After BT & A Lack of Customer Service and some rather variable network quality in recent months, I made the decision that at the end of my current contract I’d “jump ship”. Zen Internet, with their much lauded customer service, and lack of any kind of traffic “shaping” is ideal. They offer a phone and broadband package, the latter being available up to the equivalent of my current Infinity 2. It’s a bit more money per month but, to me, that’s worthwhile.

Now, I have 3 contracts with BT – Infinity, Line Rental and BT TV. Infinity is due to expire in a month’s time so I thought I’d look at the possibility of moving that over to Zen first, before moving over my phone later and then retiring my BT TV when that expires at the end of the year.

I used the BT online chat to just double check that moving away from Infinity would have no effect on my TV package. This is what they said (thankfully they email you a transcript of the conversation, so this is an exact cut & paste from that)…

If you cancel the broadband from BT and move the services to any other service provider, it will not affect your BT TV

Brilliant. So I ring BT to cancel my Infinity contract. At this point I’m told that if I do my BT TV will no longer work, as you have your broadband from BT for this to work. Basically, the exact opposite of what I was told moments before in the online chat.

So, who is right? It sounds outrageous that BT would not allow you to PAY THEM for a TV package unless you have their broadband package – the extra channels are sent over IP and should work equally well coming from anybody else.

https://twitter.com/BTCare/status/603520555875196929

But, yeah, it’s true. It’s a good job I was reminded of this before cancelling Infinity but, if nothing else, it confirms in my mind why I need to move away from BT – their customer service truly does stink.