Help compiling complaint letter?

immoral_angeluk

Have SO had enough of BT right now. Recently all I ever seem to do is be on the phone trying to sort some kind of !!!! up out and it's doing my head in. I want to write a complaint letter as I'm fed up of speaking to 'sympathetic' bt customer services agents but I have no idea whats the best way to go about it and what I can do to make it have the most impact so I don't get fobbed off again!!!
Any tips would be greatly appreciated..

Madasafish_Customer_Care

Hi Immoral_Angeluk,

What kind of problems are you having with your service? Maybe some clever MSE'rs could help you troubleshoot.

Kind regards,
Samara

immoral_angeluk

Having all sorts! Technical problems, customer service idiocy, account problems the lot!
Will be as brief as I can.
Technical problems include internet frequently losing connection, our BT hub phone still not recieving incoming calls after being assured 2 months ago that it would be sorted within a month. As well as being promised 6.5mb max and only managing 4-5mb on a good day (Have only achieved 6.5mb once and we know the line can take it as we live close to the exchange and bt have told us we can get 6.5).
Account problems include us upgrading to bt total broadband option 3 (40gb) limit only to find out we were on option 1 after getting a fair usage email stating we'd gone over our 2mg limit. They now want us to pay more for the package we originall asked for and thought we were on.
Also having problems with payment after them not being able to take the bill outby dd on a set day of the month without being on a fixed rate plan or havign our bill quarterly, so we've now been forced to cancel our dd and start all over with the fixed rate plan starting in december. Were originally told by a woman at bt that if we wanted to be on that we'd have to pay £15 more per month that we were currently paying, and only after I complained to someone else have they let me pay what we expect to use.
It's getting to the point where I just want to cancel and go with someone else but we're stuck in an 18 month flippin contract. Argh!!!

Madasafish_Customer_Care

Hi immoral_angeluk,

I was hoping that it would be a tech problem that I could help you with.

The only thing that I could spot is that your speeds and disconnections might be impacted by your set up (forgive me if you've already gone through this all with your ISP) but if you haven't.....

1. Ensure that you're connecting from the master socket in your home and not an extension or extension cable.

2. Double check that every phone socket that is in use in your home is fitted with a microfilter. Remember to include phone sockets that are in use for SKY TV Boxes and FAX machines.

3. If every phone socket is fitted with a microfilter; unplug everything from all phone sockets in your home. Take all your microfilters and test them individually from your master socket one by one. Plug the microfilter into the master socket, the router into the microfilter and the connect to the Internet. If you get a patchy connection or slower speeds with one microfilter in particular you may have found the problem and that one will need to be replaced.

I'm afraid that I can't help out with the billing stuff, but BT do have a section on their site which outlines their code of conduct and how they deal with complaints. Here is a link to the PDF, scroll to page 21.

If you are going to write I'd encourage you to do so through the method outlined in their code of conduct.

Good luck!

Kind regards,
Samara

swagman

immoral_angeluk wrote:

As well as being promised 6.5mb max and only managing 4-5mb on a good day (Have only achieved 6.5mb once and we know the line can take it as we live close to the exchange and bt have told us we can get 6.5)

What speed you will manage in practice is dependant on several variables, especially how busy the local exchange is (contention). At peak periods your connection will be sharing bandwidth with many others because BT put all broadband Max connections through a few pieces of equipment. This will happen whatever internet service provider you are with. At present hundreds of BT exchanges are on 'red' status - in effect slowing speeds because the numbers of paths available are inadequate for the huge growth in broadband users.

As the Medasfish person says, the condition of your internal phone wiring will, if it introduces noise interference, also affect the actual throughput speed you manage.

There is no appeal against these lower speeds because the obligations on BT were drafted before broadband existed and so what BT will consider to be a technical fault is a very low speed indeed.

In the face of all the other problems you list, a broadband speed of 4-5Mb is the least of them - and many would be glad to get that.

normanmark

For the speed issues, make sure you put evidence in your complaint.

Send your complaint to....

The Chairmans Office
BT Group plc
BT Centre
81 Newgate Street
London EC1A 7AJ