Is anyone else having trouble with UKTelecom phone and broadband since their take-over?

Technology
#1

I’ve been happy with UKTelecom for a number of years – particularly their ability to suspend service for four months of the year for a €5 nominal fee (useful at the moment). Apparently, the founder died last year and the business went into voluntary liquidation – although they told no-one until the business was sold to a new crowd – who don’t seem to have a clue what they are doing, so I now have no confidence in them. Their bills are wrong, they don’t communicate and I need to dump and replace them.

We presently have VOIP telephone and broadband router over SFR with no landline fee and should be paying €36.90 per month incl. a few ‘freebies’, but before rare chargeable calls.

I would be pleased to learn what others think about possible alternative recommendations, please.

#2

I understand that Orange will also suspend services for people who are not always there. Whatever you do, don’t use Teleconnect :mask:

#3

you can’t leave it on a cliff-hanger like that… :roll_eyes: :rofl:

#4

Sorry Stella - not been all that well and bed called :smiley:

Basically, Teleconnect is aimed at Brits as you may well know and it was fine to start with. I think it may have been taken over a few times and the charges more than doubled. Then they started charging rental for the modem. They have a contact page on their website but never ever responded to my messages, nor any emails I sent, nor any letters I wrote.
I changed to Orange (at considerably less than half the price) and emailed them but thwy continued to charge me so I was now paying both providers. I then sent a registered letter (can’t remember what it is called) and received, after a couple of months, a reply saying that my contract would be terminated in a month’s time but they would charge me 90euros for the modem unless I sent it back registered post, which I did. They still charged me 90euros and my requests for a refund, again by registered letter, fell on deaf ears.
I’ve written it off t experience and am so grateful to be rid of them.

#5

good grief… :thinking: :roll_eyes:

#6

That’s what I thought… to be avoided like the plague (now there’s a phrase that resonates rather more than usual at present :smiley: )

#7

and people complain about Orange…
Personally, we never had a problem with Orange; we changed to Bouygues simply for the 4G offering but otherwise we were perfectly happy with the level of service but expat and TC consistently seem to crop up as bad guys.

#8

We’ve been fne with Orange so far - probably still in the honeymoon period though and being relieved about being free of Teleconnect (one year in…)

#9

Orange stopped this offering of suspending services in 2019 - A neighbour of ours used to come out from the USA for her three month stay and would always use the service suspension but in 2019 was told it had been stopped.

#10

That’s a shame @PeterJ but thanks for the update. I haven’t needed that service for a while now. To be honest, even paying the rental when absent will be cheaper than using Teleconnect but I can see the attraction…

#11

I had a similar experience with SFR many years ago. First they offered a special number to place in front of all outgoing calls to make things cheaper, then offered something similar on an automatic basis which I declined, but they put me on it anyway. After several calls to change failed I gave them notice and ditched them, but they still kept taking the monthly payment from my bank.

I tried to stop it at the bank (CA :frowning_face:) but they said there was nothing I could do, it was up to SFR to stop. They continued to take the money for 3 months but did, eventually after a lot of pester, refund the money.

As a result I try to avoid prelevements wherever I can. It seems to be engrained into the French psychie, I had to tell my new insurer no less than 3 times that I would pay a year in advance, that I didn’t want their sticky fingers in my account, before they understood.

#12

I’ve done the same with insurance but there isn’t a lot of choice with phones, unfortunately!

#13

A source of general advice is

I’ve never used them yet it looks a good place to start and even though it will include a fee ( like UKT) they have agents who will do everything for you.

If you are in a remote area then the Bouygues Telecom 4G box is remarkable value and provides the Broadband element to which you then add VoIP… There are lots of VoIP providers, no doubt people can let you know which work for them.

If you’re looking for a service similar to UKT then another Paris based equivalent is Phone expat at http://www.frenchbroadband.com They only do ADSL and lines, for some reason they appear not to do fibre

#14

We have been less than satisfied with the service of late from Teleconnect. As you say, they were very good at the beginning but have deteriorated over time. 10 days ago, our modem which has been playing up for some time by turning itself off and not connecting, burnt out and we were left with nothing, although the phone was unaffected. I telephoned 29 times over the period and got nothing but a message to say all their advisors were busy and to call back or after the weekend I could hang on for 10 minutes before that message came up. I sent a letter A/R on Monday, delivered on Tuesday, I even got my daughter in the UK to send them an e-mail which needless to say was not answered.

Finally on Thursday last the phone was answered, I nearly fell off my chair and the response was very good with the promise of a new unit to be sent out that day. It arrived on Saturday morning, was plugged in and all is well. Just hundreds of e-mails to sort through now.

#15

That’s interesting Elizabeth. In the past, when I have succeeded in getting through, the person answering the phone was a delightful lady called Conception. I strongly suspect that she is, in fact, the only advisor on the phones :smiley:

#16

Miss Conception :smile:

#17

Oh very funny, John ! :roll_eyes: :rofl: :smiley:

#18

I think all Telcos have Miss Conceptions.

#19

that was in the early years of telecom liberalisation and digital signalling, idea was that new providers like UK telecom would strike deals with national and international carriers BT, France T, KPN Telia etc to carry calls at different rates dependent on traffic volume at anyone time, it became known as least cost call routing. And customer either used a number prefix before dialing or had a small box between network termination point and handset. It became outdated as cloud based and virtual switching replaced the Nortel DMS and GEC Plessey system X exchange routing switches

I managed a business offering such services to Barclaycard customers, call costs were billed to users card, (so no bad debt) we had about 80,000 subscribers before it was moved to Kingdom upon Hull telephones…they of the famous white call boxes.
It was the early days of real competition…then I had a short spell at Rabbit telecom, the least said about that ill-fated venture the better :frowning:

#20

Although I never worked for a national carrier though Kingston (aka Kcom) might say they are being the only licenced PSTN in Hull ) I have to say if you value guaranteed quality and generally consistent connectivity above cheapness then a national carrier is generally the best bet as all the rest are re-users of the national carrier’s network…and industry terms resellers, and of very variable quality.
And did you know Orange was originally a name decided on by Hutchison (HK comany) for its mobile network in about 1986 over lunch in a restaurant in Herford. Little did we at the time expect it to become the National brand in France