Love letter to the BT complaints department
I’ve had some appalling service from BT of late, here’s a love letter I sent them on 7th April, I’ll let you know if/when they reply:
Dear BT,
I am absolutely shocked and appalled at the service I have recieved. 3 months ago I moved house, and informed you beforehand in order to transfer the line. The line is still not working, despite the many attempts I have made to report the fault.
Your operatives have hung up on me mid-call (usually while transferring to another of your million departments) no less than 5 times. Once I actually managed to get through to somebody to report the fault, and received a text message the next day indicating that it had been fixed.
It hadn’t. Not only has your phone service upset me, but I have not received one single email or letter telling me my new phone number or account number. Therefore every time I actually manage to get through on a phonecall – we have to jump through hoops in order to find my account. That adds an extra £2 to each phonecall. I should be billing you not vice versa.
I’ve never received such poor service in my life. And this is an absolute shame, because I have been a customer of yours for many years and until 3 months ago had no complaints to speak of.
I’m at the point now where I would like to request a full refund for the 3 months of service I have not received, and a termination of my contract. If only I could actually get hold of an English-speaking operative to explain this. The last customer services representative I spoke to refused to put me through to his supervisor (despite requesting it no less than 4 times) adamant that he could resolve my issues. Of course, he only inflamed them.
I suggest somebody gets back to me ASAP.
Regards,
Spencer Lavery
They’ve definitely made my Top 10 list of Companies To Avoid Like The Plague™
An update: 7th May 2008
This matter was finally resolved today. After 4 or 5 missed calls from their customer services department (always when I was right in the middle of a meeting typically) I spoke to a very nice Irish chap who got it all fixed for me. The faceplate was apparently replaced on March 11th (though nobody told me) and so, my line has been working since then. I didn’t know this because one of my phone cables had stopped working, but that isn’t their fault. I’ve now been refunded the line rental I paid during the start date and the date of the repair and I also have a working line. I’m happy as pie.
Bottom line with BT is: if you have a problem, kick up as big a fuss as you can. They almost certainly read this blog entry (hell, I’m #4 in Google for BT complaints) and handled the matter in a better fashion accordingly. But do, I repeat; do double-check your phone and cables, else you’ll be in the same embarrassing situation as I was this evening after complaining about the service for ages, then meekly admitting “oh actually, it works, sorry”.
Good Layout and design. I like your blog. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader.
This is absolutely an understatement for the entire company’s lack of communication from BT.
I have had issues with BT for almost one year since they created another account for me, double invoiced me, terminated my contract and then caused a black mark on my credit by trying to make me pay a deposit to keep my line.
BT know they can act like this because if you dont live in a cable area YOU have no alternative! They have 100s of different departments and expect YOU to know which one can sort out your problem.
I propose action – does anybody have any effective advice on how to bring BT into Line?
BT are absolute rubbish – How about a petition or perhaps class action against BT?
Those are both good ideas – but I think they’ve both been done and without much change in BT’s service.
I’ve just found another good web site for registering your BT complaint – they’re collating them and then presenting them to OFCOM I believe: http://www.btcomplaint.com
And now for another round of stupidity with BT:
I moved house this weekend but cancelled my BT line two weeks ago and ordered the new line to be set up on 19th May, along with broadband. Then I sat back feeling smug, expecting that I would be all set up with a phone and interenet in the new house by the time I moved in.
Stupid Jo. This is BT we’re dealing with here. Stupid, stupid girl. BT are riddled with incompetence, stupidity and they basically don’t care. I had an engineer booked for the weekend before last, he didn’t turn up because BT had tested the line (externally) and decided it was working – it wasn’t, obviously.
So I re-booked the appointment and he turned up this weekend, stayed for about 10 minutes then left. When I asked him if everything was working, he said yes but refused to stay for me to test it. Obviously, this is BT, so it wasn’t all working, only the line was, the internet was not. I’ve just called BT now and they’ve told me that they decided to cancel my broadband order because it had taken too long to resolve (?!?) they didn’t tell me they were going to cancel it, of course. I’ve just spoken to another advisor who told me that they will call me tomorrow and try to resolve it. When I asked her to send me an e-mail to confirm what we had talked about and that someone would call me tomorrow, she told me she cannot because she doesn’t have access to e-mails! Ridiculous, I thought but then I remembered that it was, afterall, BT I was calling so of course she didn’t have e-mail access!
Got talked into returning to BT by coldcall – what a mistake. Since returning nothing works, no internet, have to unplug computer to hear caller on phone, have not set up direct debit as requested and find am ex-directory – not requested. Now told will have to pay around £195 to terminate contract. All I want is to return to talk talk!!!!!!
BT are the most horrendously bad company I have ever come across.
The fact that they are a communication company is all the more incredible as that is the one thing they specialize in being bad at. We have had countless problems and bad service and the only thing they understand is if you leave. We transferred our telephone service some years ago and now that I have discovered that other companies can do the line rental, that is going as well.
Dear Sir, I have had my hub for two months and it has gone off twice. Because i only have incoming call only on my phone i can not use a land line, so I use my mobile. last month when it went off it was sorted within four hours and cost my £20.00 in phone calls. Yesterday i was on the phone at 2.30pm complaining that my broadband was off. He ran though a few things with me and said that it would be back on within four hours so i hung up. Five hours later nothing so i phoned again this person ran throughthe same things with my again i ask if he would phone me back as i was calling on my mobile he said no and he would put me through to the tec dept. i started to speak to a lady and i was cut off. by this time i was foaming. I phoned back and yet again another person started to run through what was wrong and i said that i was cut off and needed to be put back through. he said there was no record of the contact. They all said i phoned on the 12/07/2008 but i bib not. by this time i this time i told the person that i was out of phone credit and only then he said he would phone me back. i was on the phone from 7.30pm to 12.30am and the problem has not been resolved . i think for the amount of time and money i have spent i sould have some sort of allowance on my bill. because this is not my problem it is yours and i spent my hole day off trying to resolve the problem. You can not email me as my hub is still not working and i am at work from 6.30am to 7.00pm you can call my after 7.00 pm i looked befor i came out to work and the broadband light and the phone light still is not on. yours faithfully
Mrs HM Scott.
