Awful BT service

JillBill_2

Hi folks,

I have never used a forum before and find making complaints usually very embarrassing however I felt that I had to share my recent experience with BT, in the hope that someone may be able to offer some advice.

My 91 year old Nana recently moved from Wales to Cheshire into a home. She has lived in Wales most of her life so moved closer to us however she is miles away from her friends and the rest of her family (her daughter lives in France). Due to her difficulties hearing she isn't able to use a mobile or phone in the nurses office. We rang Bt on November 27th to arrange for a phone line to be installed initially we were told this couldn't be done until 8th January due to festivities (this was later changed to due to the flooding. We were annoyed by this wait but were told on a number of phone calls that this could not be brought forward so reluctantly agreed.

On the 8th we received a phone call they told us this had come to the 'wrong exchange'. They told us they would ring us back, they didn't. We rang them back the 9th and they told us the soonest they could do it now was 8th Feb although it was a mistake that they had made. We said that we weren't happy with this and they told us someone would ring us back, they didn't.

We rang them back the 9th and after speaking on the phone for an hour an a half they agreed to come out on the 11th, great! No, we received a text message this date has been changed to the 18th apparently they cannot change this date or bring it forward.

After this I will never use BT again!

macman

4-5 weeks is quite a normal lead time for a new line provision, and that will obviously be extended due to Christmas/New Year. Bad weather causes many more faults than usual, and these take priority over line installs.
The company that do the work are BT OR, not BR Retail, so even if you choose another provider than BT, it will still be down to BT OR to do the actual install-so the same issue can arise.

Fifitrix17

Your post prompted me to air my angry rant about BT.

We moved house 5 weeks ago into a property where there was an existing BT line. To date and despite multiple calls / requests by the previous owner, (beginning weeks before we moved) BT have still not terminated the line to allow my new supplier to take it over. They are utterly useless. In the digital age this company can't get their act together to do a simple electronic switch-off. It's no wonder Europeans laugh at the UK. We put up with staggeringly crap service from providers and we don't make a big enough fuss about it.

BT Infinity? - Presumably this is named in honour of the time customers are forced to wait before they get off their collective !!!!!! to do anything. And no doubt there will be multiple "reasons" why this has happened, none of them I am remotely interested in. One thing I do know for sure is that it doesn't take BT 5 weeks to take a direct debit payment from your account - oh no, when it comes to grabbing money, they're hugely efficient. Strange that.

macman

You have my sympathy. But it's not an electronic switch-off. It requires a physical switch over of the cabling at the street cab or exchange, if you are talking about an LLU service.

money_saving_matt

LLU lines become software-stopped just like WLR lines do, the only time de-jumpering takes place is if it is requested by the LLU operator or a WLR provider restarts the stopped LLU line as WLR.

If the line within your new premises is still live with BT Retail your new provider should be able to place a working line take over (WLTO) order.

WLTO works a bit like a transfer in that the losing CP is notified and is obligated to notify the EU, but if the EU does not object then the CP has to let the WLTO order complete.