BT Complaints & Escalation

klr75

I was forced to cancel my 12 month contract 6 months in because I had to move out of a rented property early for personal reasons. BT wanted to charge me over £320 to do this. As I am going to stay with my parents temporarily, and they have their own provider (Virgin) I don't need to take the service with me. BT initially suggested I get a line installed there anyway and continue to pay for a phone line internet and tv service I won't need! After I ended up in tears, partly in frustration, I made it very clear that there needed to be some sort of compromise, after leaving me on hold for ages, she offered to take off the cost of the tv service, so I have to pay £191, which includes £55 for 'equipment' - all of which, they want back, so quite why I still have to pay for it in full, I have no idea. She wouldn't escalate my complaint, wouldn't give me anywhere else to go. I even said I'd take the new phone line to my parents if I had to but not at a cost of £47 p/month. If they just charged line rental, they'd still guarantee I'd move the line when I find my new place. I worked in customer service and marketing for 15 years - this young lady was very very pleasant (especially given my prior experiences with BT) and tried to help as much as possible, but the whole system is geared up to trapping you and only letting you leave if you pay an extortionate amount of money. I've been a BT customer for 20 years and had fully intended to continue with them when I find my new property - not a chance now, despite her efforts. The overall approach and attitude to customers is disgusting. So frustrating. Checked on OFCOM's site, just says the charge has to be 'fair' but no idea what that actually boils down to in monetary terms!

Chocolatesez

Would like to discuss major problems we've been experiencing with but bt service, please could bt rep get in touch, I don't seem to be able to Msg them.
Thanks

Johnny_Tightlips

Having had further trouble with BT Business lately (still on-going and getting more ridiculous by the day), this has prompted me to finally remember to share my complaint against BT several years ago in case others may find it useful. Its a bit long, but worth a read as the level of incompetency is staggering.

Apologies in advance for the long post!

On the 6th January 2011, I placed a phone call to the BT One Plan team in relation to our current services here at our offices. At the time we had the following services-

• One telephone line with a BT Escort system (02920 ***866).
• One telephone line with broadband attached to it (02920 ***833).
• One standard telephone line (02920 ***818).
• Maintenance on 4 phones relating to the BT Escort system.

We had decided at the time that we no longer needed some of these services. Our aim was the following-

1. Cancel the standard line (02920 ***818).
2. Cancel the telephone line with broadband (02920 ***833) and have the broadband moved to the last remaining line (02920 ***866).
3. Cancel the maintenance on the 4 phones as we would no longer be using the BT Escort system.

This would have left us with just one telephone line (02920 ***866) with broadband coming through on that line.

I was advised by a One Plan sales member that the best way to go about it was to take out a new broadband contract on the line we wanted to keep and cancel everything else. I made it clear to the sales member that we had a BT Escort system on the line, which could also be seen from our records, but was assured that it would be fine to run broadband on this line. I was told the order would be placed and when it went through I could ring up once again to cancel all the remaining services.

Our activation date for broadband was the following Wednesday, the 12th January 2011. However, as of Friday 14th January, our new broadband was still not working. I contacted the Business Broadband support who told me they would look into it. I heard nothing from BT the following week so I had to chase up the fault myself. I was told it was still being worked on. The week beginning 24th January I received a phone call from the Broadband support team who assured me that our broadband was now working. Upon checking this, I found we were able to receive broadband on the line. However it would only work when our BT Escort system was switched over to the answer machine. Switching the BT system to the answer machine effectively disables the phones and is only engaged when no one is present in the office. Naturally this was not acceptable as we need both our phones and broadband to be able to work at the same time.

Upon contacting the Broadband support team with this new problem, I was told that it was no longer their problem as Broadband was being received on the line, and so it was now a matter for the telephony service.

I contacted the telephone fault team the following week commencing 27th January 2011. After numerous line checks and phone calls, I was told they could find no problem. I mentioned that we had a BT Escort system installed on the line and asked if that could be causing the problem and only one person I spoke to actually knew what a BT Escort system was. That one person assured me that was not the cause.

I then phoned the One Plan team again and went through all of my problems with a team member. She assured me that they would get to the bottom of it and opened yet another fault case on the system. She told me an engineer would be sent out as soon as possible.

An engineer arrived on Thursday 3rd February 2011 to try and fix the problem. Upon arriving he looked into the telephone systems here at the office and stated that he could only check the lines as far as the main point where the lines come into the office. He was not trained nor was he allowed to touch the BT Escort system. He could not see or solve our fault with the broadband so he said he would make a note of this on the case and told us he would make arrangements to send a member of the BT Escort team to our offices.

