Murdoch hate sparks mass bitchin', rapid evacuation from O2, BE

If I hadn't already migrated from them because of their lack of fibre options, I would have done over the Sky buyout.

Oh well, another one bites the dust.

I understand that quite a large reseller is also moving off O2 and (somewhat astonishingly) moving to BT

I left O2 the day the buy-out was announced - mainly because of poor performance when I'd been with Sky previously (I have Sky TV so can't really claim an objection on moral grounds).

I was also thoroughly pissed off that I found out about it from the BBC first, THEN received a message from O2 beginning "as you may have seen in the news"....

Hmm....

Might be in a tiny minority here, but (despite loathing Murdoch) I've never had a problem with SKY. Broadband often a bit sluggish in peak periods, but never any problem with Customer Service or the Engineers. That may be in part because the house has 3 boxes and everything-but-the-porn subscription, so my monthly bill is substantial, or perhaps I've just been very lucky. I just wish it wasn't part of the Evil Empire.

Already going....

Most people went to O2 because they got a discount with their mobile phone and that O2 were on BE which was the first to provide ADSL2+. That group of people were already thinking about fleeing O2 as O2 wasn't going to move to fibre.

Then of course it doesn't help that Sky free broadband has been slated in the past by being slow and unreliable.

So Murdoch or no Murdoch, a large proportion were going to flee. Murdoch just reminded people that it was something on their tick list.

It is a good time to go....

I left BE end of last month - no way I'm getting foisted into Sky.

I was getting just under 5mbit down and 1mbit up on BE, now on BT Infinity 2 I'm getting 73mbit down and 18mbit up :)

I heard the BE helpline was pretty good, in my 3 years on BE I never had to call it.

BT is not too bad

Used them due to issues with previous ISP which was swallowed up and screwed my ISDN, BT mainly as quickest to change me from ISDN to ASDL.

Stayed with them simply due to effort in changing, Threatened to move over Phorm.

Infinity is a good package.

No one is likely to buy them.

BTW I am a Murdoch hater as well.

Sad to see them go.

I used to be a customer with Be*.

I can honestly say that from my first day until my last, the service from Be was never less than excellent. Right from the start, when BT refused to add ADSL to my line, and while Be themselves could not sort it out, they told me exactly what to say to BT to get it sorted.

In fact, the only reason I left was that Virgin were threatening to double the speed of all their customers, and Be could not match the 100meg VM were offering.

Would I be leaving Be if I were still a member? Not sure. Probably. I am not a massive fan of the Murdochs.

Left

We quit as soon as we could and jumped to BT infinity. It's not just Murdock. It's also the fact that they are migrating off the Be network (and no traffic shaping for legacy customers) to Sky/easynet which doesn't offer the same service levels.

Even with a years free broadband and £50 mobile credit offered we weren't going to hang on and watch the service degrade.

O2, great service but terrible speed. BT actually not that bad!

I was with O2 for three years. The connect was steady as a rock, the support team was great but the speed... I was lucky to get 2.5M in the evening. This in central London less than half a mile from the exchange. I was sad to leave them, but when I could barely stream SD iPlayer and HD was an impossible dream I decided to move on. I would definitely be leaving now from what I've heard about Sky's service.

Slight digression, but after O2 I signed up for BT infinity... and haven't looked back. I actually get the advertised speed of 40M which I don't think has ever happened with any provider. The connection has been very stable over a year at two different addresses.

Not all rosy however, BT's customer services are a confusing mess. It took them three attempts to place my home move order - on the final attempt I had to speak to four different people but they did give me three months free service to apologise for making such a meal of it!

Me Too

I phoned up to cancel and the nice man offered me a year at half-price to stay Be. I hadn't the heart to suggest he may be out of a job once the transfer to Sky is complete.

I left UK Online....

because they were owned by Easynet who got swallowed by Merde-Och's evil empire.

Dumped SKY TV too, now on Virgin, NOT going back.

So 0% are staying?

Balls.

The survey says that 0% of Be subscribers will stay with sky. and i call BS.

