Should we pay?

Beau x1

I'm seriously thinking of getting onto my DSL provider (in my case, BT) and politely tell them that there is no way I'm paying for this month's service.

Why?

I'm supposedly on 7.6 Meg. I don't expect to get the full speeds at all, hell I'd be happy with the 3Meg I was getting beforehand.

However, recently I've been just getting bloody atrocious service and I don't think we should be paying for it.

On a broadband package, I'm peaking at 20kbps. That's a disgrace, and its coming out of our pockets. I'm not just saying its a hiccup either, its been like this for the last couple-few months. The service is not fit for its purpose (not Broadband at all, tbh, more like always-on ISDN), nor is it of merchantable quality.

So are we legally entitled to not pay for this service?

BaconZombie

ADSL has NO SLA on the service so if you do not pay they can cut you off and/or sue you for the money.

This is way a lease line with a SLA costs ~28k for 1.5Mb per year from Eircom.

TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR BT IRELAND RESIDENTIAL SERVICES wrote:

You acknowledge that the bit rates in respect of the Service, may be reduced within the network from time to time and speeds are not guaranteed.

http://www.btireland.ie/tncb.shtml

Onikage

Not trying to be smart, but if you want real legal advice ask a lawyer. If you want anecdotes and words of support, you're in the right place.

Have you tried http://www.legalline.ie/?

Beau x1

BOFH_139 wrote: »

ADSL has NO SLA on the service so if you do not pay they can cut you off and/or sue you for the money.

This is way a lease line with a SLA costs ~28k for 1.5Mb per year from Eircom.



http://www.btireland.ie/tncb.shtml

That's such a shame. I'd still be surprised if they could get away with that, though - because they're still charging me for the higher broadband package. Their definition of broadband is "residential always on Internet service" which is fair enough, but what about those who are paying for the premium packages? If their service has not been as described for the last three months, how can they still legally cover themselves? Just because there's no SLA shouldn't mean they can charge customers higher prices when they're not actually delivering the product which we're paying for.

Legalline seems pretty expensive to be honest. Its not really something I'd go to a solicitor about, but jesus christ my last broadband bill came to €110 ex. V.A.T. Just really annoys me that it hasn't even been working efficiently in that time.

jaybee747

I don't know about the legals but every time i had a problem with my broadband i called customer service to log the complaint. Atleast in a dispute you have everything logged. I was with Ntl and had massive problems with loss of service but i logged a call every time the service went or was not what i was paying for, I was never charged when my broadband was down. It was a girl in customer service told me to log them in order to be reimbursed, its worth a try, i'd log them anyway

smellslikeshoes

As has been said here you won't get very good legal advice here but if you post up your line stats for people to have a look they could give you a more accurate idea of whats going wrong. Since you're on BT its more than likely a problem that a lot of other people are having (and there is a thread for it) but there no no harm ruling out line issues.

Beau x1

Thanks. Here they are:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5120 kbps 512 kbps
Line Attenuation 48.0 db 29.0 db
Noise Margin 12.4 db 12.0 db

lmimmfn

Beau x1 wrote: »

Thanks. Here they are:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 5120 kbps 512 kbps
Line Attenuation 48.0 db 29.0 db
Noise Margin 12.4 db 12.0 db

those are quite good( considering youre far from the switch, but synching at those rates is good ), define "peaking @ 20kb"? how are you measuring? how many times have you measured? If those SNR margins only have a variance of 3-4db then youve got better broadband than me, and im happy enough with my 4Mb( overall its crap of course, but still faster obviously than the max 3mb i had )

35notout

Are you by any chance using a router and reading the router speeds not the actual BB speeds? 5120kbps is a good speed tbh