BT Problem - Insistent on Engineer

Meh01

PLEASE NOTE: The situation has moved on from the Engineer problems, Please see my post further down this page, directly after the post by BT company representative "Paddy", Post number 4.




Hi, there seems to be a few BT threads but I did not want to "hijack" someone elses thread.

Myself and my partner recently moved to a new address, we had BT Broadband at our old flat and wanted to get it moved to the new flat. The previous tennant apparently had Broadband at this flat but when we called BT they said the flat didnt have a phone line and they needed to send an engineer. This was despite being told there was a phoneline in the house, it is in the kitchen.

That was over 3 weeks ago, we were told an engineer would be sent and he was due for the 17th of June. He called and when we spoke to him he quoted the wrong address. The operator that had taken the new address had put the "number" of the new flat with the "street" of the Old flat. The Engineer said that because of this he couldnt do anything, end of conversation.

When we contacted BT they stated we would have to wait 24hrs and then Re-book an engineer. We decided to test this phone line into the flat and we get a dial tone but obviously if you attempt to dial out you get your standard messages.

We have spoken to BT on the phone and they still ignore that the flat has a working phone line, they simply state they dont have the address and therefore we dont have a telephone line and say we have to get an engineer and pay £127.

When looking to order online on the BT site, our flat isnt listed on the address (but other flat numbers in the same block are) but the number for the block of flats is. I dont know how the thing works but we believe they may have it down as not the flat but just the building number. EDIT: Apologies, The Flat Number and the Number for the Block of Flats is the same number, 5.

Well, BT now say that the earliest we can get an engineer out to install this phone line is now the 28th June and again, it will cost £127.

It is my partner that has been in contact with them mostly, I plan on contacting them by phone tonight (the account is in my name), I already sent a complaint via their "contact us" on the website and so far I have only received the automated conformation.

I was hoping that someone here may know how to go about this, if it is possible that I should need an engineer out for this despite the working telephone line and have to pay so much for the engineer. If not, how I should approach getting them to give me what I'm paying for, from what I can tell it has been 25 days since we called to move. They dont really seem to care that they wasted so much time by telling the engineer the wrong address, it was also not mentioned about the cost of the engineer until Today, which is after the engineer was due to arrive and fix the line.

I'm utterly sick of BT, when I lived at my parents when I was younger we were signed up to BT anytime or whatever it was for Dial up we were one of the many that were given a new number to connect to that wouldnt work because we were heavy users, it was on Watchdog at the time.

I'm positive as soon as our exchange here is upgraded I will be moving ISP.

Ive had enough of BT.

EDIT: I have tried dialing the number 17070 and got a telephone number for the flat, I typed the number on the BT Website and it says "There is no BT service recorded against this number. It may be possible that another company provides the service, in which case you will have to contact that service provider to report the problem.", we obviously dont know who provided the previous Tennant, Any advice going forward?

Heinz

Try dialling 150. That should connect with whoever supplies the line.

BT_company_representative

Hi Meh1,

If there is a working line at that address you should not be charge for the activation of the line. If you email me your BT account details or any order number you have, I will be able to look into this for you. My email address can be found by clicking on my profile.

Cheers

Paddy

Meh01

Hi everyone,

I see I got a response from a BT rep, I hope you are still around, I wanted to PM you so I didnt bring this into an open forum but looks like I cannot.

I have been charged for the engineer, we have not paid it yet and had it arranged to come off monthly with our bill, if this is not correct and I should not have been charged then I am even more angry, we were told that because the line had been used by another company we were to be charged for it.

I should note that BT got the engineer order wrong AGAIN and we had to wait until the 5th of July to get our internet and phone running. Because of this we had a "heated" conversation with BT regarding the length of time and cost to us which resulted in being told that we would not be charged in June for a month where we recieved no service. We had a Cap put on our phone so we wouldnt go over any limit but due to the engineer charge (what we were told) we couldnt make any outgoing calls. I wish I had looked back here and I would have taken up your offer of help Paddy but I thought things were resolved, then we had to deal with the reordering of the engineer , I guess I forgot about this site until today when I was looking up other experienced regarding BT cutting people off without warning.

We have not been able to access our bill online since around the time of informaing BT of moving home and we are set to paper free so we dont recieve one in the mail. This seems to have only added to the problems as we ahve tried to access the bill over this past month with no luck, we were told back around the time of ordering the engineer that the technical fault was temporary and would be sorted in time.