Be always was a bit niche so it might have more leavers than O2. but people are lazy.

I left

And following discussions on this fair site, set up with Xilo which has been faultless.

BE/Sky continued billing me after telling me they'd discontinued my service and I've been added to all of Sky's mailing and email lists.

I feel sorry for the poor buggers left on what is clearly a sinking ship, customers and BE's excellent support staff.

Lots of sky hate - not sure why...

I'm certainly no fan of the Murdoch empire, but living somewhere that has (until recently) had no real alternatives to Sky for TV, I've got the full package, TV, Phone, Fibre Broadband.

I don't recognise any of the poor service comments - like the poster somewhere above, I spend a fair bit every month, maybe that's why. All of my experiences with Sky customer services (and there haven't been many as nothing really ever goes wrong) have been genuinely first class.

When I moved to them (from O2 incidentally) about a year ago, the change over was simple, and I got 38Mbps from my "upto 40Mbps" service - reliably, all day, every day (and it is genuinely unlimited as well) When I challenged them over charging a long standing customer £50 to have Openreach come out to install it, they waived the fee.

The house move service was also flawless - If I'd have been able to give the 14 days notice they ask for, I'd probably have had the Fibre Broadband on the day I moved in, as it happened I gave them a days notice, and we were up and running again inside a week.

My only complaint about Sky broadband is the router - whether it's the older ones or the new "sky hub", they are utter rubbish, and Sky don't make it easy to use your own kit but it is possible with a bit of effort.

I went as soon as they announced...

I left BE as soon as the announcement was made, BE were a very good ISP a reliable network and they had excellent technical support.

Fortunately, as I live in South Yorkshire I have been able to move to Origin Broadband http://www.origin-broadband.co.uk/ who are on the Digital Region network. The speed provided is exactly what I'm paying for, the support is excellent and, so far, it just works.

Rumours on the BT share price forums of a massive spike in orders for BT Broadband/Infinity. Clearly, the free sport on BT Vision is going to be popular, but I wonder if some of it is emigres from O2?

Not leaving, Murdoch not a factor

In fact we just moved house and I was anxious to get the new contract signed before the takeover was finalised because O2 offered me free broadband for the contract duration (12 months) AND £200 credit to my mobile account. They also said they expect Sky to honour the terms/price of existing contract terms so most likely we will stay with O2/Sky for the 12 months and then move to Plus.net who were the obvious choice until O2 made their free internet offer.

I wonder......

How many of those who are leaving 'because of Murdoch' still subscribe to Sky TV?

I bet there are a few whose principles don't extend as far as missing their favourite TV shows!

BAIL OUT!

They're all a bit late to the party, I was already disillusioned with BE when it got swallowed by O2 originally, and finally bailed out when O2 go swallowed by Telefonica.

Service was getting quite patchy already by then, and questionable decisions started happening like the car-crash web portal 'makeover' with the nasty garish blue/pink/yellow colour scheme.

Have been blissfully unaware that yet another takeover was on the cards, since am currently enjoying a rock solid broadband connection though Goscomb.

Be Off!

Joined BE to get away from Talk Talk who took over what was originally a pipex account and then gave me terrible download speeds which they refused to fix, apparently 650k was within acceptable parameters.

Now need to leave BE to get away from Murdoch.

This is no bandwagon jumping, I've been refusing any Murdoch product for over a decade and intend to continue doing so.

Gone

Left Be 2 months ago but it was only yesterday that they finally acknowledged that I was no longer their customer. This is a sign of the rot that is moving in. I want NOTHING to do with Sky.

Skys the Limit

I wonder if this takeover was a done deal sometime ago because BE were contacting their customers over a year ago regarding a IP changeover. Their Bulgarian tech at the time said that their block of IP's were BT owned (BT wholesale) and that in moving away they could provide a better network infrastructure. Now i'm thinking this was all smoke.

I've gone - got my MAC two days after the announcement. Switched everything to PlusNet FTTC, decision purely based on price but I have to say the customer service has been good.

