Terrible service and customer support from BT

mhollins83

Hi,

I'm looking for a bit of advice on what to do here.

I moved home at the end of february. At my previous address I had BT Infinity and had no problems with service. At my new address, Infinity was not available so I had to downgrade to Totally Broadband. They did reduce the price to reflect this.

I was told that phone and internet would be activated on 25th february. The 25th came and went with no activation. There were no calls informing me of any problem, I had to call them myself and was told that there was a problem with the previous tenant's service with Sky not being terminated. I was given a new date for reactivation every few days, often having to call up myself to find out why it had still not been activated. Eventually it was activated after about a month of waiting.

The problems did not end there. Since then I have been having constant internet dropouts, and when service has been there it is often at terrible speeds. I have been using speedtest.net to monitor by line speed and it is often as low as 20kb, when I should be getting at least 2Mb.
There is also intermittent noise on the phone line, a horrible crackling noise.

I have constantly been reporting these problems to BT and engineers have visited and supposedly fixed the problem 3 times. Each time, the problem comes back usually wihin a week of the engineer visiting. After yesterdays visit, the problem was back within half an hour.

The technical faults are not the only problems I've had.
I am autistic and find it impossible to understand and process unfamiliar accents. Each time I have to call up, I end up speaking to someone who I can't understand. I've explained this every time, only to be told "It's ok, I'll speak slowly". Speaking slowly does not do any good, I can still only process a few words of what is said.
I have asked on numerous occasions to be put through to someone who is based in the UK but each time they have refused, saying that they aren't authorised to do that.
One time, I asked to speak to a manager. The man said he'd get the manager to call me back. A minute later, a woman called me. She asked if the man was helpful to which I replied "Not really". She then went on to ask if I'd opted to take the survey at the end of the call. I told her that I hadn't and she said "Ok! Goodbye" and hung up on me. Another minute later the man called back again, said he was putting me on hold to speak to the manager. I was on hold for about 10 minutes and they the line went dead.

Another time I said I wanted to speak to the complaints department. The man gave me a number to call for this... 080 800 150... This number did not seem correct to me so I read the number back to him twice and he confirmed both times that it was correct. The number was not correct.

A friend told me that BT have a minimum service policy, where if they do not provide you with a minimum level of service, then you can end your contract early free of charge.
I called up to ask about this today.
The first woman I spoke to hesitated when I mentioned this policy and asked why I wanted to know about it. Eventually she put me through to the technical department, again to somebody I couldn't understand. After I was put on hold for 10 minutes I hung up and dialled again.
The man I spoke to this time claimed to not know what I was talking about. So I explained what the policy was and he then began talking about me having to report the fault and give them chance to fix it.

I believe that I have given them time to fix this problem, it's been 3 months, 3 engineer visits (which should have been 4, but on that occasion nobody turned up) and in the mean time AWFUL service.

I'm really at the end of my tether now and I just don't know what to do.

macman

If the fault is on the local loop, then switching your provider won't help, because the fault will remain. It's up to BT to get OR to fix the line fault.
Have you tried using the messaging service through your online account if you can't communicate satisfactorily by phone?

shoperholicnot

has your line been capped? if theres a lot of dropouts, your speed will be capped have you done a speed test on speedtest.btwholesale.com?
there is a further diagnostics on there that will tell you if your line is capped.
Say you are going to leave because you are not getting the service you are paying for and threaten to go to Ombudsman

BT_company_representative

Hi Mhollins83,

I will be able to help you with your connection as it sound like you have had a bit of frustrating time, trying to get this sorted. Please could you send me in your details using the link found in my profile?

Thanks

Paddy