Please help! At wits end with BTinternet broadband provider

Nenen

We use BTinternet as our broadband service provider and have, until recently, been using broadband successfully for over a year. I’m now at my wits end with BT as we have been without broadband for 12 days (due to their catalogue of errors listed below… for anyone who is able to take the time to read). We were told yesterday that it will be another fortnight until they can reconnect us. :mad: My dh and I have spent more than 10 hours on the phone to them in the last 12 days, being passed from pillar to post, told all manner of different things and generally misled by their sheer incompetence.
Finally, they are now telling us a ‘tag’ has been installed on our line which will take another TEN (working) DAYS to remove. If there is anyone who can give us any advice I would be extremely grateful. I’m posting this on techies and rant boards as I’m not sure which is the most appropriate.

BT’s catalogue of incompetence:

19th March 2007:
Contacted customer services regarding proposed house move necessitating telephone and broadband transfer to new address. Job number allocated and telephone number given.

29th March:
Text message on mobile to say that the telephone line and broadband had been transferred and was now working at new address. All worked well for two weeks.

Friday 13th April:
Broadband suddenly went ‘dead’ in the morning whilst I was online. I had to go to work so my son spent 1.5 hours on the phone to technical support speaking to various people at their Indian call centre none of whom could tell him what the problem was and despite trying everything they suggested to fix it nothing worked. Eventually they told him the engineers would do a line check within 48 hours.

Saturday 14th April:
Line still down, I rang to check what was going on and see if we would have to pay anything for the engineers services. Told once again that within 48 hours of original report the engineers would check the line and they didn’t think there would be a cost unless it was a fault in the wiring.

Sunday 15th April broadband still down, rang again told engineers were due to check today (despite being a Sunday, when I tried to explain to the Indian operator that we didn’t normally work Sundays in the UK he assured me it was 48 hours from original report).

Monday 16th April:
Broadband still down. After waiting almost 45 minutes to get through to technical support told it was 48 ‘working hours’ from original report and they didn’t work Sundays!

Tuesday 17th April:
Broadband still down. Technical support rang to tell us there was no fault on the line and an engineer would be coming to the house to investigate on Wednesday between 1-6 pm. Rang to confirm the appointment but after waiting 40 minutes to be put through, the engineers department had closed!

Wednesday 18th April:
Broadband still down. FIVE HOURS on phone firstly to try and confirm engineer’s visit next day only to be told this had been cancelled as there were further problems. Many calls to various departments to try and establish what the problem was. At one point we were told that we had been cut off as we hadn’t paid the bill! Long phone call to payment department confirmed that this was untrue… our telephone bill and broadband is all paid by direct debit and had been paid up to date. Our telephone was working perfectly throughout this period. Told again by technical support that there was a problem on the line and that when there is a problem with the line ‘normal procedure’ is to withdraw Broadband! It then takes them five working days to re-establish the line. We were promised broadband would be restored by 8.00 pm on Tuesday 24th April.
Tried twice to register a complaint through customer services. They told us we had got through to the wrong department, kept trying to put us through to technical support. On both occasions they cut us off and did not ring back. Finally spoke to a manager in technical support who said he would look into the problem and call back within two days… no further contact to date.


Tuesday 24th April:
4.00pm technical support rang to say broadband was not being reconnected by 8pm today (as originally promised) due to unknown problems. They could not tell us the nature of the problem and told us we needed to speak to the ‘order management department’. We then spent 40 minutes on the telephone trying to get through to ‘order management’, but speaking to three different people in technical support having being redirected to them instead. Eventually spoke to ‘Fiona’ in order management who told us that “If you had spoken to me in the first place I could have told you exactly what the problem is straight away”! According to her, there had been an ‘order mix-up’ and the broadband transfer to the new address had been ordered twice (which she tried to blame us for). This meant that BT have put a ‘tag’ on the line which prevents any broadband provider from using it. She said it will take TEN working DAYS to remove this tag as this is ‘standard procedure’. BT would take accept no responsibility for its mistake and gave no apology. ‘Fiona’ had an extremely belligerent attitude, couldn’t understand our frustration and when my dh suggested that if he made so many mistakes in his job he would be fired, her reply was ‘Well my job is perfectly secure’! She said it would be 11th May before our broadband could be restored and suggested if we didn’t like it we could change our provider but that any new provider wouldn’t be able to have broadband before then because the BT tag would prevent this!

Charis

Computeractive magazine (bi weekly) have a page dedicated to poor service for IT consumers. Might be worth contacting them, sometimes companies jump to attention rather than receive bad publicity.

"http://www.computeractive.co.uk/"

Nenen

Thanks for that suggestion... I'll try it if writing to Ben Verwaayen doesn't get me anywhere!