Which company owns my line?? (And dialling 150?)

JBeadle

This is a copy of the email I sent to Ian Livingston (
[EMAIL="ian.livingston@bt.com"]ian.livingston@bt.com[/EMAIL] ) the CEO of BT Group.


Good Afternoon Mr Livingston

I have had the most unfortunate experience with BT over the past couple of weeks and thought that this really needed to be escalated to your level. Having been born in the UK and brought up under the impression that BT (British Telecom) were the ‘Best of the Best’ for so many years, I am totally disgusted with the level of services that I have received from your call centres and so called ‘Customer Services’. There is a total lack of help and cooperation that you would expect to receive as a new customer, so much so that it had my wife in tears. Not really like the advert you see on TV for so many people that are supposedly returning to BT.

Please find below my account of what has happened over the past 3 weeks and they are not able to get an active phone line into my house…

Tuesday 25th May
My Wife ordered for our phone to be transferred from Sky to a new BT line on June 11th.

Friday 28th May
The confirmation Letter arrived and confirmed the new line would be active on June 11th and there was no need for an engineer to come out. Jobs a good’n! J

Friday 11th June
Sky TV, Broadband and Phone line all stop working as agreed with Sky.
Phone line stays dead all day, no new BT connection.
(I think give them the benefit of the doubt, it’s the same day sky finished it may work tomorrow...)

Saturday 12th June
Still no working phone line. I use my mobile phone and call the number supplied on our BT confirmation letter. The 1st lady (Scottish) I speak with tells me that there has been an error on her system with the order and she needs to cancel the line and re-order the phone line, this will take 11 working days to get the new order active. Nothing else can be done… I state to her that I DO NOT want this cancelled and I do not want to Re order as I have had my confirmation letter stating the new line would be active on the 11th. I informed her I will call back…

10 mins later I cool down and call back. Spoke with a man (Indian) who I explained the situation to then tells me that as far as he can see on the engineer notes, on the system, an engineer is due to come out today and activate the line. The engineer does not need access to the property to activate the line and this will be working by midnight tonight.

2 - 3 hours later the line is active and we can phone in and call out no problems!! Woohoo you think, problem solved, end of story… O no. This is just getting started….

Sunday 13th of June
O2 Broadband web site checker states that they can not supply broadband on this line.

Monday 14th June
O2 Broadband web site checker still states that they can not supply broadband on this line. I phone O2 after work and the guy confirms that with a new line it can take up to 24 hours (1 working day) for BT to push out the info of new lines to other companies and it should be showing as active by tomorrow. He also advised to phone 150 and speak with BT to remind them to do this.

Tuesday 15th June
O2 Broadband web site checker still states that they can not supply broadband on this line. I asked my wife to phone BT and find out what is going on. Just over 1 hour later, she calls me in tears… She has spoken with BT who tells her that the order has been cancelled and this needs to be re ordered as the current line is still active with our old supplier. My wife then phones Sky. Sky confirm 150% (is that even possible?!?!?!), most definitely that the line is NOT with them and they have cancelled all supply on our line. My wife then phones back to BT to inform them that Sky has confirmed 150 %(?!?) The line is not active with them, BT just keep going round in circles saying the order is cancelled and needs to be re-ordered..

A little bit of Googling confirms that if you phone 150 from your land line it will go through to your supplier. On a Virgin line this will go to Virgin and Sky will go through to Sky and BT, yes you guessed it, will go through to BT!

So with this in mind, I phoned 150! O look I am through to BT…. I go through the 785 options and head towards the Telephone Technical support team. 326 push 1 for scuba diving with Prince Charles, and push 2 for pick your own lobster
I finally get through to a human being, and after only 19 mins of holding! (OMG she is English!!!!!) Spoke with a VERY helpful lady, she could not find the details on the system with the phone number so she checked with address and found that the line is active (yeah no !!!!!! Sherlock, I have been talking with 62 advisors for the past 4 days on it….) and there was a system error at her (BT) end and the problem with the fact that on the system the Phone line was not linked with the address and the account number (on our BT letter) She said that she can connect me to the Order Processing department who will be able to get this fixed by merging the phone line with the address details to make the account active.

AMAZING! A light at the end of a very dark, damp, 60s decor tunnel…. Hang on, I am on hold still, 11 mins… 12 mins… 13 mins…
The nice English lady comes back to me to inform that she cant hang on with me any longer but she will connect me to the queue... O great here we go again…
16 mins of holding and I get through to Steve (Indian fellow) who I explained all the previous to AGAIN (OMG I am going to have this story on my grave stone…) He said that the line is still active with Sky - HELLO! DID YOU NOT JUST HEAR ME SAY THAT SKY HAS CONFIRMED IT IS NOT WITH THEM ANY MORE……… He confirmed that when the order came through and they (BT) tried to migrate the line from sky it was declined, so the system cancelled the order…
Amazing, so no one thought to let me know as a NEW CUSTOMER that I may need to do something about this… The answer was sorry no one informed you, if you would like to re order then I can put you through to the sales team. So after about 15 mins of going round in circles I agree that I may as well go to the Sales Team and see if they can get me connected with a new line.

