can i leave BT BB before contract expires?

mr_rush

I've had trouble with BT broadband since signing up in September.
problems with delivery, line getting disconnected, emails not answered, phone help not being helpful, still waiting for cashback 3 months after it was due, being overcharged....
i won't bore you with all the details.

is there any way i can get out of the contract (its for 12 months, i've just started month 5).

isn't there anything about BT having to provide a decent level of service.

Or once we sign up do we just have to tolerate extremely poor service?

help and advice appreciated

marcellep

I am surprised that you have been treated that way. I would strongly suggest that you call BT customer service and advise them that you are very unhappy with there poor service, It is very unlikly that you will be allowed to cancel there service as its a 12mth contract. But if they are not keeping to there side of the contract then you could ask for the contract to be terminated. Alternatively you will find that you will be offered a discount as a gesture of goodwill

Good luck

mr_rush

i have spent hours on the phone to bt c.c. they are completely useless.
sent 20 - 30 emails as well

marcellep

If your not getting any where using the normal number or email try these ones.

Headoffice - 0207 3565000

Broadband Complaints - 0800 679905
Failing that I am sure the info below will help

Customer Service Manager
BT Customer Correspondence Centre
Durham
DH98 1BT.

We will normally respond to your letter by phone but will gladly confirm any particular points in writing, if you prefer.

We aim to deal with the problem to your satisfaction, and our customer service advisers will try to do this as quickly as possible, preferably during your phone call. If this is not possible, we will agree a course of action with you. Complaints about a bill may take longer to put right. If you are not happy with how we have handled your complaint, please ask to speak to the manager. He or she will review your complaint and will work with you to try and sort out the problem. If, after contacting the manager, you feel that we have not dealt with your complaint properly, please ask for your case to be reviewed by a more senior manager.
If you are still not satisfied with how we have dealt with your complaint, we offer a Complaint Review Service. You can contact this service on the following numbers.

Residential customers - 0800 545 458

Business customers - 0800 555 257

Payphone customers - 0800 252 745

If you prefer, you can write to our Complaint Review Service. Please phone the appropriate number for the address.

If you are still not happy
We want to try and deal with any problem without you needing help from others. However, if you are still not happy after following the process explained above, you can refer your complaint to the Telecommunications Ombudsman, Otelo.

Otelo
Otelo provides an independent service for dealing with the problems of customers who are not satisfied with the final outcome of their complaints (called 'alternative dispute resolution'). We will have explained the final outcome in a 'deadlock' letter, which we send once a complaint has been through our complaint process. Otelo can investigate either at this point or if you are not satisfied 12 weeks after making your complaint. Otelo may be able to award compensation.
The following kinds of disputes can go to Otelo.

Problems with most products and services that we offer to residential customers and small businesses.

Problems with products and services for disabled people, including free directory enquiries, access to the TextDirect textphone service, and Typetalk.

If you want to complain to Otelo, you must do so within six months of receiving the 'deadlock' letter. If we haven't sent you a 'deadlock' letter, you must contact Otelo within nine months of making your complaint to us.
See 'Some other useful contacts' for Otelo's contact details.

Complaints about premium-rate services

What we can do for you
Provide information on general questions about premium-rate services.

Deal with number-checking requests through the facilities provided on the ICSTIS website at https://www.icstis.org.uk.

If available, provide details of the service provider for the premium-rate service number so that you can contact them direct for a refund.

Provide information about the prices for calls to any premium-rate service number on our network.

Provide basic information about how premium-rate services work, including whether the calls in question were on our own network or on the network of another provider, together with a basic explanation of how share charges.

Provide information about how you can bar calls to all or specific premium-rate numbers from your phone line.

Provide information about how 'internet diallers' work and how you can identify and take action (such as improving your computer's security), to avoid similar problems in the future.

Provide information on other options available for getting refunds in cases of abuse or problems involving premium-rate calls.

What ICSTIS can do for you
ICSTIS (the Independent Committee for the Supervision of Standards of Telephone Information Services - see 'Some other useful contacts' for their contact details) regulates the content premium-rate services and how they are advertised. It is responsible for investigating complaints about the way premium-rate services are advertised or run, or the way information received using a premium-rate call has been presented. ICSTIS is also responsible for running the 'Live Service Providers' Compensation Fund', which can compensate customers who dispute making calls to live (rather than pre-recorded) premium-rate services. ICSTIS cannot provide compensation for calls made to recorded information premium-rate numbers, but they may be able to provide details of the service provider. If you want to make a formal complaint to ICSTIS, you can do so in a number of ways. Please see 'Some other useful contacts' for their website, address and phone number.

