BT complaints dept: who to contact?

pigeonpie

this overlaps with BT home phones. I have had no internet access for 2 weeks until today. Won't bore you with the details but BT Retail (who diagnosed the original copper line fault and told me I needed one of their engineers to come) were frustrating, useless and occasionally rude and I am contesting their £130 engineer call out charge. I rang their complaints no and got someone in India who failed to even understand the complaint and told me to email them as "there is no complaints department". There's a whole website devoted to BT's ignoring of customer complaint emails....

BT Openreach finally fixed the problem yesterday evening. Their engineer was excellent and confirmed the BT Retail engineer and dept's failings.

Who do I write to at BT as I have to contest the charge. I pay by direct debit so they will just take it from my account otherwise.
thought someone on here might know - thanks for any help.

macman

Where was the fault? If it was downstream of your master socket then the call-out charge is valid. Otherwise it would only be valid if it was user inflicted (if for example a tree in your garden had grown into the cable and rubbed it through, or you damaged the cable while decorating).

Mr_Oink

Mmm. A letter sent by Recorded Delivery to Sir Micheal Rake's home address near Henley On Thames works wonders, but I'm not allowed to post or PM it here.

Funny thing is, every time I post internal information about BT here it just vanishes..... https://www.carter-ruck.com putting on the frighteners?

pigeonpie

an underling with some authority would be just fine! BT are an outrageous company imho.

The fault was diagnosed by 151 after 2 calls as something they needed to send an engineer to fix. He arrived and failed to even find the master socket and disappeared, blaming my ISP. 2 weeks later my ISP managed to get BT Wholesale to agree to send their Openreach engineer - fault fixed in 2 hours. I am refusing to pay the £130 for the Retail engineer's useless visit. I just know if I send that email pro forma complaints form, I will get nowhere.

macman

BT Retail don't have engineers, so sounds like the usual OpenReach admin chaos.

littleboo

Assuming that your ISP is not BT, then you wouldn't/shouldn't have had any dealings with BT Retail.

Mr_Oink

littleboo wrote: »

Assuming that your ISP is not BT, then you wouldn't/shouldn't have had any dealings with BT Retail.

FYI: Whilst in some cases the SP may be using their own LLU equipment in the exchange, many still use BT Wholesale equipment. In nearly all cases (LLU or BTW) that equipment will interface to the BT local loop looked after by Openreach (Part of the BT Group of companies).

However, the customer must communicate with their service provider. It is the job of the SP to communicate with BTW/Openreach. That said, there is nothing wrong with an end user putting a rocket up the backside of BT if they are to blame for something.

littleboo

All very true but it doesnt explain why BTR were involved if it is a braoadband problem and not BT Broadband

Mr_Oink

littleboo wrote: »

All very true but it doesnt explain why BTR were involved if it is a braoadband problem and not BT Broadband

Guessing but the OP states:

Won't bore you with the details but BT Retail (who diagnosed the original copper line fault and told me I needed one of their engineers to come) were frustrating, useless and occasionally rude and I am contesting their £130 engineer call out charge.

From that I read he had a metallic pair issue (dis/loop/earth/bat/low ins) which was service affecting on the voice circuit - which is probably provided by BTR. BTBB {or any SP} would require that fault to be cleared before looking into a BB issue because it is likely to be common and repairing the fault will probably clear the BB issue. BTOR would be responsible for attending be it a voice or BB issue.

That's how I understand it, but I may be wrong.

pigeonpie

Mr Oink,you are 100% right. ISP were helpless until the copper line loop fault was dealt with by BT Retail. Once that fault mysteriously disappeared ( I rang India daily and finally got a supervisor after shouting "su-per-vi-sor" for 10 mins), my ISP contacted BT wholesale (their engineer sorted it out).
I have no quarrel with the latter, just the 151 lot and Mr Grumpy who would not even locate the master socket.

thanks for the info!

BloomingWellFedUp

macman wrote: »

BT Retail don't have engineers, so sounds like the usual OpenReach admin chaos.

Chaos?

Nah - just the fact that they have about 10% of addresses in the country wrong in their databases.

With the new OFCOM regime about data sharing between Openreach and other Telecom providers you often can't place an order as the address Openreach claim you have a service at does not agree with the Post Office Postcode Database - so you are left hitting your head on a brick wall.

ROLL on OFCOM - OTELO - THE OFFICE OF THE TELECOMMUNICATION ADJUDICATOR and THE INFORMATION COMMISSIONER - 11 months and counting!

Openreach believe that incaurate data / addresses are not an issue because Openreach don't know who you are - they blame the Phone companies who are blocked from placing orders - porting Lines, Phone numbers and BB services - and all because Openreach are getting it wrong.

One phone provider ended up having my line cut and reconnected 3 times in one day - and I'm still being told by providers that I have a line when I call them - and when they check with Openreach systems it reports I have NO LINE and so NO Services.

They even tried to sort it out using a few tricks and My neighbour git Slammed and it could not be stopped - all due to wrong address data used by Openreach that causes Industry wide systems to not work and get it very very wrong.

Chaos is not the right word - "Negligence" under the Data Protection act is!

There is also concern that billing issues with certain providers is linked to them cross referencing customer data with Openreach and the computers not being able to raise bills as a result. Bills not raised - and then customers cut off automatically due to mis-processed data.

It has only taken 6 months - but OFCOM have accepted a complaint from a member of the Public against Openreach.

OFCOM histrionically have refused as Joe Public is not an Openreach customer.

We will see! :rotfl: