BT Complaints & Escalation

candyspacemedia wrote: »

I can see that the BT rep on here is active

Contact him direct here;
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4950

BT customer customer service are driving me up the wall.....Here is the story...

In mid August I requested a Mac code and informed them that I was cancelling my phone line rental and infinity 2 with them. The end date was to be the 18th September 2014. However, I was transferred over on the 17th...a surprise but my new provider was very efficient and the new service was running from that date.

We had a series of letters saying that they were sorry that we were leaving them etc etc. This appeared to confirm that everything had gone through.

(All well and good but I had heard of some of the issues with BT billing so I cancelled the direct debit they had with my bank account....good decision as it turned out.)

The 'final bill' was in late September which contained a credit for £11.27 which was all well and good. HOWEVER, to our surprise we were billed for Infinity option 2 from the 18th - £8.76 for the remainder of September and an additional bill in advance for a sum of £30.17 for October. So they were then claiming that we then owed them a total of 27.88.

Since then I have been emailed, sent letters and had numerous phone calls regarding my failure to pay the bill. With late fees the bill had built up to £67.55 (but that did include the credit of 11.27 they gave us when the service ended so in effect they were asking for £78.82).

I have twice managed after some effort got through to the 'cancellations' department who were very reassuring and said they would sort the problem out. Latterly their agents did stop calling every day and we thought it had all been sorted ...

Then I get an email saying your final bill is ready.. oh good thinks I at last we will get the amount they owe us.... Well no - they are still demanding cash but have helpfully reduced our deficit by £21.14 from the date that they cancelled our non-existent service! So we only owe them (they say) £46.14...when in effect they owe us money...

After a couple of hours phoning them we seem to be getting nowhere and it is driving us nuts!!!!

Any suggestions as to where we go next as the customer service people just don't seen to follow-up on anything despite their assurances ....

We joined BT as new customers in June 2013 having moved over from Virgin Media in order to get BT Infinity and the new BT Sport TV service without paying out huge amounts of money every month. However we immediately wasted two months of our time chasing BT to resolve technical issues, transfer numbers, rectify incorrect orders & cancellations and eventually managing to get nearly £400 worth of incorrect charges refunded.

During those two months we experienced such unbelievable levels of poor customer service, miscommunication, misdirection and incompetence that we hoped we would never have to deal with such issues again.

Thankfully all the issues we experienced were eventually resolved (or so we thought) and we have enjoyed nearly 18 months of decent broadband speeds and trouble free service from BT.

There was however one remaining minor issue which was so trivial we decided not to pursue it any further. We were on a 40GB per month data allowance package however; we were unable to monitor our broadband usage due to an issue with the BT website. An on screen message informed us that as we were not able to monitor our usage we would not be charged for any out of bundle data usage.

Everything was fine until 10th Nov 2014 when we received an email informing us that we had nearly used up all of our data allowance and we could incur additional charges if we exceeded it. We logged in to check on-line and sure enough the facility to monitor our usage was up and running. Closer inspection however revealed that the broadband service was assigned to a different phone number to our telephone service.

A lengthy call to BT followed on 14th Nov 2014 in order to get the issue resolved, apparently the problem related to how our account was configured on the BT system and it had been incorrect since day one. The issue was resolved and discussions moved on to upgrading our broadband service to an unlimited package in order to avoid incurring future usage charges. We decided to think about it over the weekend rather than committing straight away, particularly as the only options available to us all involved signed up for another 12 month contract. Notes were added to the system to allow us to take advantage of the same deals etc when we called back.

Over the weekend we realised that as we had already purchased another 12 month line rental saver package back in July 2014, we were effectively locked into BT for the next 8 months anyway. Therefore a new 12 month broadband contract didn’t seem too bad after all and on 17th Nov 2014 we decided to call BT and place the order for a new broadband service, as discussed previously.

However despite the notes on the system clarifying what had been offered previously, additional charges were being added to the package which we were previously not made aware of. Some discounts were offered but the end result was still an increased monthly amount compared to what had previously been quoted. Unfortunately, due to the existing line rental package we felt like we had no choice so we agreed to sign up for a new unlimited 12 month broadband package.

A few minutes after the order was placed and the call was ended, we received an email thanking us for choosing BT and asking us to provide a Migration Authorisation Code (MAC) so they could start transferring our broadband service from our existing provider! Alarm bells starting ringing immediately as BT are our existing provider and hence a MAC should not be required to simply upgrade our package and not change suppliers.
We waited an hour just in case there was a glitch in the system that would sort itself out. However nothing else came through and we were concerned that the order would not progress without some kind of manual intervention.

A call to the BT order tracking team followed which was extremely frustrating as it seemed impossible for us to be able to make them understand the situation correctly. After approximately 20 minutes on the phone and running out of patience, eventually they cancelled the order and transferred us back to the sales team so another new order could be placed instead.

The sales advisor offered us a package which would cost us even more money per month, which obviously we rejected. The advisor then stated that he was unable to help us any further and he would email the original advisor from 14th Nov 2014 and get him to call us. He also informed us that the original advisor was working that day and he would call us as soon as he had finished on his current call. That was at 13:39 on 17th Nov 2014 and we have still not received a call back.

This is extremely frustrating, all we are trying to do is reluctantly commit to BT for a further 12 months and they seem incapable of being able to action this. At this stage I am considering cancelling all of our BT services and losing the 8 month’s worth of line rental fees we have already paid. A new customer introductory offer with an alternative supplier combined with a cashback offer should recoup these costs.

Any help you can offer in attempting to get the situation resolved would be much appreciated.