I woke up yesterday to find my Internet not working, when we tried our mobiles we couldnt phone out. We assumed this was due to a technical problem in our area but when the mobiles started working again and my internet did not I began searching for another cause including calling the number to find out about service problems, which I used my mobile for because we hadnt been able to use the home phone all month, I also tried landline numbers which all worked. It appears to have just been an issue with our mobiles at that time.

Eventually my partner went to a phonebox and called the 0800 number only to be told that we had been cut off. She argued on the phone after she was told we would have to pay an amount in the region of £230 in a single lump sum. She stated that we are happy to make our payments and pay what we owe but as agreed before in our monthly bill instead of a lump sum that would cause us difficulties (my daughter is 7, nearly 8 months old and we just dont ahve that kind of money to throw at unreasonable bills that we thought had been worked out).

The operator on the phone to my partner spoke to whomever was in charge of billing and was told that they would not accept payment in instalments.

After hearing of this and the fact that we had, had no warning whatsoever about getting cut off I have written to OTELO and I have also sent an email to [EMAIL="BTcare@bt.com"]BTcare@bt.com[/EMAIL] which included my Account number.

My e-mail to BTcare was sent Monday 26th of July at 14:52, my name is Paul Brisbane and it was sent from my personal Hotmail address using my iPhone as it is my only point of access due to having low credit and no broadband or home phone.

I have tried to be reasonable.

After this email was sent I recieved a call from BT on my mobile which was clearly from an indian branch of your customer services, I could barely understand the woman (not her fault, I accept that) but I did understand she was telling me to pay the whole amount and I "may" be able to get back online in the middle of august, I was also told I would not be charged a cancelation fee. I immediatley demanded a manager, assuming these people had read my complaint email. The manager was completely unhelpfull and would fall silent and not attempt to help me in any way, telling me they were an "offline" call center when he did eventually think of something to say. I did manage to get to the bottom of why we were cut off...

Apparently we had not paid a bill, of £30.06 in JUNE! regardless of whether there has been some missunderstanding regarding June's bill I cant believe I have been cut off without warning for a cost that is almost half of what I normally pay monthly anyway. I atleast would have expected some kind of warning in writing before any sort of suspension but I have been told my Account has been closed! I wasnt even given an opportunity to correct this issue with you! As I already stated, I was informed I would not be charged a cancelation fee so the impression I have been given by the people I have spoken to so far is that it is beyond recovery. Cancelation is not what I want.

It is a complete and utter mess, I took a holiday on Friday 23rd of July (my birthday) and Monday 26th of July, we had plans to take my daughter swimming yesterday which were ruined by a morning trying to find out what the problem was and an afternoon spent trying to correct it (which was unsuccessful so far).

I have heard nothing back and I am reaching the end of my patience. I had a similar issue occur with Sky, they were planning on charging me £60 for an engineer that came out, looked in our attic space and around the flat, said there was no access and he wasnt insured then left only for a local engineer to come along and find easy access to the roof from the attic area. Why do I tell you this? because in mere minutes after requesting I speak to a manager I had an email back appologising for the mistake and stating that they would remove the payment. I have requested a manager by my email to Btcare and thus far have received nothing, not even a confirmation of receipt.

I do not believe I have been unreasonable in any of my contact with BT and I have tried contacting you via Twitter reffering to my email and the time I sent it but I have had no response as of yet.

I really need to know what is going on and if my complaints are being dealt with, I need my phone and internet back as soon as possible and I am still willing to work this issue out but I refuse to wait until the middle of august to recieve my broadband access, as far as myself and my partner are concerned, we were fullfilling our end of the agreement and that we were due to make a payment around the end of July (now) begining of August.

I hope that a BT representitive will see this and get in touch with me so we can sort this out.

Thank you for taking the time to read this message.

Meh01

I used my work computer to send a complaint via the BT website today (I was unable to do this on my iPhone on monday which is why I used the btcare@bt.com email address) after being told that the rep on twitter couldnt find the email.

I write this for the benefit of any BT rep that happens to read this, I recieved a reference of 100728-003964, probably not the best place to post it but you have my contact info (e-mail and mobile number) that you can use to speak to me directly if you wish.

I have also sent this to BTcare on Twitter, you can contact me through twitter aswell if you wish.

BT_company_representative

Hi Meh01,

I am sorry to hear that you haven't had a reply. I have managed to pick up that email and I am in the process of looking into this for you. I will drop you a reply as soon as I can.

Paddy