Browntoa

it's worth the escalation, friend of mine had problems with broadband from BT which they swore was due to her wiring/modem etc list went on, in the end she gave up

about 10 months later she gets a wireless laptop, gets the updated Wireless modem from BT and tries again, still no joy, again stuck int the loop with customer service.

within a week of escalation fault found on line, regular phone calls to check progress and at the end a whole years refund of fees

Carl.

I used to be on BT Broadband and had much the same problems as you though it was Broadband Talk which caused me most problems.

I escilated the issues to the Broadband Talk back office team who were very helpful when it came to sorting most things out.

One of the things that they did for me was to give me 6 months of the BT Home IT for free because the technical helpdesk was so inept. This is normally charged at £10/month and was given due to repeated complaints about dissatifaction with the script in India not recognising ANY of the issues and queries I raised. Home IT are VERY helpful and VERY thorough.

The cashback was denied and denied and denied until I finally spoke to Broadband Options who applied the £30 as an immediate credit to my bill.

Further credits were applied for their VoIP rstrictions on the BT Voyager Router (they lock the ports to stop you using any other VoIP provider), faulty home hub, faulty hub phone, late deliveries and so on and so on.

At each and every single stage I asked them to issue a MAC without penalty and they refused.

In the fourth month they finally relented after giving me credits and goods to the value of over £600 (which bought me a router, a SE k750i and three months with another provider) and allowed me to leave.

Persist!

mr_rush

Carl - can you give me a few more details - BT gave you 6months free BB and also allowed you to leave the 12 month contract AND gave you £600 of credits - seems to good to be true!

Carl.

No, not 6 months free broadband and not £600 in credits.

It was 6 months free subscription to Home IT which is a UK based, BT run, general technical helpdesk.

I got this because I complained endlessly about the Indian Technical Support representatives being so poorly trained that they were unable to deviate from the script they use.

I cited example after example after example of query they simply did not understand, even at MANAGER level which ANY basic support representative should be able to answer.

Regarding the credits and goods....

There was a three month credit for Broadband applied to my account because an advisor has told me to get rid of my anti-virus and firewall because they'd be giving me Norton on my start-up CD. Eventually I had to try and download it because it wasn't on the CD. Their systems wouldn't allow me to download the Norton tools and they refused point blank to give me a direct download link, so I stated how I would have to go and buy it from the shop at £49.99 (I wasn't going to shop around because of their mis-information), they offered 3 months refund on Broadband rental to cover the purchase price of Norton so I accepted.

I received a Voyager 220v router when I signed up to BT as part of my service.

This was then upgraded to a Home Hub free of charge.

A hub phone should have been included with the Hub but there was a delay so an alternative DECT phone (£39.99) was sent. This phone was so poor that there was a constant buzzing on the line when in use making it unusable.

BT offered a replacement so I asked for a £19.99 phone as a replacement because I knew that worked.

The phone didn't turn up at all and on speaking to a manager a week after the supposed delivery date of the £19.99 one he said that they didn't have any in stock and to go onto their website and choose ANY phone as compensation for the problems. I chose a BT Zenith Flip, which at the time retailed at £99.99 and came with a guarantee that it would work buzz-free.

The phone was delivered the next day but the number 7 button didn't work so the phone was sent back and re-ordered.

After the phone arrived in working order, TWO of the £19.99 phones arrived so again I phoned BT to request a returns pack for those and the 1st phone (I'd asked before but they never sent one), at that point they said to keep the phones.

Then finally a hub phone arrived, value at the time on the website was quoted at £79.99 and finally things were going fairly well.

I had thought about signing up with another VoIP provider due to BT BBTalk being down for FOUR days after intermitant downtime throughout the previous months, so called the technical support helpdesk to see if I would be able to use a normal phone in the Hub with an alternative supplier without any additional hardware.

I phoned on 5 seperate occassions and spoke to 5 different people, including on 2 occassions, members of the Broadband Talk helpdesk in the UK who all confirmed that I could do so.

I went ahead and ordered the service and when I phoned to ask where to put the settings into the Hub I found it impossible so phoned HomeIT.

A poor guy on that desk spent THREE hours on the phone with me, with a Home Hub in front of him trying to work out how to configure it. At the end of these three hours he went through to a senior manager, and then another one who eventually told him that it wasn't possible to use a different VoIP provider without additional hardware.

This meant that I had to purchase a seperate ATA which cost me £50. This for me was the final straw.

By now the HomeHub had been upgraded again to a Voyager 2500V.

I managed to secure a MAC after emailing Ben Verwayen who sanctioned the end of the contract without penalty, when I asked if I would be able to use ANY of the routers with any other ISP I was told no I wouldn't be able to.