Mrs Scott, I believe you may be confused slightly by my web site. This isn’t the BT complaints department, this is actually commentary on my dealings with their complaints department.
I have just been informed by BT that my line has been disconnected, it is their fault, but because of this they will now take 48 hours to reconnect me. It gets worse though, because they disconnected my line, the mystery department BT Wholsale have now arranged to disconnect my internet. I have now spoke for over 10 hours to their customer service department, but still no answers. I can only describe BT as a disgrace to Great Britain. They should not be allowed to use British in their title as the majority of their customer service now takes place over 4000 miles away in India. Although having travelled there regularly i only wish for the day when the company is renamed India Telecom, and all the superficial, arrogant BT staff finally realise that the one thing that is important is customer service.
The only thing that will change the attitude BT has towards its customers, and hence those that actually pay for this terrible service, is for them to move to another supplier.
I am so relieved to discover it is not just me having major poblems with BT. I would change provider tomorrow if I wouldn’t cost me. We’ve just moved house and BT has been awkward (wouldn’t let us have a number), unreliable (don’t ring back or do what they promise) inefficient (they’ve sent debt-collectors letter for a bill already paid) and damaging (my husband now has a poor credit rating he does not deserve). I’m a clergyperson and I think it’s easier getting in touch with God than trying to get any sense out of BT! I still don’t know where I stand. Have written to MP and Ofcom for help.
BT is advertising a saving of £4.50 to any client who signs up to a direct debit scheme. In fact there is no saving. The reality is that the client avoids a penalty charge of £4,50 by signing up. Ther is no saving at all. It is the same as saying that one saves £60 by driving within the speed limit and thus avoiding a penalty ticket. The advertisement is at best, misleading and at worst, a lie. It is unbecoming for a company of the standing of BT to conduct itself in this questionable manner. I suggest you examine your bills carefully and consider whether you are prepared to sign up to a scheme on the strength of false representations. We have informed BT that we will not be paying their penalty charge. We have lodged a formal complaint to that effect and await their reply.
Reading this list of complaints has confirmed what I started to suspect after countless (futile) hours on the phone to BT to get a phone line and broadband installed in our new home. BT is the most inefficient organisation I have ever come across in my entire life, and what makes this all the more shocking is that I’ve lived in a developing country for most of my life.
Probably in an attempt to save money on staff training, they seem to have countless different departments which my call kept on being transferred to. The frustrating thing was that I had to explain the whole situation from the start whenever I was transferred (again) – that is if I was lucky not to have got cut off after having been on the line for 40 minutes! I’ll not bore you with the details, but it is clear that no one who works for BT seems to know how the system works (I’m starting to wonder if there is a system) and I have ended up wasting many hours waiting for technicians to show up for appointments, followed by hours on the phone chasing up no-shows and clarifying confusing contradicting statements made by the various departments I’d been transferred to. If we actually had a choice (we live in a non-cabled area), we would have cancelled our order right at the start when BT called us 3 times in 1 week to make an appointment for a technician to visit, after an appointment had already been set.
I have recently had £76.58p taken from my bank account for a one off payment for a BT home hub which I didn’t order and haven’t got. After contacting BT on several occasions (all of which were call centres in India) I finally got someone to agree to return the money to my bank account. When this didn’t arrive in my account I again contacted BT (again a call centre in India) and was informed it would be knocked off my next bill, as my bills are usually less than this ammount it is going to take me at least 8 weeks to retrieve this money that has been stolen from me (stolen as in taken without permission or good reason). If this unauthorised deduction from my account had resulted in me going overdrawn or I had needed this money for bills this month this woud hve left me in a position of owing the bank money. When I complained about this and asked to speak to a manager I was informed they were all busy (after being kept on hold for a considerable length of time). I consider this terrible service and have therefore cancelled my direct debit to BT they can now wait for payment for my account till I am good and ready and as soon as my contract expires I will be changing to a company I can deal with face to face rather than a faceless company who obviously don’t care about customer service.
I just can’t resist the temptation to share with you our latest BT shocker. Based on the collective experiences above, we decided to promptly stop our direct debit with BT. Our broadband still wasn’t up and running even though we’d ordered it a month ago at the same time as the phone line. This had been causing our latest spate of wasted hours on the line to BT since the phone line finally started working several weeks ago. Just last week a helpful-sounding BT employee told us that the broadband equipment had been dispatched to be delivered to our house by courier and that the technician would come round to install it. The package and the technician never showed and when we called today to cancel the broadband order, we were told that we never ordered broadband in the first place! BT have lost my custom for life – I will never use their services ever again unless I absolutely have no choice. Now shopping for another broadband provider :-)
Why is BT so bad??? I have been with BT for about 5 years in total and no cause to complain until 2 months ago, I moved house and all hell has broken out. They stated that I needed a new line fitted to the house @£124.99, so I spoke to the English operative and confirmed the first bill would be £164. It came in at £190 so I stopped the direct debit, after fruitless attempts to sort it out I still get reminders for £190 even though when speaking to them they all agree it’s wrong, even after arguing with me the Asian lady stated that she’d never pay the extra and try to claim it back as a refund, but was adamant that I had too!