I did blame the sell-out, and immediately the person at O2 retentions offered me a year's free broadband plus £100, then £200 credit on my mobile bill. They were desperate even back then.

Sky – great so far

I moved from IdNet, who are a good non-evil company to 'evil' Sky because Sky are the best price+quality unmetered deal I could find, and their speed is fine. It's been nearly two months and, so far, no complaints. I had to reboot the router once, but that's it.

Most of the country is covered by their LLU network. Best to check, though, before purchasing.

I Left Sky Broadband Because They UPGRADED Me.

That is not quite the whole story. The upgrade (their words) consisted of INCREASING the upload speed from about 400KBits/Sec to 600KBits/Sec, DOUBLING the price and CUTTING my monthly allowance from 40GBytes/month to 10GBytes/month. Protestations to Customer Services were to no avail.

I therefor joined O2 and what an excellent service it has been over nearly 4 years with near maximum speeds for my line. Clearly, I don't trust Sky Broadband and will move to another provider within the next 3 months.

One of those 40k was me

I phoned to close my account the week after I first heard and I've now been happily on Plus Net for a couple of weeks now :)

There was a couple of factors, first I didn't want anything to do with Sky but also I've been waiting for BE to do Fibre for over a year and nothing, no news. Even registered my interest a year ago and didn't get a single update. Now on PlusNet I'm getting a tested 60Mpbs down and 12Mpbs upload and I'm paying I think an extra fiver a month.

That said I've never had a problem with BE over 7 years and their customer service was excellent even when quitting. Didn't have to send my modem back but then it was 7 years old lol

It was the fibre that was my issue and sky the final nail in the coffin.

Just wait for the change over and tell Sky you're going to leave unless they give you a much lower price.

Telefonica and golden eye?

I'm sure it isn't just crappy sky service that a lot of people jumped ship... Some crappy upper management decisions led to a lot of people leaving .I've already got my MAC code.. BT engineer due any day now.

Pity, as I was with them for years, and still would be , apparently my loyalty was worth exactly £2.20 to them.

Not so sweet

The reason O2/Be are offering customers free broadband for a year or more if they stay is simple, they've been promised a £20million sweetener from Sky if they keep a certain percentage of their customer database. the more that leave, less chance of the sweetner. Im on O2 and plan to leave (not sure who to yet) as soon as my contract is up in a couple of months. At the rate customers are leaving Telefonica havent got a hope of the extra cash

I'm leaving too, although not explicitly because of Murdoch.

I'm a Sky TV customer at present, and because I was on Be I also have a BT line. BT have offered me a really good deal to switch to Infinity (FTTC, 40mbps download estimated) which also gives me a free YouView box and access to the new BT Sport channels when they come on-stream.

I was really happy with Be for years (Been with them since 2006, even before the O2 buyout) but I had a 2 week long outage this year and the service and after-incident care was awful. As an ADSL customer, never tell your ISP what you think is wrong (even if you are right) as they will assume you are incorrect.

Speaking as an employee of Sky who deals with the idiot public, err, I mean dissatisfied customers on a daily basis, I'm pretty sure these polls are of little value.

People threaten to go to other providers all the time, and probably about 5% of them will actually go through with it. It's just hot air. Then you need to take into account that they are a vocal minority. The majority of happy customers probably don't care. This is being blown out of proportion.

All the major ISPs nowadays have big greedy corporations' fingers in their pies anyway.

I left because they didnt do fiber. Simple as that.

Currently sitting on a 70mbit / 15mbit infinity line. Couldn't be happier :)

BE was a pioneer that lost its way...

Rufusstan

I've been dithering since I first heard about the sale.

Was with BT for years, but when I bumped up against their (at the time) unadvertised softcap, I was gone within a couple of days. The delay was only to find a viable alternative.

Now I am stuck. I LIKED Be/O2, and really want to have nothing to do with Sky, So unless things have seriously changed in 3-4 years, my only options are the providers I rejected last time, or go back to a company I never thought I'd deal with again. Decisions are bad.

It's not possible for the subscribers to buy the ISP?