BT an absolute joke

Shrimply

I'm Having a nightmare of a time doing something I class as very simple. Basically I trying to get a phoneline sorted for my new flat.

Tuesday the 9th I filled in BTs online form putting the address I wanted connected first and my parents address as the billing address. Next thing I know I get an email Wednesday the 10th confirming the changes to my parents phoneline. The billing address not the address I want connected. Brilliant, so I called them up and quite honestly its the most ridicules amount of electronic options before you get to talk to someone and quite often you have to choose between two neither of which apply.

Finally I managed to talk to someone who seemed for some reason to fail to grasp what I was trying to explain. I eventually got to the point of trying to place the order I wanted and when I gave him the flat address which we've been told is 68/4 apparently that's no good, he needed to know if it was 2f2 or 2f1, well although I'd guess 2F2 I couldn't say for certain, so instead of just checking which one was currently disconnected he asked me to find out and call back. So was about to hang up when a thought occurred, I asked to confirm that the previous order had been cancelled and that no changes would be made to the line. Apparently the order hadn't been cancelled, why is anyones guess, so I asked him to cancel it. " so do you want the line completely cancelled sir" no I do not I want any order for changes cancelled, which is what I've been trying to explain to you for the last 30 minutes. He assured me he'd cancelled any orders for that number.

So next I called the estate agents, I'm so glad we're with this firm and not some of the cheap cowboys who dominate the student lettings in Edinburgh, was by far the easiest call this morning and took all of a minute to get the information I wanted.

Then called BT back, got very frustrated with the electronic woman, mum looked round the door and asked what I was going on about when I shouted "It's an asterisk, not a star". But finally got through, they had no history of my half completed order and started again. It was going fine until the credit check when apparently her system froze and she asked if I minded being transferred to another person, I thought it would be direct but OH no, I had to jump through the electronic loops once again.

And when I did finally get a human being she told me my order should not of been transferred then upon quoting my order number got told that the order had been cancelled so we started again. Order did go through this time and I finally got a telephone number, 2 hours later.

I was just appalled really, the main annoyance is I got told different thing both times I completed my order, Its like they have a chart of information they can tell the customer and choose three pieces to actually ask you down the phone.

But the phoneline is now connected and we didn't have to pay a connection fee so I though everything was fine.

But just to complete the joke today my parents got a letter through from bt saying that they have been upgraded my parents to the Unlimited and weekend rolling contract. Something that they definitly don't want, they're broadband contract runs out in the next couple of months and they will probably be looking for a complete package. Besides that they're paying talk talk for their calling plan so unlimited weekend calls are unneeded. Also it means I will be paying the direct debt something I can not afford or want to do.

espresso

As no BT Company rep has answered your post, e-mail ian.livingstone@bt.com and someone will be in touch PDQ to sort out your problems. It should not be necessary to e-mail the CEO but it is very effective.

Shrimply

Many thanks, have sent an email, explaining the problems so I'll let you know how that goes.

Idiophreak

I can only sympathise with the OP.

I've just has a line installed in our new flat and BT really were the most useless company I've dealt with in a while.

Ordered online, called up after about 5 days with no word at all, only to find that the order wasn't on the system at all. So had to start again over the phone, got 90% of the way through that (with, of course, completely different prices etc being quoted) before the woman on the phone mentioned that online orders wouldn't show up on the system for 5-7 days.

Once the 7 days had passed they actually started doing something and told us they required access to the property last thursday. So booked the morning off. Then they called the day before to let me know they didn't actually need access to the property at all.

Then, of course, on thursday the line still didn't work, so called up (you're 100% right - the most infuriating phone system ever - sure sometimes it puts you through to depts where everyone's gone home already...) and they arranged for an engineer to come out on Saturday to fix it. Which he did, quite quickly. Asked him if they'd been busy, to which he replied "no, it's really quiet" or something. Which was reassuring. Them having taken 4 weeks to install a bog standard phoneline in a brand new flat (in fact, the line was already installed, they just had to activate the thing).

Needless to say, as soon as I can switch and stop paying BT anything I'll be doing so...

GrammarGirl

If it makes you feel any better, Sky are as, if not even, worse. Useless. Who would've thought the communication companies would be the hardest to talk to?!

Shrimply

I had began to regret posting this, after emailing Ian Livingston I got a quick reply from his PA and then got passed to a case handler whos been in contact with the sales team, and apparently sorting everything out.

But tonight when trying to use the house phone ( my parents) nothing was working, on dialling 17070 I get quoted a number that isn't ours, though even it doesn't seem to be fully functioning. And my parents are no longer in the online phonebook.

We still have internet here though which is a bit of a mystery but I am grateful of it.

I've just totally lost my patience, all they needed to do was reverse the change of calling plan and the direct debt payer, they had no reason to touch the phone line. Having emailed the CEO there seems to be no one higher up I can contact and I have no idea what to do next.

If it was any other company we'd of parted company by now but as its BT it really is an essential thing and I feel that they are taking advantage of that in the way they treat their customers.

Idiophreak

Could be worse. My phoneline's still not working at all. Installed it last saturday, stopped working again on thrusday/friday.

Called on Friday, was told that someone would come out saturday afternoon.

So, waited in on Saturday, long story short, they'd had an "advisor error" and they now can't get someone out to look at it til *this* Saturday (as I have the nerve to work in the week - who'd have thought!?).

Absolute bunch of timewasters. You're entirely right that they exploit what is, fundamentally, a monopoly over new installations. It's well time the competition commission did something about it.

Shrimply

I'd just like to say now everything is almost sorted, the case handler has been brilliant, although a reply to my email regarding the latest problem would of been nice so that I knew she was actually dealing with it. And I'm sure its not her fault all she can do is yell at the sales team when they yet again mess things up.

My parents have been set up a new account with their original number and my dad is now dealing with the case handler since the Direct debit details are back in his name. Since he's been using talk talk he's been advised that the calls will at present be going through BT and not talk talk so until the calls are back being supplied by talk talk BT will not charge him for the cost of any phone calls ( so making plenty of long distance calls;))

The case handler is phoning back on Wednesday to deal with any further issues and confirm everything is as it should be.

espresso

Thanks for reporting back, glad it's sorted now.