Anyway after being promised for the millionth time my bill came today… £405. So I am now leaving BT as they are in breach of contract by failing to sort out their mistakes they can shove their service back to India, unless I can speak with an English manager and agree to only pay what I owe which is £14 line rental and £24 broadband which works out at £38pm for 2 months… £76. A lot less than the £405 they reckon, plus I’m lodging a second complaint to BT and one to Ofcom.
We just recently joined BT and got the whole package with the home hub we waited almost a month 4 installation but eventually got it installed. 2 days later my BT Vision stopped working and all I could get is what is offered on Freeview after almost 9 hours of being on the phone in 3 days we still had no BT Vision after researching I found I am in my legal rights to cancel my contract due to a break in contract on BT side after inquiring as to how much it would cost I was told I would have to pay the whole 18 month subsciption in full. Is there any other way I could get round this?
I have had nothing but trouble with BT since the beginning of 2008. It all started when I asked them to come and move the phone line as the bungalow was being demolished. After numerous letters and phone calls about 4 months later they turned up at the other house; and to get the job done they had to put it under the other house (otherwise would have to wait god knows how long again). The first engineer didn’t check the job properly and a few weeks later there was a problem so had to call them back. However, billing had gone under the other house – that complicated matters. I have now spent days and hours on end trying to sort this out to the Indian call centre who cut you off, put you through to the wrong department and basically haven’t a clue what you are talking about. On my last bill, they billed me for a second call out which I am in dispute with – however, they then restricted my line and I couldn’t make any calls except to the Indian Call Centre – who still didn’t have a clue and it took each individual approximately 10 minutes to read my letter each time and then tried putting me through to the faults department – but it wasn’t a fault problem then – it was a dispute/complaint. Nowhere could I speak to an english person that would understand. Bt is the worst customer service I have ever encountered!
We moved house at the end of June this year (2008). We asked and informed B.T. of our date, they told us we would have a new landline number and that the service would start a week after moving in! O.K. we thought, we will just have to tell everyone to phone us on our moblies! That week came and went; serveral calls to B.T. later, (taking us now into the middle of July!!) they then tell us its a fault on the line and that they would send out an engineer! Another week later, we were send two different phone-numbers!!! Two seperate bills!!! We werent even on a land-line yet! Only requiring one land-line is enough (or should I say, would be nice!!!) Evenually an engineer came out, fixed the problem!! We were now able to use the land-line! BUT, we had to phone our mobiles to see which number came up!! Finally 6weeks later, we just had one land-line with one number!! Great your thinking! WRONG! They then write to us saying,”Sorry your leaving us….!!!”, WHAT? after all that! several calls later, (with consistly been hang up on!!!!) We resolved that matter!!! One problem still awaiting to be sorted is our personal greeting (1571) you know the one! They told me back in June, it would cost me an extra £1.50p per month for me to leave my own message, should someone phone when were are out! Just wait 24hrs and then we could activate it! WRONG!! Months later, I still dont have it! Still been hang-up on! When I do get through, they make you explain everything to them, then pass you to someone else, where you have to explain all over again!! I had had enough of passing the buck today and asked the guy to put me through to his supervisor! NO, he couldnt do that, I would have to write! Just as he was going to give me the address, he hang up on me!!!!!!!!!! I have had with B.T. I have been paient long enough! Has anyone any idea what I can do now??
BT – I know exactly what you are talking about.
At least 6 weeks ago I informed BT that I would be moving and wanted to have my line re-directed to my new address along with my Broad Band connection (have the bill to prove it).
Last week the residential line was connected and I have been patiently waiting for Broad Band to come on stream (7 days from land line as told).
After the engineer connected me I thought I should ring BT just to check all was in order with the Broad Band – I was told “yes” all was in order and just to wait. I should have known from the speed of the convesastion and efficiency (or was it just to keep their calls resolved stats high) that all was not quite right.
On Wednesday of this week, for some reason, call it sixth sense, I phoned again to double check the Broad Band order, this time I spent over 25 minutes hanging on and being pushed around only to be told that the residential line order was still “open” and that they could not proceed with my Broad Band connection until it was “closed”. The customer service adviser was very nice and tried her utmost to help me. She tried her best to give exceptional customer service, however I was getting very frustrated. She promised to put an urgent email through to Broad Band orders asking someone to call me to resolve the matter.
This morning (Friday) I rang to chase up again as I still hadn’t received a call back as promised. This time I was transferred no less than 5 times, being told my order was for a business line and the UK call centre couldn’t help me. I then transferred to India, where I was told they couldn’t access my new account on their system. Finally some 40 minutes later and having explained the problem for the umpteenth time was told that our Broad Band had not been ordered and that they would do a rush job and get us connected by 7pm on Monday.
Having had experience of SFR/France Telecom I didn’t anything could be worse – well I have to say BT win the award for the most appauling, archaic customer service that I haver ever had the sad duty to pay for.
If anyone can recommend a competent telephone/broadband provider I’d love to hear who they are and I’ll switch from BT like a shot.
Grumpy “not so old” woman – Brentford.
An update on the above. Having been promised my Broad Band line would be switched on on Monday (27 Oct), nothing happened. I spent over an hour on the phone last night talking to some very nice people in Middlesborough (I have their EIN no’s and will be writing to BT to praise as well as complain) who unfortunately could not resolve my problem but was promised that my issue would be escolated to the CSM dept today. I rang the 0800 customer services number this morning and spoke at great length to several people and to the CSM dept who could not help me as their computer system did not give them access to my records. Apparently BT are in the process of migrating customer records from one system to another and neither system talks to one another and some BT employees have access to one system and not to another. You can imagine my frustration at being told this.
I mentioned to one of the customer advisers that I had “friends” who worked for BT, I was advised to call my friend and get them to put a call through to the internal “action line” a dedicated line for family and friends of BT employees having problems!!! I couldn’t believe what I was being told. This sounded like preferential treatment for a select few who just happened to have BT connections!