At this point I brought up the £30 chequeback offer that I had never received at point of sign up as it was yet another expense and after much toing and froing they FINALLY found the offer in their archives, accepted that I should have gotten the offer and the cheque and applied it immediately to my account.

I pushed for further compensation based on the router being locked when most ISP's provide them unlocked and pointing out BT's anti-competition practise of locking the VoIP port AND the router, they applied a further £100 credit to my account to cover the misinformation of being able to use any VoIP provider when I couldn't, thus making another piece of hardware neccessary, AND the price of a new router.

I asked if they wanted their hardware/phones returned and they said no and to keep them, throw them out, bin them or sell them.

THREE MONTHS after leaving BT for broadband, ANOTHER Hub Phone arrived so again I phoned them asking if they would like me to send it back, again they declined.

So all in all it came to over £600. In November I received a bill which was £120ish in credit, (including all line rental, phone calls, homeIT and broadband paid) so got a refund and cancelled the direct debit to make sure that they couldn't !!!! the billing up while I was in credit (3 months phone line rental paid in advance).

I would have gladly swapped all that for a product that did what they said it would when I signed up and for reasonable technical support but the only thing which they promised which was actually delivered was a rock solid connection.

People could say that the other things were extra's but they were all selling points and acting on the advice of technical support and sales cost me over £100 in things I had to purchase which I wouldn't have had to IF they'd have been as good as their word.

It took over 60hrs of my time, around 80% of that on hold (I remember one particularly memorable call when I was on hold from noon until 2:53 before the call was answered), to sort the whole mess out piece by piece, including getting them to pull up the tapes of the calls as proof and waiting round for call backs, I could have lived without that.

I had no problems on AOL other than the fact you have to use their software to access any of the features/newgroups and email (at the time they didn't give you access details for IMAP or direct dial), no problems with FreeServe (ancient dial-up), no problems with PlusNet (until I moved into a new property which was rented - broadband was against the lease terms and their packages changed drastically before I moved again), no problems with Eclipse (other than I think Wholesale are messing them about) and no problems with Twang.

With all of the other ISP's listed I was as happy as Larry, it was just circumstance or looking to cut prices, which made me switch, I would recommend them ALL (other than AOL because of TalkTalk buying them). based on my experience with them but I think anybody, other than very basic users, who signs up with BT needs a brain transplant.

So like I said, stick with it, they'll let you out of the contract eventually, free of charge, just make sure you speak to managers or if possible a member of the back office team, as much as possible and when support aren't helpful, ask to be transferred to the customer options team.

mr_rush

Carl

thanks a lot for your very detailed reply.
Its amazing that when you pay a premium price for BB, BT give such poor customer service.

I'll never use any BT products again - which means they've managed to lose a young professional who loves technology and is willing to always pay premium prices for quality service.

Carl.

Hi Mr Rush,

Be very careful when you leave them after they grant you the free cancellation/migration...

I have just checked my online bill produced a couple of days ago and low and behold what do I find?

01 Jan-29 May
New charges for BT Total Broadband Option 3
Order number XXXXX
68.91
112.52

If you have online billing like me watch it like a hawk because these bunch of incompetants really do like to extract the urine.

That charge, together with the charge for BT Home IT they have levied onto my account (which I was promised free till Feb '07 and cancelled earlier this month anyway) PLUS the lack of line rental credit they should have added to my bill in JULY means that no doubt I am going to have to waste another few hours of MY time from 8am sorting it out!

This time I'm going to give them an hour to sort it out or I'll be taking legal action (Small claims court £500 compensation for stress, time wasted and over-billing should do it). I have run out of patience with these jokers.

Carl.

Just to close this off...

As stated above the bill was £120 debit when it should have been £22 credit.

I got a call this morning to advise me about the amended bill which I had asked for. Expecting to have a couple of pounds to quibble over (thought that they were amending it to be £15 in credit), I was absolutely astonished to hear the lady tell me that I was now in credit by £131!

I informed her that as far as I was concerned BT only owed me £22 quid and that I wouldn't be quibbling if they adjusted the credit to that. However she said the bill had already been sent with my account that much in credit and that BT wouldn't be going back on their word (the bill) by altering the amount after thanking me for my honesty.

After asking her if she was sure nobody would get into trouble, and to check to confirm the amount, which she did, I have ordered a refund of £114, leaving the £22 that should have been left in the first place.

Going to use the completely unexpected windfall to fund a RAM upgrade on the old workhorse I use to access the net, maybe I'll stick a new hard-drive and DVD R/W in it too with the £70 or so left over money.

I just really, really hope that when my next bill comes out next month (I'm on whole bill direct debit now), that there are no further foul-ups because I can so live without the hassle.

Best of luck Mr Rush and remember, after you've left, keep a VERY close eye on your bill in case the same thing happens to you.