My ISP has contacted me today to offer me a home visit by one of their engineers to improve my broadband speed. The problem I have is they have never provided anything like the speeds they bill me for and they would like me to make a payment to them for

a visit so they can quickly and efficiently improve my speed (they are so confident they are prepared to guarantee it).
If this is the case can they first of all demand further payment to provide a service they have been charging for and not delivering?
And if they are admitting they could have "easily" provided the service advertised should they not be accountable for not having done so?

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April 28, 2009 • Tags: , ,
5 Responses to “My ISP has contacted me today to offer me a home visit by one of their engineers to improve my broadband speed. The problem I have is they have never provided anything like the speeds they bill me for and they would like me to make a payment to them for”

  1. tecspec - April 28th, 2009

    I know what i'd tell them to do with their charge!
    How dare they, they charge enough and say they can guarantee to improve your speed.. isn't that called service.

    Bloody cheek..

  2. Russel.West - April 28th, 2009

    You could try writing to them offering them the opportunity for you to visit them and for an unreasonable fee you will guarantee to help them understand the terms – customer service, fair practice and how to keep a customer… if they decline…

    I suggest you then move service provider, taking your hard earned money away from them and giving it to a more deserving supplier!!!

    I am fed up with paying for rubbish service, so I'm changing ISP the moment my contract is up for renewal.

  3. blacksmith81 - April 28th, 2009

    Damned cheek, they should be doing this at their own expense, not yours. You should not be held liable, for their failure to discharge the contract they entered into with you.

  4. funrunna - April 29th, 2009

    I cannot name names for legal reasons… But there is a popular antivirus suite which regularily causes far more problems than it purports to fix. When the end user realises the travesty, it is nigh on impossible to remove the offender… However the kind people at semantic WILL sell you a piece of software, to remove this very effective virus!

    There are tools to check your download speed h and I'll supply a link presently, if you wish but. I'd be very inclined to let them do the work, submit the bill and request them. Take me to court!

    Whilst I can be as tolerant as Candy's "Mahatma on a big-un"

    I have a whole different outlook to corporate extortion… I find this especially obnoxious and spit venom at it!

  5. wumpus - April 29th, 2009

    Other ISPs manage to improve speeds without home visits; they do it quietly and without fuss or further charges.

    There are various ways of doing this; tweaking the signal gain (done at the exchange), reducing your contention ratio (done at the exchange), removing speed caps (done at the server or exchange).

    As far as they know, you could be the best computer admin in the world, so they can't guarantee an improvement by tweaking settings on your computer – unless you're running BT software to get a connection!

    The only way they could guarantee a speed increase from a home visit is by swapping hardware, which I'm sure you could do yourself.

    So maybe they'll swap your modem for a faster one (which you could do yourself, or maybe you already have).

    Or they could swap you to using ethernet rather than USB (which is something I always recommend to people; might need a change of modem, and you'll need a network connection on your PC).

    Or they could change your ADSL Microfilters for better ones, which might give a marginal improvement.

    But to be honest, I'd register a few complaint about their poor levels of service, wait for the end of your contract, and move to a better ISP. Even better, take your phone service with you if you can.

    I was very happy when Telewest gave me the option of one of their lines and I could finally kick BT into touch.

    Even more so when I ordered BT engineers off my property – they keep trying to install extra cables which would have hung across my driveway in front of my bedroom windows.
    The cheek of BT is unbelievable.

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