Having been bounced from one person to another (15 people in all over the last few weeks), I ended up in India again, being promised that “a manager” would call me back in half an hour. After 1.5 hours I rang again and this time went through to Customer Complaints. I was then bounced to Broad Band sales where, at last, someone seemed to know what they were talking about (thank you Dundee). I now have a BT Broad Band order no ( 3 weeks after making my first enquiry) and assurances my Broad Band will be on sometime on 4 November (original order placed 8 Sept).
I then asked to go through to Complaints where I made my case for compensation. I await to see if BroadBand gets switched on on the alloted date. After which I will be writing to BT to praise some and to shame others for the overall appauling lack of customer service.
Grumpy and feeling a lot older of Brentford
I have had a horrendous time with bt since moving into a new place in June. I requested a phone number in July, but as I couldn’t get anywhere by talking to them, I have only a mobile phone and to be kept on the phone for upwards and beyond an hour is no joke on a mobile, so I asked my mum to phone for me. Not a problem, we were given a phone number and an activation date which was August 15th. My partner wanted Sky TV so we informed them we would have a line on the 16th August. By the 18th we stillhad no line, so mum rang bt yet again and was on the phone for the best part of 2 hours, twice in the first day. The reason we hadn’t a line was because BT said we already had one and BT Openworld had just cancelled the order, didn’t bother to tell us though. We rang baak and explained that the line in use is for the alarm only and ispaid for by the landlord. No problem, or so we thought. Another order was put in for a line and another activation date set. Still we could not get a number and a line, we have now had 3 different phone numbers. Whenever we tried to phone BT and speak to someone we had to put a false number in as the automatice reply said the number wasn’t a BT number yet BT had given it to us. The lengthy telephone calls continued for about a month, I think we must have spoken to everyone at BT we have spoken to so many people, the worst problem is when you get a foreign person cos you can’t understand what they say and they can’t understand what we say – no go area! In September we did manage to get thro to someone who ‘appeared’ to know what he was doing and who assured us we would go on line by the next day at noon. BUT noon came and went and so did the next few days and still no line. On phoning BT yet again, we were told to check everything ourselves as if an engineer had to come out it would cos well over £100. Now we have 2 lines connected to this house, one is the land line that the precious occupier used but took the number with her when she moved out, but left the line ‘open’ theother one is solely for the alarm, this is what seems to confuse the bt employees. The 3rd number they had given us was the alarm number, I rang and explained that I couldn’t possibly have the land line the same number as the alarm, but was told we could so to make a point and to find out what was really happening I emailed BT and told them to cancel my order, and guess what? The alarm was cancelled, much to the landlord’s annoyance, now this is odd because it isn’t even in my name so how could I cancel it? I have since tried to get theother line reconnected but it seems to be impossible and I am still paying for Sky which I cannot get and also paying a fine to Sky for not getting the BT line wuick enough. Who’s fault is this? Mine – I do not think so. To add insult to injury I am now receiving bills for the alarm line, as I have not paid it because it is the llandlord’s responsibilty and he had a direct debit set up to pay for it, I am now getting red bills. Can someone PLEASE tell me where to go from here?
BT – WOT NO PHONE LINE OR CUSTOMER SERVICE!!
In December I moved house and was too busy to re-connect the line from the previous owner that I knew was there. My mother did this for me by calling BT free of charge, but BT would only do so if she set up a Direct Debit in her name at my address. First cock-up how can anyone be allowed to do this? This was done everything was fine, then after receiving the first bill which my Mum paid and I re-imbursed. I decided that the bill should be changed into my name as I was the bill payer. This was where BT seemed to go into a complete whirlwind of errors and couldn’t quiet tel me the best way to do this simple admin change. I wanted to pay the bill as and when it came in, which I had done for the last 12 years at a previous address. I lost track how many “customer service” people I spoke to ( I use the term losely) in India for 45mins long each time, to keep getting transferred and being told something different everytime and not getting a resolution. In the end they told me to cancel present agreement take out in my own name but I could keep same number which I was insistent on. Well this never happened they gave me another number in the end then disconnected my line, leaving me 5 miles from anywhere with myself and daughter with no phone line. Then proceeded to tell me that they would charge me £120 to reconnect. All I wanted was to be the bill payer and change into my name. Still no line and my current mobile phone provider could not provide a signal in the village that I had moved to, namely Orange, I was totally Isolated. BT then decided the send me a disconnection bill for £96.95 even though they had given assurances to my Mother who had made several calls by then the account was clear and no charges would be made, it was their error I didn’t ask to be disconnected. I just wanted to take ownership of the bill. I called again and again and refused to pay this disconnection charge, they again assured me the account was clear but no confirmation was sent in writing. I then come back from holiday 4th September to find a debt recovery letter asking for full settlement of £96.95 or they may pass my details on to Credit Ref agency. Given me 3 days to do so. I paid immediately at mid-day even though it pained me to do so as BT were totally in the wrong, then tried to get a mobile phone contract the same afternoon and was declined, stating that my address was blacklisted. I can only assume they had already passed my details and black listed me to credit agency, so now this affects my credit rating. I have never defaulted on my mortgage, loans or ever been a bad debtor. How can these companies continue to give bad service, do not provide the service they promise then slap charges on where they are totally not justified and then pass your details on to credit agency when you are in dispute with them. Is there anyone out there that can help as to my next point of call?? I have writen to Otelo and drafted up all the conversations and info. BT are totally incompetent and why are they persistently allowed to keep ruining peoples lives in this way and cause untold stress because they cannot fulfil basic training for their staff and their products and have clear guidelines on how to do the most basic admin change.
