I have been promised BT Infinity speeds over Coppe...

Question

On 31/10 I went to BT website, entered my postcode to see what services I could get and ordered BT Infinity 2 (with £125 sainsbury voucher offer). upto 78mb speed Yay!
Was given an installation date of 11/11 with activation within 24hrs.
On the 4/11 I got a text saying the order was on hold as they were trying to contact the previous line owner,
who had moved out on the 31st, having sold the house to me.
I phoned BT and explained to them that the previous owner no longer lived there, and that they had disconnected the telephone line anyway. I was assured the order would progress and the hub would be delivered on the 11/11.
Came home on 11/11 expecting to find a parcel with the hub, but nothing so left it till the next eve and still nothing.
Phoned again and told that the order management team would give me a call back in the next 24hrs.
On the 13/11 (eve) I got a phone call from order management team telling me my service would be connected on the 19/11.
I said this was unacceptable & in breach of agreed contract, but they wouldnt budge.
Asked to speak to someone higher up and passed to another lady, who kept calling me Colin. (my surname is Collins).
She said they were still waiting to talk to the previous line owner to take it over, so i repeated that the line was dead and the owner had moved out 13 days earlier.
Again, i asked to speak to someone higher up and was promised that the service would be set up today (14/11) and activated on Monday. I asked about the Hub and was told this would be delivered 'next week'.
By this time I was so frustrated I contemplated cancelling the whole order and seeing what other ISPs were in the area.
To my shock, I found the fastest speed available to the village I leave in was 17mb as there is no fibre optic!
I checked my BT order status this morning, to find that the BT home Hub 5 has been dispatched, so I phoned and asked to speak to their technical engineers to see how I can connect a LAN port to a copper telephone line!
I was passed yet again to the order management team, who told me my order had been cancelled as they couldn't provision a port at my local exchange, but the broadband team were preparing the connection for the 18/11.
I said I was not surprised as there is no fibre optic in the area. The lady suggested she ran a line check which I said was probably a good idea.
She came back and said there is no fibre optic to my address, only copper telephone line. Yay!! progress!
She said she will pass this info to the expert team and organise for an engineer to test the line and may require an engineer for installation.
She then promised that I would still get BT Infinity speed that I ordered, so i said can I have that in writing which she emailed me and texted me.
So lets see what happens next week. I am not holding my breath!

Answer 1

wilthewiz wrote:
Don't cancel, make them provide what they're contracted to provide
How could they do that if there's no fibre optic cable to his street cabinet?
Openreach manage the infrastructure, BT Wholesale sell the services to ISP's, BT Consumer is just one ISP.
My advice would be to cancel before the activation date if that is what you are considering. Once activated you are locked in to the contract and liable for early termination charges if you cancel within the contract minimum term (usually 18 months). You can officially complain but that can sometimes take months to get processed, and may not necessarily come out in your favour.