6 days later we still had not heard from anyone regarding our problems with the broadband. Upon contacting the One Plan team yet again on Thursday 10th February 2011, they could not provide any reason for this lack of contact. I was told they would get back to us that afternoon.

Later that day we received a phone call from the One Plan team. After almost one month of trying to receive broadband through our line 02920 ***866 we were told that it was not possible to receive it on that line due to the BT Escort system. The One Plan team member told us that the maintenance we pay on our BT Escort system only covers the phones themselves and not the actual BT Escort box. If we wanted to receive broadband on this line we would have to pay a BT engineer to come and re-configure the line and the BT Escort system for us, which would likely run into hundreds of pounds.

Knowing that it was now definitely not possible to receive broadband through the 02920 ***866 line, I decided to cancel the new broadband contract. I phoned the One Plan team and explained why I wanted to cancel the contract and did not expect to pay the cancellation fees (which would have been the remaining amount owed on the contact, which was 2 years and had only been running for one month so would have been a lot of money). I was told that they couldn’t waive the cancellation costs unless I had a reference number from the technical support team. In my one month of dealing with this problem and the 5 separate faults that had been raised relating to this, I had not received one reference number at any time. I was put through to the technical support department who issued me with the reference for the last fault. Upon returning to the One Plan team I was put through to a different member who told me that I didn’t need a reference number at all and she would have to speak to her supervisor. Eventually she agreed that the contract would be cancelled and the cancellation fees would be waived.

As we could not receive broadband through the line we wanted to keep, I decided it would be a better idea to try and switch two of our phone numbers around so that the line we had been receiving broadband on successfully for the past 6 years was re-numbered with the one phone number we wanted to keep.

I phoned the One Plan sales team on Monday 14th January 2011 and explained what I wanted to a team member named ******. She understood what I wanted to do and arranged it all for me, giving me a reference number for the order. In this order I also cancelled the standard line that we did not want any longer (02920 ***818). I was assured the line would be disconnected by 5pm that day at the latest.

Later that afternoon our old broadband, which we had kept on 02920 ***833 throughout all of this with the intention of cancelling it once the new broadband had started working, also ceased to work. I assumed it was because the line re-numbering was taking place so I decided to leave it in the hope that it would be restored.

The next morning, Tuesday 15th February, we still had no broadband. I phoned the One Plan after-sales support who told me that there was only one order attached to reference number ************, the number given to me by ****** the previous day, and that was the cancellation of the line 02920 ***818. I was put through to the sales team supervisor who confirmed that ****** had forgotten to attach the other part of the order, the re-numbering of the lines, to the main order. If I had not phoned up to check on this, this could have gone unnoticed for some time. I asked queried the supervisor on why the 02920 ***818 line had not yet been disconnected, despite being told the day before by ****** that it would be. He informed me that ****** should not have told me it would be disconnected by 5pm the previous day as they cannot guarantee disconnection that fast. He then promised me that he would pass on the message to ****** and get her to ring me straight away to explain what was happening. I gave him my mobile number and waited for her to call.

4 hours later I had heard nothing from anyone at BT. I decided to send an email via my Blackberry at approximately 2:30pm to spoc.oneplan@bt.com, an address given to me by a sales adviser, asking that ****** or someone on the sales team call me within the next 30 minutes or I might be forced to take my business away from BT and to another provider. By 9:30am the next morning I still had received no phone call from BT.

I telephoned the One Plan after-sales team straight away that morning and was passed through to another department. This department told me that 02920 ***818 had finally been disconnected, but because they were still waiting to hear back from the sales team regarding the line re-numbering, they hadn’t started that yet. They promised a member of the sales team would call me back within 4 hours and that they would also arrange a call-back the next morning between 10:30 – 11am to check the order was progressing. They also confirmed that as work had not yet started on the re-numbering, our broadband outage must be for a different reason.

By 11:30am the next morning, Thursday 17th February 2011, I had not received any phone call from the sales team, nor had I received the call-back I was promised. At 11:40am I finally received a phone call from the Cardiff based BT One Plan team. The person I spoke to had no knowledge of any call-back but was instead phoning in response to my email dated Tuesday 15th February 2011. I explained the situation to him and he promised to get to the bottom of it immediately, with the intention of phoning again by the next morning at the latest. When I queried him about our maintenance fee in relation to the BT Escort system, he insisted that any work that needed to be done on this system in relation to broadband would have been covered by our maintenance fee, which is a direct contradiction to the One Plan team member who told us we would have to pay to have the BT Escort system made usable with broadband.