I have contacted a Solicitor now, but if they send a letter to BT it will be like sending to MARS, will I ever get a response??? I fear not. How can I get them to take me off this credit list and would I have to build up my credit rating again. It makes my blood boil just writing this. BT CEO I would be interested to know how you sleep at night, judging by all the complaints and terrible service BT gives. Perhaps its beacuse you are sunning yourself on your private yacht investing time enlarging your rather large belly with the finest food and champagne & you really don’t give a hoot!!!!!
I am apalled at the way BT treat their customers.
This must be the only industry that I am aware of that offers its customers very little in terms of a service and yet regularly expects to be paid for this lack of service.
To question an item on their bill results in replies that border on downright rudeness.
They penalise their customers who do not initiate a direct debit payment to them through their bank by imposing a handling fee. The bills are sent out by BT giving very little time for the customer to pay before they slam on a late payment fee – their motive for this can only be to force their customers into organising direct debit payments to them. this verges on extortion.
Do we, the consumer, the customer, have no redress whatsoever to this “daylight robbery”?
Do you know if the Ombudsman has investigated BT’s far from fair practises.
I have spent several weeks trying to resolve a problem with our BT Home Hub which keeps dropping the wireless connection to our laptops. After several wasted hours of phone calls to an Indian call centre and having had no success with emails to their complaints departments, I finally sent an email to their CEO using the email address: ian.livingston@bt.com.
I have not had a reply as yet but if that effort to get help fails, I don’t know what to do next other than to ask BT to publicly admit that their customer service system is actually better described as “Customer Contempt”.
WOW !!! I am very impressed. I had an almost immediate email reply from a lady in Mr. Livingston’s office and shortly after, a gentleman called to tell me that he was taking charge of the problem and would get back to me, hopefully by Monday with a solution. He gave me his name and direct dial phone number here in the UK and promised me that I would not have to suffer any further contact with their Indian call centre. It’s a pity that their customer service people do not take that same level of interest.
Hi James,
I’m glad to hear that you’ve got a good result. I must say that that tactic is generally very effective – I had similar results when I e-mailed the CEO of Virgin. The trick is to be polite and concise, these people are very busy and important and care not for whining.
I agree though it is a shame that not everybody experiences their better end of customer service.
We moved house in November this year and like good customers we contacted BT to inform them and ask them to continue our contract at the new address. Great we gave them notice and whould be back online when we move in. Well the phone worked great. BT told us that we would have internet service from the 7 November but the speed would go up and down for the first 7 days. We contacted BT nope, the order had not been placed, second call nope they were trying to give us the best service and speed they possibly could and we would be connected on the 18. As you can all imagine having been there yourselves every call we made we were given a different reason as to why we did not have our broadband and that the last person should not have told us that. Now we have been billed for the rest of the quarter upt 31 December. Because I am not happy with BT I have told them in no uncertain terms that I will not pay them therir money until I get my refund for the last quarter I paid at the old address upto 31 December. They agreed with this and said that they would put a note on the account to make sure I was not chased for the bill. Well one week later I have no refund but I have a reminder that says it will charged me a £7.50 late payment fee and reconnection charges if I do nopt pay immediatley. Yes I phoned again, yes different story, and yes a promise that I will not have my services interupted. Guess what? Yep they have interupted my services. I have got my internet back but I now have to re order the phone but again on my hub which meands a new broadband number. somehow I don’t think this is the end of it do you. I am even starting to see what is going to happen before it actually does now. I reckon that India is actually trying to make BT go bankrupt. How can anyone give such a bad service and how can these depts not know how their product works. I fonly OFTEL would take on all complaints rather than saying you have to wait 3 three months before you can complain. It is not just the time it takes to resolve an issue but how many complaints for different things that cause the problem.
For years I had no problems with BT then I made the fatal decision to move home took over two months and hours of irrate phone calls to get my phone line working at my new home the list of excuses given were theres no record of you on our system the engineers have a heavy work load at the minute (like i cared about there staffing levels) eventually after two moinths we had connection that would some seem like the end to the nightmares with bt but hell no this is the most incompetent company in the world after all they have been failing to collect the monthly payements on the direct debit they insisted I filled in when I moved bearing in mind they had been billing me monthly from this account from my old address they then sent me a bill in excess of a hundred pounds for a phone I bearly use and became aggressive when I challenged the bill after agreeing a revised amount for payement we set about setting a monthly direct debit for payement now if this was a fairytale the story would end her but guess what NO after setting up the direct debit payments with them 6 more times and it still not being proccessed they have now cut off my phone line and internet connection according to there records. the phone line is inoperative but guess what I still have internet connection the only reason I signed up for BT in the first place so I am currently getting the internet service for free as according to there records I have been disconnected they can not even get it right when the disconnecting from service my complaint is now being dealt with by OFFCOM as speaking to Bangledeshi Telecom is becoming tedius but then again they have given me free internet.
I would like to ask you guys a question concerning moving home. I had previously had a working phone line and number at my previous address. When I moved I contacted BT that I have just moved home and that their was a working phone line at the new place. We were told to get the old number from the land lord and that an engineer will come out to deal with it. On all the calls made between us and BT no mention was made for a 122 pound charge. when we got our bill we we re stunned to see that charge. Does BT charge for moving a phone number from one line to the next and more importantly not inform their customer of the charges. They called the charge an “exchange line connection” does that mean any time i move from a house with a phone line .I need to pay 122 pounds.
The website states the following
How much does it cost?
If there’s a working BT line in your new property connection should be free of charge, but if the line needs to be reconnected to BT or a new line is required a connection charge of £122.33 will apply. Our advisors will confirm this when you call.
We were not told about this
This is the letter I have been sending them, it explains most of the problems:
————————————————————
Firstly, I ask you to please respond ASAP.
