Talking to BT??

jon_cfc

realaledrinker wrote: »

Thanks for the tip.

We had a fallen tree in the garden bring down our line back in Jan. Took less than an hour to repair.

logged into my new bill tonight to find they had charged me £420!!

e-mail sent.

grrrrrrrr!!!!!

the tree in our garden fell down last January taking the line with it. i asked for an engineer to come out and after 1 hour the line was fixed.

anyway the bill came and they had charged me £359 for the work!!! i sent an email back to them quoting their faq section on repairs http://www2.bt.com/static/i/microsite/help_and_tips/faults/faq/faults_faq3.html

Do I have to pay for an engineer visit?

For most engineer visits, there is no charge. The call out charge does not apply if the engineer is already visiting the premises to carry out other work. However, there may be a charge if it's something you can fix yourself. So please check your own connections and equipment carefully before arranging a visit by an engineer. When charges do apply, they are: £99.00 plus VAT, (£116.33 inc VAT), call-out charge, then £85.00 an hour (or part of) plus VAT, (£99.88 inc VAT). This is a total of £184.00 plus VAT, (£216.21 inc VAT), for each minimum visit period, which is an hour.

and adding that neither myself nor my retired mother have the expertise, parts or ladders to complete such a repair.

a couple of days later Eamon from india rang to say that we will have to pay the bill because the tree was in our garden (it doesn't say that in the faq!)

"But the house isn't ours!" i replied, "we only rent it from the council."
"then you will need to speak to them then", he said.

At this point my mum went to the CAB who after an hour talking to india arranged that the bill would be 'split' in two. We would pay for the calls and standing charge etc, and we would get a separate bill for the work which we could pass onto the council.

Anyway, my mum was quite upset by this time and i said id look after it from then on. After a week with no bill i spoke to several people at BT mainly indians but also someone from england(!) who all confirmed that the new revised bill would be sent shortly and the payment 'clock' wont start ticking until we receive it.

Lo and behold, this morning and over a week later the full bill came again, this time with an extra charge of £5 for none payment!!!

Off i go to india again and before Eric or whatever name hes made up could start i asked for someone in charge. i was put though to some english women from the 'resolving department' or something. After a couple of minutes of telling her what had happened, she simply said that splitting the bill is a service BT don't provide and we would have to sort all the mess out ourselves

I said i wasn't happy with that so ive asked to speak to her manager. At the present im waiting for him/her to call me back.

the service is so bad its almost laughable. just how do they get away with it?

UPDATE

While proof reading the above, the customer service manager rang me. although very apologetic, she confirmed that BT do not split bills and id have to sort the matter myself. She did say she would cancel the £5 and we don't have to pay the full balance until May.
Fair enough i thought, theres little point asking huge computerised operations like BT to be flexible so ill just have to hope the Council dont mess up!

I did ask her then about the faq. Apparently, the call out charge, is simply that, you dont pay for the visit if there is a fault on the line. What is not mentioned is if there is a fault YOU STILL HAVE TO PAY FOR THE WORK! She agreed it was misleading and she said she will pass a note onto the web gadgies to change it.

Ok so i got to speak to someone knowledgeable at the end but i think BTs reputation of having one of the worst customer service departments in the country is well deserved.

i think ill have a lie down now! :mad:

DonnyDave

jon_cfc wrote: »

the tree in our garden fell down last January taking the line with it. i asked for an engineer to come out and after 1 hour the line was fixed.

[…]

"But the house isn't ours!" i replied, "we only rent it from the council."
"then you will need to speak to them then", he said.

At this point my mum went to the CAB who after an hour talking to india arranged that the bill would be 'split' in two. We would pay for the calls and standing charge etc, and we would get a separate bill for the work which we could pass onto the council.

Puts me in mind of something I read (I think on here) a few months ago.

It went along the lines of someone had a dropwire(s) running through a tree.

The question was brought up of whether the tree was there before the wire was put there, and therefore whether it was reasonable to assume that the tree would grow and therefore it was/may have been BT's fault for putting it there in the first place.

Like I say, I can't remember exactly how it went. I've searched, but I cannot find it.

It's a question you can ask at CAB.