BT Complaints & Escalation

zaax

Sounds like BT retail are doing things on the cheap, and if the customer goes else where never mind, we have plenty of others.

amandatakel

We are a small garage that before last Friday (20/2/2015) had an unreliable phone line (kept cutting out) but a reliable MOT/VOSA line. BT upgraded our lines to ISDN and put a new telephone system in which resulted in a reliable phone line but an unreliable and at times a non-existent MOT line. Despite long discussions with the salesperson and a letter to the CEO and chairman of BT (sent on the advice of the BT salesperson last Friday) I have not received a reply from anyone apart from the salesman who has told me we must pay for a new line (installation and rental charges). We have paid thousands of pounds for this system and now BT are asking for more money for essentially their mess up.
VOSA, understandably, have strict rules regarding connection to their system. OFCOM tell me BT have eight weeks to respond to a complaint. We are losing money on a daily basis and the frustration is mounting. Any help/ideas/contacts from anyone would be useful.

jonwed

Yet another tale of woe with BT, I’m afraid. A few weeks ago, I discover my elderly, widowed Mum has been paying for two phone lines as she’d been told (at some point by BT) that she needed one for voice calls and another for the internet. She’s been on Infinity for years, so a second line is certainly not needed!

You would think in the circumstances BT would have leapt into action, but sadly it wasn’t to be.

As soon as I found this out (14 Feb, “Day 1”), I contacted BT and after some long conversations was promised action to “asset merge” the two lines transferring the Infinity to her “voice” line. Pointed out we’d need the line split physically removed on premises to avoid issues and optimise broadband performance. On 16 Feb, was contacted by asset merge team, ran through everything again explaining to them it would need an engineer on premises and was told I would be contacted within 5 working days with details of arrangements. Heard nothing, but on 24 Feb my Mum came home to find a BT contractor on her doorstep claiming she’d “missed her appointment” (double checked this, and we’d definitely not been given any appointment details).

On 25 Feb (“Day 11”), I contact BT again and after a long call getting passed from handler to handler manage to make an arrangement to move the Infinity and close the unneeded line. Explain that an engineer is required to update (v old) master socket faceplate when installing the hub, and they will probably need to look at the physical connection of the line to disconnect physically the second line as I believe there are some oddities in the wiring.

On 5 March (“Day 24”), this appointment takes place. The BT contractor says he is unable to carry out the work required as he doesn’t know about swapping faceplates. He tells us “you need an BT Openreach engineer”. Not that helpful, given I’ve been asking for an engineer since Day 1. Meanwhile, he has installed the router which is working but an sub-optimal speed (30Mbps up, 4.5Mbps down on Infinity 2 when dslchecker says we should get 40 and 8Mbps respectively). Since his visit, there is also a terrible hiss on the line making voice calls extremely difficult. He was aware of this during his visit (as he and I spoke on the phone with him pointing out “I can hardly hear you this line is so bad”). However, he refused to contact BT at that time to report issue or that job was incomplete. Apparently he was very busy with other jobs…

So nearly a month later, after many lengthy phone calls, we are back at “needing an engineer”, the phone line that was fine before is now almost unusable, and the broadband is way below its specified speeds. My Mum lives alone so her landline and broadband are her social lifeline.

There’s no clear route to feedback to BT: any one got advice on how to escalate this and get it finally sorted?

BT_company_representative

Hi jonwed,

Sorry for the problems your mother is having with her service. I can take a look at this for you.

You'll see the link to get in touch with us in our public profile.

Thanks,
Olga

bartsimpson

I have just been cruelly mis-sold a phone & broadband package from BT.

A few weeks ago they had a half price unlimited broadband offer on, for £7.50 per month. I tried to order online but it had gone back up to full price, so I called them to explain that I was looking for a provider to replace my Sky Talk & Broadband, and could they give me the £7.50 half price deal over the phone? They said yes, fine and I even paid up there and then for a year to save 2 months line rental. I was feeling pretty good about life & looking forward to switching.

The switchover happened last week, and it took me a day or 2 to realise that BT had actually changed my home phone number (one I've had for 6 years) to a brand new one - something I did not ask for.