I would like to tell you my story of joining BT. I cannot remember all of the exact dates but they are roughly correct.
I signed up to BT over the telephone in April 2008. I did not have a phone line installed at my new address so this was the first thing which I needed to arrange. I booked an install date for the line and it was arranged for over three weeks later. I was given the option of the engineer to arrive in the morning or the afternoon. I had meetings in the afternoon so I agreed for the engineer to arrive in the morning.
On the day of the install I was up at 8 and awaiting the engineer. He was due to come between 8am -1pm so I waited until 12.30pm before contacting BT. After speaking to several different people at customer services (CS) I was told that no-one knew where the engineer was and someone would call me back. I waited until 2 o’clock but hadn’t heard anything, so again contacted BT. Again, after waiting over half an hour to speak to the right person, I was told someone would call me back. This went on for the rest of day until 6.30pm when finally I was told the engineer was not coming. It was arranged he would come first thing in the morning and that I needed to be in.
I woke the following day and awaited the engineers arrival. I rung customer services in the morning to find out if he was definitely going to be coming and I was told he was. Again I waited until lunchtime and no one arrived. After attempting to contact CS and being transfered, cut off and generally waiting a long time, I was told no one could get hold of the engineer.
After three days of this an engineer finally fitted the line,to the incorrect address.
After long arguments with your CS team an engineer finally came out 1 week later to install to the correct address.
I moved house 24th Sept and informed BT 3 weeks before so that all my services could be moved to my new address.
BT cut off all my services early (2 weeks early.)
Then it took 1 month for the services to be up and running at my new address(which i had to pay £120 installation charge)
I was also charged a cancelation fee of £96 when i didn’t cancel my account i simply moved house.
BT also placed me on an new 18 month contract when i moved without consulting me. Scraping my old account which was a 12 month term 6 months served.
I have been having issues with my account for over 9 months now and no one had been able to assist me. It was even a problem for over 6 months that my name couldn’t even be spelt correctly on the database, even though informing over 20 different people at BT.
I have also sent three recorded delivery letters to the Correspondence Centre to which I have had no reply.
Finally, after speaking with Mohan, some of my issues appeared to be resolved.
I had recently received a letter from credit solutions asking for an outstanding balance of £72. This was from an account which had been closed over 3 months previously and also, over the phone, I had made the final bill pament. I had made a final payment and closed the account back in October so this was ridiculous.
My girlfriend spoke to Mohan (India Billing Services) 2 days ago, he agreed to pay back a credit that was outstanding to me and also a disconnection charge you should not have charged me when I MOVED MY SERVICES FROM MY OLD ADDRESS TO THE NEW ONE.
I have this morning received a phone call from Credit Solutions asking why the payment hasn’t been made. After contact BT, the customer services advisor told me that I still had to pay the amount and it was outstanding for a final Bill. Apparently there was no note on the computer, it was only after I repeatedly asked to speak to a manager that she came back with the response that it would be paid by BT.
My main issues of concern were from when I moved address. I had agreed to the new installation charge of £120 for the new phone line. After that
For these inconveniences I am to bill BT for my time on the phone, days off work and loss of services.
On the 7th January 2009 my partner managed to speak to one of your managers, Mohan from the India customer services who was very helpful. I would like to thank him for doing all in his power to resolve some of my issues but even his attempts have done very little.
13.01.2009 A further £123.50 was taken from my bank account, no bill! After i had instructed BT to cancel all direct payments until all the matters were resolved. I have occurred further bank charges! £38.
Also on the 13.01.09 your agent would not put me through to a manager, when i finally got through after requesting so 18 times your manager hung up on me!
Please also note that several letters have been sent to BT with no response.
I have also sent a copy of this letter to the ombudsmen for which I am awaiting a reply. As you can see, I have very much been inconvenienced by BT.
I await your response.
Having suffered weeks of intolerable phone calls to a call centre in India, and getting no results at all, I finally sent an email to Ian Livingstone, the BT big boss and I had a reply in mere minutes, and my problem was resolved to my satisfaction within 3 days. Sometimes it pays to go to the top of the tree. Be polite, state your case carefully and without emotion, explain what solution you are looking for, then send your email to: ian.livingston@bt.com
It worked for me.
James
I JOINED BT BECAUSE I THOUGHT THEY WERE GIVING ME “VALUE 4 MONEY” WOT A JOKE!!!!I WOZ SUPPOSED 2 B PAYING ABOUT £32 A MTH SINCE I JOINED AT END OF DEC THEY AV BILLED ME £162 phone bill & £21 internet plus ive jst ad another phone bill 4 £115 & thts not including the £21 theyve jst took out of my bank 4 internet! BEWARE! I AM IN THE PROCESS OF GETTING MY CONTRACT CANCELLED, PLEASE “DO NOT” BELIEVE WHAT THESE “BT” LIARS ARE TELLING YOU! “”"DO NOT”"” SIGN WITH THEM. THEY ARE LIARS & ARE AFTER YOUR MONEY! I REALLY WULDNT WNT ANYONE 2 SUFFER & WORRY LIKE IVE BEEN!!!! THEY R A “”"DISGRACE”"”. PLEASE B CAREFUL & TAKE ALL NAMES OF “BT,S PEOPLE” U TALK 2 “NOT THT MAKES A DIFFERENCE! DONT GIVE THEM UR BANK DETAILS I CNT BELIEVE THEY R STILL GOING! BUT EVERYONE “PLEASE,PLEASE,PLEASE, DONT TRUST “”"BT”"”THEY MIGHT B A LONG SERVINING COMPANY BUT U “DEFO” CANNOT TRUST THEM!!!!!