We are on hold again. Love it. I think I may take up that well known Hobby - Sitting on hold for the fun of it, because it’s just what we have to do…

‘Steve’ finally gets through to the sales team and forgets to push his secrecy button so I can hear him telling the sales advisor (who is English) what has happened, failed order, cancelled, line still active with sky etc….. Then he tries to connect me and his phone is not working!! OMG THE COUNTRYS ‘BEST’ TELECOMMUNICATIONS COMPANY CANT EVEN CONNECT MY CALL INTERNANLY! What hope do I have? The sales advisor has to speak with her Manager to confirm if they can give me a call back! WTH! Lets not forget I am supposed to be a ‘NEW CUSTOMER’ and they have to check, to see if they are able to call me back to resolve my problem………….

This is about when I banged my head on the wall. In fact the wall was very helpful and offered me a better service than BT.

She comes back and she agrees they can call me back... Yay. I hang up with 1 hour 49 mins on my call timer.

Right away I get a call back, She starts with “Hi Mr Beadle, I hear you need us to migrate your existing phone line from your current provider to BT?” That is it, the blood vessel that was growing in my forehead has just popped. JINGASENGASEFNOEVSOIDFEN FOEUIHOISEHF:SJEN OHESAUF UBVS@EOPG NIEJHBUOE£URBGBSD
Ok breathe, lets start all over again… person number 3 on this call, explanation number 3… At least you can say BT are, indeed, consistent with their ability to get things right and to pass on info from one department to another…

I go through all this over again and she gives me two options.
1) Re-order the migration of the line which will take 11 days…
2) Order a new phone line at a cost of £124.99 (bargain!) that will take 5-10 days…

Hmm now I am no rocket scientist but WTH! FTLOG! Fribble… plop pump ram a daning tip tramp flamp ike.

I tell her that if she can’t offer me a new line within the week then I will phone Virgin and go with them. She informs me that she can’t stop me leaving BT. HANG ON! For the past 4 days BT have been telling me that I am not with them!! Now you are saying that you can’t stop me leaving! WOAH!! I politely as her to put me through to the Complaints department as I am not going to be dealing with BT any longer and just want to log down my official complaint.
Get this, you will like this… Her reply was ‘We do not have a complaints department” YOU NEED ONE LOVE! OK, please put me through to Customer Services Department because I need some one to shout at! She informed me that they will not be able to do anything other than the 2 options above. I informed her that I do not want the options and I just need Customer Services so I can shout and scream at them and they can log my official complaint. She puts me through.
An Indian chap comes on the phone “Hello my name is Dave, how can I help?” You are joking me right???????

Ok lets start AGAIN! Person 4, explanation number 4… again the consistence of the incompetence is continued.

I go through the WHOLE story over again from the 25th of May through to me being put through to him, and all on a phone line that does not actually exist!
Now I am going to cut this down a bit because I have gone over all the problems above... After about 10 mins of story time he says, I am really sorry for the problems you have had, let me see what I can do. NO NO NO NO NO! I have already told you I do not want to be a BT customer any more just log my damn complaint and let me go dribble in a corner.
We can offer you a special offer on new connections? Ok, please just tell me the offer quickly so I can go and do something more interesting like scrape the skum from between my toes…

We can offer connection on a new phone line for £30 which ties you into an 18 month contract. Ok sounds good to me, how long will that take to get connected, bearing in mind that I am a NEW CUSTOMER and taking into consideration all the problems I have had.
Answer - 10 days. WTH OMFG!!! I told him that he should change the name from Special Offers to Mugging you blind.

OK lets recap the options we have with BT!
1) 11 days to migrate the line for free (12 month contract)
2) 5-10 days with a charge of £124.99 for a new line (12 month contract)
or the Customer Services Special Offer of the day
3) £30 for connection of a new line in 10 days (with an 18 month contract)
(Please remember that this is JUST the phone line, any broadband will take another 5 - 10 days to connect)

AMAZING I am so glad we have so much choice and so much flexibility to help out new customers.

Dave then asked if I would like to be put through to the Sales team to order the new line….. HANG ON, I was speaking with them 15 mins ago and they could not help so I came through to you!

I finished with Can you authorise the Sales people to connect me with a new phone line for Free this week? Daves Answer ‘No’

Ok we are done there is no way you can help to stop losing a New Customer. Thank you Good bye……….




I then called Virgin on a 0845 number, from my phone line that does not exist according to BT, 19 mins later I have a new Virgin phone line and broadband being connected on Monday 21st between 0800-1300 for no charge!


Thank you. Good Night. Dribble Dribble Dribble.

BT_company_representative

Hi BindyB,

Having read your post I can totally understand your frustration! I would like to try and help you get this sorted. Please could you email me any BT account details you have along, with a link to this thread? My email address can be found by clicking on my profile.

Thanks

Paddy

BindyB

Paddy,

I have emailed you as requested. I shall be interested to see what happens!

BindyB

24 hours and no response, not even an acknowledgement of receipt of my email.

Not really sure why I'm surprised.

BindyB

Well, just by way of an update in case anyone's interested as to whether or not the BT Representative is useful...

I can confirm that they aren't! When I emailed them on the 17th I advised that if they were to resolve these issues, that they needed to do so by 21st as that's when Virgin were booked to fit a new line, and that I would not cancel the Virgin booking until the BT issue was satisfactorally resolved.

So, I get a reply from BT at 6.40pm on 21st basically saying again that they couldn't resolve this issue and my order with them remained cancelled due to their errors.

So really, what was the point of me emailing the BT Rep? What another waste of my time!

BT, you should be ashamed of yourselves, and really, it's a wonder you have any customers at all!

(Incidentally, I'm typing this post with my new Virgin broadband which they managed to set up speedily and with no fuss, at least someone still believes in keeping the customer happy!)