BT complaint

richardlanden.123

Please bear with me, this is a long story. I ordered BT broadband on the December of 2007 and opted to pay my bills by direct debit. Due to problems with my bank over direct debits (I'm sure you've all heard about these) i was forced to cancel the direct debits and pay online.
When the first bill arrived after cancelling my direct debits i attempted to pay on the web site only to receive a message that this service was down and to try again later. I attempted to pay over the phone and received the same message.
Over the next couple of weeks I managed to lose count of the amount of times i had attempted and failed to pay this bill until eventually my service was disconnected due to none payment.
I immediately contacted BT to complain and to explain the situation. After been passed from pillar to post for over four hours (this was on my mobile and yes the mobile phone bill came very close to finishing me off through shock!) BT admitted this was entirely their fault.
Unfortunately it was explained that they would be unable to reopen my old account and i would have to open a new account. This was on the 5th Aug 2008. You probably saw this coming but over the next few months i have been receiving bills for my new account plus the old account BT had closed down (well done BT, top banana!). Every time i called BT over this matter i was forced to spend another hour on the phone explaining the situation only to be told they were very sorry, the old account would be closed immediately and to ignore any bills for this account in the future.
I was always less than surprised when the following week i was guaranteed to receive a new bill for the old account. I took their advice and eventually learned to ignore these bills which resulted in a letter from a debt collection agency (loving BT by this point). After receiving this i sent an email to BT complaints department explaining the situation (this rings a bell) in very simple terms as not to confuse anyone on the BT staff.
Eventually i received a response telling me how very sorry they were, that the old account would be closed immediately and that they would be sending me a cheque due to my account been in credit (after almost 6 months of harassment for money i supposedly owed them, it turns out they actually owed me, I'm not making this up honestly).
I can only hope this matter is resolved now, at least with BT. Unfortunately the fine minds at BT have decided not to inform the people at their debt collection agency and i am currently facing endless phone calls and even a home visit from them only this morning while i was out, despite the numerous occasions i have explained the situation over the phone to them, sent them proof in an email in the form of my letter from BT and called BT themselves and asked for them to contact the debt collectors to resolve this matter.
The point of this post is, i am confident that this matter will eventually be resolved (i must be mad) but due to the stress caused (I've aged terribly in 6 months) the mobile phone bills, the threats of a black mark on my record from the credit agency and the home visit, surely somewhere in there is a case for compensation.
Any-who thanks for your time, sorry i couldn't make it a shorter story.

Thank you. Richardlanden.123


BT..... irritating people.

kaisersoze_2

Im not really an expert but i would start by going to your local citizens advice centre with all the information including phone bills,letters,emails and anything else you have from BT and the debt collection agency. I would also contact Ofcom ( http://www.ofcom.org.uk/complain/) explaining what has happened as this is pretty shody.

I would think you have a case as thay have admitted fault a couple of times.

Kaiser