontheedge.com/permalinker/?pid=11216&blog=donkey
→ Posted by: Dug at September 10, 2003 11:29 AM
Ive quit BTopenworld for pipex 1mb and it has been such a hassle cancelling BTopenworld. I even talked to french ppl!
→ Posted by: POP at November 6, 2003 6:56 PM
you lot are a bunch of whinging tossers. Problems occur with all ISP's at some time or another. because BT are by far the biggest all we hear about are the unproportionally number of people with problems
→ Posted by: GT at November 20, 2005 12:02 PM