BT! i've had it with them!!

Legolass

I have a list of complaints and my patience is running out. it seems i cant go a month without having some problem with BT!

1. i moved in with my partner in october and decided to take my BT with me, i was charged £125 installation fee (this is the 3rd time i've paid the installation fee in the past 3 years due to moving house - all council estate houses with lines already in place) within a week of moving my partner recieved a letter offering him installation for £30 if he 'came back to BT' this felt like a kick in the teeth.

2. when we called up to make a complaint about this we were offered 6 months free broadband as compensation, but we decided to wait till we paid the december bill and have the free broadband start after that, but when i called up about it they had no record of this offer.

3. the installation fee was agreed with a member of staff that it would be spread over 6 months at £45 per month (including line rental etc) but when i checked my account in november an amount of £79.50 was taken out my account. i called about this and it was determined that the operator had made a mistake and the amount was to be adjusted for the next month. lo and behold an amount of £79.50 has been taken off again for the december AND the january payments. i dont understand how BT can just take whatever amount they like from my account - i am a student and i simply cannot afford this kind of mistake.

4. in december i recieved 2 different bills for 2 different broadband accounts (i only have 1) one for around £300, and the other for £105. as you can imagine this was terrifying for me! i called and yet again it was a mistake. my account from the old house was down as an early cancellation and i had been billed as such and thats what the £300 bill was for. bt admitted their mistake and said we would actually be in credit - yet i got a bill saying i owed them £3.50-ish. (not much but yet another little gripe)

5. because of a spelling mistake at BT's end, my bt broadband installation was delayed and no-one had informed us, and we had taken the day off work/college for this, i would not have known if it was not for me phoning bt to ask if an engineer was coming out or if this was a self-install.

6. we have tried to watch films on bt vision for the past couple of weekends, they seem to work fine during the day but they are impossible to watch in the evenings as they 'stutter' like they are pausing for a few seconds every couple of minutes. to me it seems like their servers cannot handle the volume of customers watching the films at the weekend as i have noticed from several different technical forums that this is a common complaint.

by now i am sick to death of all the problems i have been having with BT and find it upsetting when i call up with a problem and get passed about different departments and end up back at the original one over and over again. right now i dont know what i am still doing with BT and i was wondering if i have grounds to be relesed from my contract with them?

i have sent this complaint by email to BT as i find it hard arguing with them without bursting into tears lol, so i'm supposed to hear back from them within 24 hours - we'll see :P

has anyone else had this level of incompetence from them? you'd expect this from new companies getting on their feet but not a company like BT

devizes18193

when i moved to bt , they never gave me 1571 , it took 3 months and a complaint to offcom. in the end it transpired that my line had beeen changed but no account setup and they could not bill a service to an account that was not in place . Its all sorted now but you could not make it up . They have slid down hill

Legolass

lol! just got an email from bt saying they are sorry for any delay but the email was forwarded to the wrong department!

if you didnt laugh you'd cry...

Mark_In_Hampshire

Legolass wrote: »

I have a list of complaints and my patience is running out. it seems i cant go a month without having some problem with BT!

1. i moved in with my partner in october and decided to take my BT with me, i was charged £125 installation fee (this is the 3rd time i've paid the installation fee in the past 3 years due to moving house - all council estate houses with lines already in place) within a week of moving my partner recieved a letter offering him installation for £30 if he 'came back to BT' this felt like a kick in the teeth.

I'm not normally one for defending BT but if you were told this is what it would cost and agreed to it then there would seem to be no grounds for complaint (though of course this comes on top of your other issues). There seems to be some evidence that this charge is inconsistently applied looking at other threads. If you were told there would be no charge then you don't need to pay this, just withold payment and explain why.

Legolass wrote: »

2. when we called up to make a complaint about this we were offered 6 months free broadband as compensation, but we decided to wait till we paid the december bill and have the free broadband start after that, but when i called up about it they had no record of this offer.

Again you didn't take up the offer when it was suggested and I'd guess whoever you spoke to did not note it, it did not reach a resolution at this time. I suspect you should have taken this then and there..

Legolass wrote: »

3. the installation fee was agreed with a member of staff that it would be spread over 6 months at £45 per month (including line rental etc) but when i checked my account in november an amount of £79.50 was taken out my account. i called about this and it was determined that the operator had made a mistake and the amount was to be adjusted for the next month. lo and behold an amount of £79.50 has been taken off again for the december AND the january payments. i dont understand how BT can just take whatever amount they like from my account - i am a student and i simply cannot afford this kind of mistake.