During the afternoon I then received the call-back I had been promised by 11am. The department that phoned agreed that they would look into the matter as well and that the original sales team (i.e. the team that ****** belongs to) would phone me the following morning to update me on the order.

I heard nothing from anyone at BT until Tuesday 22nd February 2011 when I decided, once again, that I would chase up the order. I phoned the One Plan after-sales team who told me that the only order they could find was an order to disconnect our broadband line the following day. This was not mentioned at all to me during any conversations about re-numbering, and the after-sales team member assured me that disconnecting a broadband line has got nothing to do with re-numbering a line. He concluded that someone had entered the order incorrectly. I was told to speak to the Customer Options team to request the line 02920 ***866 be disconnected, and then speak to the Sales team to request a re-numbering. After I had spoken to the Customer Options team, I asked the Sales team if they could re-number the line. They told me that they couldn’t re-number it until the other line was actually cancelled and disconnected, which could be any time in the next 5 working days according to the Customer Options team. I would have to ring back when it had been disconnected and request that the old number be transferred to the broadband line.

6 working days later (one day late) the line was finally disconnected. I phoned the One Plan sales team who arranged the re-numbering of the broadband line for me. Finally, on Thursday 3rd March 2011, we had achieved what we wanted.

Looking back now, I still find it staggering that some much went wrong with something that should have been fairly simple. I should also point out that I ended the letter with 8 detailed questions for the BT complaints department, of which they answered 0. I did receive a small amount of compensation, to the effect of I believe 3 months free broadband.

I wonder if my current complaint will stretch to the 7 A4 pages that this one did...hopefully not!

pjrimmer

Following on from the issues we had back in Nov 2014, we are now having a fresh set of problems with BT, this time regarding a house move.

I've completed the on-line form, your help would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Broadwood

POPPYOSCAR wrote: »

What is it with BT!!!


Yet again went to use the phone and no dial tone.


Looked out the window and there is a van down the road, turns out someone has a fault and they have to work on the line.


Could you not have the common courtesy to inform us of this and that we will be without use of our phone and broadband while you sort out the fault on a neighbour's line!!

Wow! I could have written that word for word.
Except I would have had to add that it then took 5 days for Openreach to come and reconnect my line.

I'm actually with Plusnet (also part of BT) so had to raise a ticket with them who gave me today's date (19.5.15) for an Openreach appointment slot, having had no line since last Thursday (14.5.15).

Xcarbonator

I have been with BT most my adult life. I recently moved home and have a small office business from home and my phone is very important.

I have tried in vane to either re-direct my old number OR transfer my old number.

I get emails, texts and calls daily promising this will be done for me by midnight almost every night but nothing happens.

I have now received an email advising that i will receive an update on the 24th June 2015 - another 20 days away!!

Calling takes forever just to re-explain the basics only to get fobbed-off that they have taken care of it and all will be sorted by midnight tonight only to awaken to another groundhogg day of BT staff trying to get me off their complaint line.

Please BT Rep, help me out....

Nerak3010

We changed to BT on 16th May on phone line & broadband wish we hadn't bothered as they still haven't transferred our number over from SKY and broadband is rubbish, every time we call we get it's being looked into which isn't helpful when you work for yourself and are loosing customers due to no one being able to leave a message. Would appreciate if anyone can recommend a way to escalate our issue?

spyhunter

Nerak3010 wrote: »

We changed to BT on 16th May on phone line & broadband wish we hadn't bothered as they still haven't transferred our number over from SKY and broadband is rubbish, every time we call we get it's being looked into which isn't helpful when you work for yourself and are loosing customers due to no one being able to leave a message. Would appreciate if anyone can recommend a way to escalate our issue?

If your not getting any help try the BT forum https://community.bt.com/

The mods are pretty good at getting things done. You have to register and wait a few days for a response.

liamwguy

Hi BT company representative,

I can't use the contact link within your public profile??

I'm having real issues with a switchover from Sky to BT.

Broadband finally went live 10 days late, TV is now 12 days late and a delay of 10-15 days for my fibre broadband to be setup is now 17th August!

On top of that i'm now being told i must pay for TV activation as BT can't offer me the Entertainment Plus package i ordered as they can't offer me the fibre i ordered! (Both of which were confirmed!).

I'm being passed from person to person and not getting anywhere. Some staff have no grasp of the situation whatsoever, despite the abundance of notes held.

Please help!

:mad:

JameZee

Been waiting nearly 2 months to have a line and broadband installed. Absolute joke of a service. Customer service is shocking.