This week, we’re discussing the biggest complaints you’ve got about your broadband, mobile and phone providers. Has your provider turned a bad experience into a good one?
After we revealed Britain’s top five biggest broadband and phone complaints, you shared your experiences – good and bad – with us.
Irene Bunce hasn’t had much luck with her broadband:
‘BT Infinity is rubbish at times. I can not get on the internet and it’s slow. As soon as the 18 months is up I will change.’
Linda had a bad experience with Plusnet:
‘I moved from Plusnet Value to Plusnet fibre. I found their customer service on par with Carphone Warehouse – i.e. rubbish. Not what I had come to expect from Plusnet. I had to purchase an additional piece of equipment to be able to operate my systems. Will be changing as soon as my contract period is up because of how they treated me.’
Taking the rough with the smooth
Some people had mixed experiences with their suppliers, like David:
‘The main problem I have with Virgin Media is the video buffering. Website videos like YouTube, BBC iPlayer etc always have trouble loading, but everything else is otherwise very fast.’
Christhompson would like to see his prices go down a bit:
‘I have been with Virgin Media for years and overall I find they are OK, but not that cheap. In the past, getting through to complain has been a slow process but waiting times seem to have greatly reduced and the quality of customer service has also improved.
‘I think that more competition from BT may have caused this to improve as we now have a real choice of service. My service dropped for three days recently and Virgin offered a reduction on my subscription for that period and called me once the problem had been rectified.’
Turning problems around
Some commenters turned a bad experience into a positive one by switching to new providers, including Rosemary:
‘At this very moment, I have a BT engineer changing our system so we can move from Virgin Media to Plusnet. This is on the advice of relatives who say we can halve our monthly Virgin bill, which is very expensive.’
Trilly is also having better luck after switching:
‘I received the Which? Broadband survey and put down I was happy with Virgin Media. Two hours later, I opened a letter advising my monthly premium had gone up by nearly £7-a-month. In the contract it says you have 30 days to cancel if Virgin increase the price, which I did. Phone, broadband and TV and went to BT. We already had a BT phone line and I am saving a minimum of £30 a month from what we paid Virgin.’
Alan tried a less well-known supplier and came up trumps:
‘It’s not right at all that they put prices up mid contract. However, Im glad my broadband contract was up because I was having a terrible time with Sky Broadband. Speeds were slow. It kept dropping out and no amount of call outs seem to fix it.
‘There was no Virgin Media in my postcode so I decide to try Yoursuresave broadband. I called them up on 11 January and it was installed a couple of days ago. So far, everything is great. My son is overjoyed with his Xbox connection.’
We agree that prices shouldn’t be raised mid-contract, which is why we launched our Fixed Means Fixed campaign last year. Congratulations Alan – you’re this week’s Comment of the Week and will be featured on the Which? Convo homepage!
Have you suffered many problems with your mobile, phone and broadband provider? Have you managed to solve the problem by switching?