Friday, February 10, 2012

BT nonsense with VPN

I might be shooting on my foot for talking too soon, but I have just spent half an hour talking with the customer service of BT about why my BT Infinity connection won't work with VPN. After talking to numerous people that had to talk to their supervisors because they had no idea what I was talking about, I ended up speaking to a sales guy. He said that if I want VPN support, I had to change to a business package and end up paying more than double what I'm paying now, which is over £50 per month. That would include an static IP address (which is a nice addition, but honestly, I don't care about it at the moment). The thing is that it used to work before, but they didn't care when I said this. They just said that BT home does not support VPN. End of discussion.

This is all my fault for not doing my research before calling BT, although one would think that they should know better than anybody else about what's possible and what is not. Of course they don't, because after a brief search I found a BT forum in which they (as in customers, not BT) suggested to enable "port clamping" in the BT hub's settings. Sure enough, there is a menu called VPN, where it is suggested to enable this setting if you are having problems with VPN, which I had. Oh magic... now it works with no problem whatsoever... well, that is so far, because apparently it is unsupported according to their own sales department.

Lesson 1: Always do your research before talking to anybody
Lesson 2: Do not think that customer support knows what they are talking about
Lesson 3: For God's sake, do not believe sales people!

I'm tempted to send a letter of complain telling them that they should have known about the BT Hub option and that it almost seems they were just trying to make more money out of me... but I think I will pass just in case they decide to cut my VPN and say "We told you it wasn't supported". Shame on you, BT...

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am going through exactly same problem. I was with EE's ADSL before. I work from home one day a week. I never had problem with VPN or VPN on Linux. Now switched to BT's VDSL - so called infinity ( when will Ofcom make it mandatory to publish the actual standard along with whatever brand name they use ). BT customer care was curt and unhelpful. All they want me to do is subscribe to their tech support. It does not cost anything they said initially. Nothing comes free from BT, I knew and and kept asking them the same question. Oh, yes, BT does not charge anything. Someone else is charging. I am within the 14 day cool off period and can cancel the contract. I will try your suggestion. Thanks very much for that.

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