Still strugging with BT Broadband

I am still struggling with BT Broadband following my "upgrade" in July.

The good news is that the non-connecting PC issue resolved itself when the PC in question died of other causes. The bad news is that BT have still not managed to get the billing right and my recent philanthropic gesture has backfired.

I am getting regular emails from BT telling me that I have exceeded my monthly usage allowance and that I will have to pay for the extra but I can avoid this in future by upgrading to BT Total Broadband Option 3. Equally regularly I write to them reminding them that I am on Option 3 and they need to get their act together. They have yet to do so and that battle continues.

While all this was going on I agreed to open up my home wireless network and make it available to others as part of BT Openzone. The benefit to me was that I could then use BT Openzone at other locations, particularly useful for an iPod touch owner.

This seemed to work and I could see both networks but the connection speed on my private network was a lot lower than on the Openzone one. This was not practicable for the high use I make of broadband at home so I called BT to try and get it fixed. BT seemed to think that the best way to do this was to give an operator in India remote control of my PC but this failed as the connection speed was too slow, i.e. the problem they were trying to fix stopped them from fixing the problem.

At the end of the aborted call to India it was suggested that I call another number to speak to the Openzone team directly but as they were the people who told me to call the Broadband team in the first place I decided against this. I removed myself from the BT Openzone instead.

That has not worked out either! BT were quick to remove my free access to Openzone but have not yet disabled the service so the network is still running off my router but I cannot connect to it.

I am about to cancel my direct debit with BT (why didn't I do this earlier?!) so that I can stop paying for the service that I am not getting and perhaps then the mounting debt will force them into fixing the problem.

I have considered transferring to another provider but with so many devices (at least 8) connected to the current wireless network I don't want to risk a break in service. I'd rather owe BT lots of money instead!