Dispute with BT over costs incurred

graniteclimber

Hi All

First post so please excuse any errors with non-standard presentation...

i have had a dispute with BT that following a phone call today i have been informed will lead them to issuing a 'deadlock' letter. i'll try to succincltly summarise what has led to this 'deadlock'.

I have had internet with Zen through a BT line for a number of years at home, from where i run a small business. its a residential line not a business line and has been used purely for getting an internet service, not phone calls as i use a VOIP service for that.

Broadband speeds have not been great due to old lines and poor exchange equipement so when a local provider of a wireless internet service began to offer better speeds I installed that and was preparing to migrate my internet and mail services over to them.

Thus i rang BT and gave notioce that i wanted to cancel the line and was told that it was thirty days notice whiuch was fine with me as it fave me planty of time to migrate my stuff over to the new ISP.

The date agreed to cease the line was 17th June.

they ceased the line on 17th May.

I realised this when zen automatically informed me and i called BT customer service imediately. The cust' service rep realised what had happened, admitted it was their error and placed an order to connect a new line, it being too late to cancel the original cease order. Despite the hope that this would be spotted and lead to someone putting two and two together and not disconnecting the original line, the line was cut off and was off for about 24 hours. when re-instated it was a new number.

Because of this interuption of service the ISP connection was lost and Zen needed me to pay for a new connection. I felt that this was perfectly acceptable as they had to do work to re-connect and i asked them to request an expediated service from BT. total cost £175 plus VAT.

Despite the expedite being agreed to by BT the total time offline was 5 days.

when the bt bill for the new line came through the advance billing period also meant they were asking me for payment for line rental for the period up to the 17th June twice as i was due to pay this under the 30 days notice period and now under the new line connection.

I raised this as a complaint with BT, sending them a letter asking for the £175 plus vat i was out of pocket due to their error, a credit for the duplicate billing period and some compensation for the time offline - i suggested £10 / day.

after two phone calls with BT - they called me despite my requesting in my complaint letter, that they repsond by letter we are in deadlock.

thay offered a figure about £20 for the time disconnected. refused to deal with the £175+ i'm out of pocket. we didn't get as far as discussing the double billing period.

Sorry, thats a pretty long story. now to my questions...

following deadlock i understand my next port of call is the ombudsman. any advice on doing this? what do i need in place to do this? what are the chances of satisfaction? is it worth going down the small claims court route at the same time, or do i see what the ombudsman says first and if i'm unhappy with the onnbudsman's ruling then go small claims? what pitfalls and what chances of success in small claims?

thanks for your patience. I look forward to hearing your thoughts.

Have a top weekend :beer:

Dave

agrinnall

I had to go to the Ombudsman after getting a deadlock letter from BT, it took a while for them to go through everything but they found in my favour and forced BT to compensate me. It wasn't as much as I would have liked but better than the nothing BT were offering. I believe you can take court action at the same time but as the Ombudsman is free I'd say you're better to use them first.

http://www.ombudsman-services.org/make-a-complaint-communications.html

misssarahleigh

Just one question. What did Zen do that cost £175 plus VAT?

bod1467

Arranged for BT to reprovision the internet connection. This involves getting a BT Openreach engineer to do connecting work at the exchange. BTOR charge the ISP a set fee for any such work, usually about £130, and OP says this was supposed to be an expedited appointment hence even more expensive.

So in essence Zen did nothing but arrange the appointment - and they HAD to do that as the OP would not be able to do so. Zen have not loaded an additional fee on top, merely passed on the BTOR fee.

It's all there in the OP if you look (and know the machinations of such things).

Handsome90

Maybe you should go and visit their London HQ

http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2012/jun/01/get-bt-listening-visit-hq