They can do this because you agreed to pay by direct debit. Cancel that and pay only what you agreed and back this up with a letter. Do NOT phone them. If you must keep the direct debit, then watch your bills. If they are wrong, cancel the direct debit by online banking before the money is debited and again write to BT to say why. If they take the money before you can do that, ring the Bank, void the direct debit, get your money back, and again write to BT to explain why. You can't make part payment like this - it's all or nothing. You remain liable for paying the undisputed part of the bill even though you're not "paying", it's being taken from you. That's one of a long list of reasons why DD is a bad idea. It always works in the payee's favour as you have found.

Legolass wrote: »

4. in december i recieved 2 different bills for 2 different broadband accounts (i only have 1) one for around £300, and the other for £105. as you can imagine this was terrifying for me! i called and yet again it was a mistake. my account from the old house was down as an early cancellation and i had been billed as such and thats what the £300 bill was for. bt admitted their mistake and said we would actually be in credit - yet i got a bill saying i owed them £3.50-ish. (not much but yet another little gripe)

Again pay only the undisputed part of the bill and write and explain why.

Legolass wrote: »

5. because of a spelling mistake at BT's end, my bt broadband installation was delayed and no-one had informed us, and we had taken the day off work/college for this, i would not have known if it was not for me phoning bt to ask if an engineer was coming out or if this was a self-install.

it's quite unusual these days for someone to physically have to attend to get ADSL working. It might have been helpful for that to have been pointed out to you :-)

Legolass wrote: »

6. we have tried to watch films on bt vision for the past couple of weekends, they seem to work fine during the day but they are impossible to watch in the evenings as they 'stutter' like they are pausing for a few seconds every couple of minutes. to me it seems like their servers cannot handle the volume of customers watching the films at the weekend as i have noticed from several different technical forums that this is a common complaint.

I don't know what causes this. Perhaps your ADSL isn't quick enough to actually stream content - the BBC iPlayer does exactly this on our 3G connection occasionally. Perhaps it's a fault in the box. This is different to the other complaints because it isn't something that hasn't been delivered at all or has been billed wrongly, it just isn't up to scratch.

Worth pointing out that ADSL 'MAX' - which is probably what you have - takes about 10 days to adapt to your line, during which period the connection may repeatedly drop and re-establish which would cause this. This problem *may* go away. But, do not leave it and assume it will unless the manual/instructions say this is the case.

Again WRITE to BT and explain the fault.

The address for customer correspondence is in Durham and is on your bill.

If you want a response, CC your letter to:

BT
81 Newgate Street
London EC1A 7AJ

Explain clearly what has gone wrong and importantly state what you want done to put it right giving a time frame after which you'll progress the matter with Otelo.

Legolass

1.my complaint wasnt that i had to pay the installation fee - i knew i had to and i will be moving again later this year and i expect i will have to pay it again.. it was the fact i'd paid this fee every time i've had to and within a week of moving in with my partner he was offered the same installation for £30

2. the operator on the phone agreed to the delay and gave us contact details to phone back once we had paid the bill - unfortunately we didnt notice at the time that the number was the standard number for broadband and not a direct one to the person we dealt with, and the person we dealt with had not put a note on the account so therefore we had no record or proof we had this offer

3. its too late they've taken it all now, in fact i believe i'll be in credit with them now lol, is there another way to pay - standing order for example? other than quarterly billing that is

5. when we recieved our letter confirming our order it stated an engineer would call, i thought this was unusual and thats why i called to confirm this

6. as i said, the problem only occurs evening weekends and we have no trouble at all the rest of the time. i was assuming this would be peak time for people watching this content

individually these problems might seem trivial but considering they all happened in the space of 3 months and with our financial situation taking so much extra money and sending a bill for £300 is quite distressing!

thanks for your advice tho it is appreciated

Just_landed

Legolass have you thought of a mobile phone & broadband until you settle in one place. Just a thought.:rolleyes:

Gordon861

Sorry this might just be me, but why did you have to pay an installation fee if there has already been a line at the property. Surely all they needed to do is switch it on and register a new customer, pretty sure this is all I did when I moved house.

Legolass

lol we're not moving that soon, i'll have been here a year by the time we move i reckon. i dont know how good mobile broadband is but i play mmorpg's so i need a pretty good connection for that. tis a good idea for the future should i be in a situation like that again tho!

the reason we had to pay the installation fee again was because my partner had previously been with telewest. although there was still a bt port there so i dont know why that wasnt just ready to use. i guess there was a reason though. i had to pay it at my last house because i needed an extra line for myself as my aunt had a pay-as-you go type line and didnt want to change it for me ao pretty legit reason for that too. AND when we buy my dads place later in the year we'll probably need to pay it again as he has virgin phone/broadband there and he doesnt think he has a bt socket there either ¬¬ just my bad luck i guess lol