BT TV No Frills > EE TV

[NK34]

My mother 90 has "Entertainment (No Frills)" as part of her ludicrously overpriced contract with BT. I intend to contact BT to try and get a better deal - she's paying nearly £100 per month, don't know how that happened but anyway.

I know BT TV is morphing into EE TV and I assume any possible new package would be under the EE brand but...

(1) I do not see a no-frills TV package on EE - Entertainment at £20 is the closest and she only wants or can cope with Freeview

(2) Is the EE interface basically the same as BT? e.g. channel guides, how to "record" programmes etc.? At 90 she would not like new things to have to learn

Thanks in advance if anyone can answer

[Midnight_Voice]

@NK34 

Under no circumstances allow her to be switched from BT to EE - posting after posting here shows that with the best will in the world, EE just can’t get this right.

Have a look at the BT Broadband packages and get her something simple and basic - £30-£40 should do it.

Price 300 minutes on the Pay As You Go tariff and compare it with what the 700 minutes tariff costs - we have light telephone usage, but the 700 minutes tariff is the sweet spot for us, even though we use many less minutes than the 700.

One snag, though, is that they will inexplicably tell you that this tariff is no longer available, even though it is in the current, July, price list. Challenge them on this; I got the Unlimited tariff for a few pennies more because it was easier to sell me this heavily discounted than to sell me their price list item at its published price. Go figure…..

Finally, when did your mother get her YouView box from BT? If, as seems likely from that No Frills plan, it was before 13/12/2019, then the YouView box is hers to keep, so don’t respond to BT's threats and blandishments and preaddressed paper bags to require it back; they are bluffing.

You will find with a YouView box out of contract with BT that she can still see the channels from 300-600 in the EPG, but she can no longer watch them, nor any recordings made of them. But she can still watch all the channels from 1-300 (except the internet ones that don’t play anyway) and the radio ones from 600 upwards.

Netflix and Now will stop, but she can go back and subscribe to them if she wants to, and they will then play on the relevant apps on the YouView box.

If she wants Now, don’t take any six-month discounted offers - pay the regular price, but start the cancel process immediately. Now will give you a heavily discounted price to stay. And it’s all automated, so you don’t even have to haggle with a human.

I ran like this for years quite happily without BT or EE; I have EETV now to better support EETV customers now the YouView Community has ceased to be, and didn’t miss much. Though maybe that’s because I am sport-blind; EETV is a much more compelling option for sports mavens, as I have always readily admitted. But unless your mother is a real sports fan, she will likely find what I found.

[NK34]

Thanks for this, very helpful

[Weerab2024]

I would say that sky stream is better for those looking at entertainment channel options. 

I had an offer of sky stream whole home for £6.50 a month and took that. I will let my EE entertainment package run down and send the apple TV box back. Could always buy my own if I miss it

[Minkey1]

@NK34 

@Midnight_Voice  knows his stuff. Trust me. I've "known" him previously going right back to the YouView days.

[NK34]

Thanks but a complete new system would flummox her and I would be on-call telephone support daily. I'm getting cold sweats thinking about it 🙂

[Minkey1]

"Package is "Fibre Halo 3 and Complete Wi_Fi"

What I had. There's only the 2 of us normally, but we stream a lot, in the highest quality available.

But bless her. If I'm spared to her age, I hope I'm compos mentis enough to turn the telly on, let alone battle with the rest of it. 

if BT Shops still exist, might that be an option? I suspect tho they've made the decision to offload the consumer side , and if you  can avoid it for now, it'll come along sometime.

Good luck. And good luck to your Mum.

[Minkey1]

@Weerab2024 

As you’ll know, there’s not a huge amount of content on Apple TV+, but what there is can be great. I’m thinking Slow Horses, Ted Lasso etc. Abd the box can aggregate other apps.

Before I came to EE I got mine on a buy it now on a well known auction site for £130 new for the 4k Ethernet model and Apple registered it as new. Full whack then was £179 I think but they’re cheaper now. Some bargains to be had 👍

[Midnight_Voice]

@NK34 

Indeed, that’s exactly why I’m advocating a continuing BT Broadband/YouView solution, but without EETV in the mix.

If her usage is as you describe, she may not even notice that the frills in the ‘No Frills’ plan are gone 😛

[Midnight_Voice]

@Minkey1 

BT Shops are now EE shops.

I had the most excellent service  from the one in our local town, switching my existing mobile from O2 to an EE mobile contract, and I could see all the EETV kit lined up for inspection, though we didn’t need to talk about that.

Have a look on Trustpilot to see how your local store rates, if you wanted to use it, as there is praise for some and horror stories for others.

[Minkey1]

@Midnight_Voice 

Good tip. Ours does much better than shops overall, tho when I was directed there they couldn’t help, and the yute I took to be the Manager sat slumped in a chair head down fiddling with his phone. Appropriate.

Note EE overall 😱