Then, I got an email on 4 March to say that I had nearly hit my 10GB broadband limit! !!!!!!!!!??? The sales lady had sold me £7.50/month for UNLIMITED broadband, I never would have signed up for a paltry 10GB given our usage.

I called BT to complain about this, and they have forwarded to their complaints dept which I'm told can take up to 12 days. By which point the usage will be well over 10Gb and my 'cooling off period' will probably have expired.

It has now become clear to me that not only has this woman changed my number without my knowledge, and mis-sold me 10GB broadband for £7.50/month - I checked online and the ONLINE price for this package is only something like £4.75, with a £75 FREE Sainsbury's voucher!!! How can she get away with this?

Totally, utterly ripped-off and dejected. On the plus side my broadband connection has been very good, but this is surely scandalous and I have no idea what BT are going to do about it when they do finally get back to me.

I never got an original order email either as this woman spelt my email address wrong and sent it somewhere else.


Complete nightmare so far and I'm hoping that it won't take too much time or money to resolve.

:mad:

alba7

I had a bit of a nightmare trying to get the MAC to get away from BT. Despite waiting the required 5 days, no email with MAC was forthcoming from BT and I couldn't seem to get through to anyone in customer services who could speak English well enough to understand what I wanted.

In the end (and in desperation) I contacted BT through their facebook page, filled in another form and then contacted them on facebook again. Finally, they sent the MAC. The facebook team seem to be the only way to get anything done with BT.

Mind you, the broadband changed to Plusnet a week ago but BT don't seem to have noticed yet, if my account is anything to go by... I foresee another fight coming on if they try to keep taking the direct debit!

BT_company_representative

Hi alba7,

I'm sorry about the recent problems you've had with BT, if you need any help getting your BT account sorted please use the contact link in my profile to send over your details and we'll be happy to help.

Thanks
Neil

Paul-G_3

I'm someone else needing some help escalating my latest problem (the third in 3 months) with BT.

My broadband speed dropped from ~7Mbps to 25kbps around 22nd Feb, so I reported it to the helpline. First guy insisted it was the firmware on my router and to leave it on for 3 days to update. Unsurprisingly it wasn't this.

On my second call I was told I needed a new router (mine's a v1.5), so I was sent a v3. This arrived and made no difference.

On the third call I was told an engineer would be sent out. An appointment was made for Friday 6th March between 1pm and 6pm and I managed to get the afternoon off from work. The engineer didn't arrive and nobody called to explain why. I lodged a complaint on Sunday 8th but still wasn't given a satisfactory answer as to why the engineer hadn't arrived. I was given another appointment for today (Tuesday 10th March) between 1-6pm, but the support team agreed to request that the engineer would call after 4pm which would be the earliest I could get home without taking more time off.

My wife got a call at home at 11:30pm on Tuesday 10th from the engineer asking if he could come now. She told him to ring me as she was about to go out. I didn't receive the call at work (I wasn't at my desk), and the engineer didn't call my wife back. I rang support at 12:30pm to find out what was going on. After a few calls I was told that they'd be able to get someone there for 3pm so I set off home straight away (I work 1 hour away from home), and arrived home at 2:45pm.

At 3pm I received a call from support telling me the engineer had finished for the day and wouldn't be coming so I had to book another appointment. Despite escalating this to two managers in an attempt to get another engineer sent today I was unable to get this resolved; I was just told that OpenReach arrange the appointments and they couldn't arrange to get anyone to me after 4pm... even though it was only 3:15pm!! I was offered £10 compensation, and they are still unable to offer me anything better than a 5-hour window despite messing me about twice in 5 days.

I escalated this as far as possible at the India call centre and no-one was able to help. Is there any way I can speak to someone at BT who has the authority to help me with this?

JJ_Egan

BT Open Reach are not available to the consumer .If and when they arrive is an unknown algorithm .
You could try the BT Help customer forum .


https://community.bt.com/
Be aware that if the fault is within your property BT will charge you for the call out £139.

Paul-G_3

JJ_Egan wrote: »

BT Open Reach are not available to the consumer .If and when they arrive is an unknown algorithm .
You could try the BT Help customer forum .

Be aware that if the fault is within your property BT will charge you for the call out £139.

Thanks for that.


I was also looking for help in raising a complaint to BT about having been let down twice with engineer visits, if anyone can help...?