Just got off the phone to another distant call centre, after being told flat out that the operatives in that office couldn’t actually interact with system that automatically takes money out of my account!!! What is the point in the call centre if its employed staff can’t effect the changes that you agree with them. Getting charged another overdraft, the fourth in about six months!!!! I mean what is the point of chasing up queries, complaints and setting up repayments with these people if some monster computer is just going to arbitrarily charge you any amount it likes. BT has had a stranglehold on the communications network of this nation for too long if their customer service is any thing to go by, being staffed by people who unable or unwilling to engage the computer in front of their noses. If BT does indeed read this as Spencer suspects then I would like to say, SORT IT OUT! NO MORE OVERDRAFTS!
Grrrrr…frustrating lot. They switched me from Sky’s Unlimited Talk plan without telling me and I have been charged for all calls thinking I was covered by the fee anytime plan. Normally my calls are about £15 a month. The last 2 months they were nearly £140!!!! I even told them on at the end of the first months bill to put me on their equivalent plan, but they just didn’t. The call centres are absolutely rubbish and so frustrating. Despite this I have been nothing but polite, but they still have the nerve to hand up on you or pass you around departments. I had no choice but to go to BT (not in cable area) and they are taking advantage of this. I suspect more people would move providers if they were not tied in to this dreadful company. I have been trying to find a reliable source for their complaints department. Found this page much easier and thought I would vent some frustration. I am going to use the email address to the CEO (above)
I posted a complaint about BT on this site many months ago re: Broadband problems I was having.
All my problems have now been resolved – I can’t say speedily or without stress. I can’t say that as a customer I was 100% satisfied with their customer service.
What I can say is that after a lot of trouble and inconvenience I did manage to speak to a couple of people who did offer genuine customer assistance and one in particular was able to resolve my issues and provide me with a bill-free period in compensation.
If you hear a whirring noise on your BT line, that’s Busby spinning in his grave.
I work for a web design company and we rely on ADSL for the sites we develop – unfortunately we have lost vast anounts of business and revenue due to months of slaw useless internet connections in 2 locations. Both times BT have been to blame. The phone lines they provisioned were poor quality and noisy, broadband would drop down to 200kbps down and 20kbps up making it impossible to do anything.
Upon contacting them they would tell us they are going to do some tests and call us back only to leave us waiting for day on end for the callback. They would take our details every time we called but when they tried to call us back they would call on a random number each time, almost like they had pulled it out of the air and being a communications company just assumed that it would connect to us.
We have had engneers sent out to us only to then go home after spending 30 seconds looking for us and failing, not calling so pissing off.
We are currently having internet problems now and we are all stressing as we have upcomming deadlines and are unable to work – I am working till 5AM most nights from home as it is the only way I can meet the deadline.
BT are the worst company I have ever had the displeasure of working with and i urge EVERYONE to stay away if at all possible.
All complaints have gone ignorred and they have offered us £180 compensation for the thousands lost.
My blood boils!
Current speed test results:
http://www.speedtest.net/result/456829789.png
I wrote to Livingston to praise a couple of his staff – giving credit where credit was due. Not heard a word back even in acknowledgment!
I joined BT 2 years ago and requested ex-directory for a very good reason (but they didnt, and I’m on their directory for all to see). I was raped, strangled and left for dead 12 years ago by my ex-partner who is also the father of my daughter, he was one of Britain’s most wanted for several years (he’s a serial offender), and because he was on BBC Crimewatch he was caught and is currently serving a prison sentence. Over the past 12 years I have had to move house 4 times, my daughter’s school, and give up a thriving business.
I have complained to BT, because thanks to them there is a possibility of him knowing where I am again, so I have no choice but to move my girls and I once again, someone at BT is accountable for this.
Today it became apparent just how important protecting consumers is to BT. BT has a specialist department called “BT Security and Investigations” which deals with corruption, bribery and security breaches within the entire group. It is a small group that is vastly under staffed and with a workload to last a life time. Logic would dictate that during a recession it is more likely that people are more susceptible to being corrupted or bribed.
So what is BT’s response to this threat? Make members of this already under-staffed department redundant – that is the level of service you can expect. This demonstrates that any bull fed to you is purely lip service.
Anyone reading this should make their views know to the chairman’s office as they are the only people who can stop this!
Today I have posted a letter to Otelo comprising 6 typed A4 pages which outline the problems surrounding my recent house move. Just how hard can it be for BT to get a new number? Over the last 3 months I’ve been given dozens of pieces of contradictory information, waited on the phone for hours on end, been billed crazy amounts, been hung up on many times, been put through to the wrong department on countless occasions – the list goes on and on. In the end I wrote to BT to complain but it is not being dealt with. They passed it on to Complaints Review who seem to be equally chaotic. In the end I was offered £50 compensation which I took to be an insult and declined it.
How can a company like this continue to operate? Apparently they “aim to give excellent service”… but I’ve never met anyone who’s received it from them. Any comments?
Well what can I say, BT are driving me crazy. I’m the landlady of a pub so my landline is very important to me. I took this business over in February and have been trying to take over the contract ever since then. 4 weeks ago I got cut off and since then I have been trying to get it put back on, for 2 weeks BT have said they would put calls to my mobile and haven’t. I have lost thousands of pounds because of this, I could go under now thanks to BT .
I have been trying for over 1 month to get BT to accept that I have made DD payments every month since december 2008 but my BT statement only shows 1 payment for April 2009. I have even sent bank statements showing the money that BT have stolen from me via Direct Debit. Tonight a person from their overseas (Indian) call centre admits the problem has been caused by a change of software and they have migrated customers to this new software (so someone has screwed up!!!). Anybody else got the same problem? I’m now told my complaint will now be escalated and I will get a response in 24 hours. Still not resolved and and I have no confidence that it will be. Next step will be the small claims court.
My mother, who is in her late 70s and disabled, is due to move house on the 25th August. As instructed by BT’s customer service department she arranged a month before hand to have the phone and broadband line in her old house cancelled on that date and the line and broadband in the new property installed on that date.
BT in their wisdom cut her phone line in the old property off on 27th July, since then I have been on the phone to their useless customer service department for over 4.5 hours and basically achieved sod all! I have spoken to at least 9 different people in the last 2 days, most of them indian and obviously unable to make any form of decision. Can anybody please tell me why in the current economic climate BT has to hive off their call centre to India – don’t they make enouogh money off us to offer the unemployed in the UK work?
BT have admitted that it was their “error” that caused my mum’s phone line to be cut off early, but it will take them three working days to reinstall it. They cannot explain exactly what is involved that takes that length of time, they will not give me an address to write to in order to complain, and when I asked to speak to somebody in the UK I was informed that if I kept ringing the customer service number eventually somebody in the UK might pick it up.
I own a business and all I can say if I treated my customers in the arbitory fashion that BT do, well I guess I would not have a business. I am really angry and upset how can they leave somebody who is so vulnerable in this position?
Too many problems with BT, I can’t be bothered to write it down too much. Just a bit of advice stay away from BT you will regret it, their customer services is so bad and it’s really got to the point were they need to be ‘closed down’ while things get sorted and get their company sorted out.
After reading all these comments I am slightly concerned as I am trying to move back to BT, only because I have to. We are with Tiscali and moving house and they cannot transfer our number. I have been on the phone to BT for most of yesterday and today and am getting absolutely nowhere. They do not even care about a potential new customer, let alone their existing ones, I have never dealt with such a terrible company, I thought Tiscali were bad but BT are even worse. I do not know what to do and if my phone and broadband are working when we move then I am sure it will just be by pure fluke!
Do I detect dissatisfaction among a rapidly growing number of BT subscribers?
I have many BT complaints sent it to me via my BT complaints blog which I compile into a report and send for investigation. This particular complaint of terrible customer service is unfortunately not uncommon. Far from it, it’s just one amongst hundreds I myself have received and it concerns me that after 2 years of running the blog, complaints still pour in and BT go from bad to worse.
The BT complaints blog is http://www.btcomplaint.com so those of you who wish to submit their complaint can and I will include it in a report that will be sent not only to BT but to Offcom, Watchdog and other authorities. Together, I would like to think we can change things.
I won’t go into the enomous problems i had with BT. However i was sick of being in call queues for hours (on my mobile as my landline was cut off) and being cut off repeatedly by call centre staff whilst ‘transferring me’.
I called Ofcom and made an official complaint against BT. They gave me a special ‘Ofcom dedicated complaints referral number’ – 0800 7312762. It got answered immediately by someone in the UK who had more than two braincells and, after giving my Ofcom complaint reference number, he sorted the problem within 24hours.
Why does it take these lengths to get half decent customer service??? I urge people to official complain to Ofcom (BT get a slapped wrist if too many people complain) and vote with their feet by leaving BT (if you can as they have a bit of a monopoly).
Luckily i am emigrating, and will hopefully never have to be a BT customer again. A truly dreadful company.
There is some comfort here that at least I’m not the only one being driven mad by BT. I am so cross that I let them talk me into staying with them when I had actually made the decision to move to another company. I was ‘sweet talked’ by a very nice Scottish guy who assured me that staying would be very beneficial and above all he could reduce my bills significantly. I have just received a bill for £150 – in a lone household hardly ever using phone or internet – exactly the same amount as all the old bills. The problem comes when I try to question the bill – no-one in England will talk to me about it. I spoke to several people in India – one of whom was outstandingly rude – another who assured me he had cancelled the direct debit (which they talked me into arranging – it would ‘save me money’) and of course today the money has gone out of my account. I could go on and the thought of having to ring them again and try and deal with it just fills me with dread – this is absolutely the worst customer service I have ever encountered. I just want to get away from them as fast as possible but I fear I am now tied into another 12 month contract.
My story begins in May ’09. I moved in to a new property, the landline did not work, to cut a very long story short after 2 engineer 5 minute visits each costing £303 & £115, my phone line never worked properly, after endless phone calls & recorded delivery letters – no response! Have just received a debt collector letter for over £700 for a line thats never worked, I’ve complained to Otelo, still receiving threatening debt letters!
WISH WE COULD GET BT CLOSED DOWN!
I posted a complaint about BT on this site many months ago re: Broadband problems I was having.
All my problems have now been resolved – I can't say speedily or without stress. I can't say that as a customer I was 100% satisfied with their customer service.
What I can say is that after a lot of trouble and inconvenience I did manage to speak to a couple of people who did offer genuine customer assistance and one in particular was able to resolve my issues and provide me with a bill-free period in compensation.
BT are crap and the best thing I did was get them to remove my land line and go 100% mobile. Not only have I saved a lot of money over the last couple of years I don’t have to put up with their pathetic customer service. I live a long way from the road and the line went through quite a lot of trees on the way to my house.
Every few years since I moved in (1985) the line went faulty during really windy weather. I would report it to BT who would argue it was my phone that was faulty. I would have to go out and buy a new phone just to prove them wrong, then they would argue it was the internal wiring that was at fault not the external line. I would then have to remove all the extensions to prove them wrong. A couple of years ago after some high winds I attempted to report the same old problem yet again but got the same old spiel..’your phone is faulty, your internal wiring is faulty’ anything but accepting their line was faulty, as it had been on every occasion since 1985.
On this occasion I got so incensed at the attitude of the person I was speaking to I told them to stick their land line and went fully mobile.
Best thing I ever did. I advise everyone with a BT land line to do the same. I even use 3G mobile for my broadband needs and a couple of cheap mobiles for phone calls. There is an alterative to crap service…take your custom elsewhere.