New BT Account - WLR3 - Nightmare! Please Help!!

Scotty1985

Hi Guys,

Please Help!

I moved into my new flat on the 5th April and ordered a BT line to be enabled, there was already a BT socket from previous tennant, it took them 10 days to enable it while telling me only 24 hours.

I am on the new WLR3 system and am now having trouble paying my bill, I set up a monthly payment plan via direct debit which did not go out and I have now received a red letter from BT asking for immediate payment, but when I call BT and wait for over 1 hour on hold they say that there system is not working properly and they cannot take payment! This has been happening for over a week now, I have typed a letter to their complaints dept. and am sending that on monday hope that sorts it, probably not tho.

Wanted to know if anyone on here as had similar trouble, and if so how they resolved it?

Or if there are any BT employees available willing to sort this out for me please?

Either would be much appreceiated

Thanks

Scott

Drunkstar

Scotty1985 wrote: »

I am on the new WLR3 system

*shudders*

Its a nightmare to get to, even the staff dont have shortcuts. I spent 65 mins trying to transfer a customer to the WLR billing last night. Sorry , I cant help you as I dont deal.

Hazzanet

Drunkstar wrote: »

I spent 65 mins trying to transfer a customer to the WLR billing last night.

Forgive my ignorance, but what is WLR billing?

Drunkstar

WLR3 billing I meant. Sorry.

But in case youre not sure on this link may help


What is WLR3?


WLR3 billing is simply the people whos computers are set up to deal with WLR3.

bunking_off

Hazzanet wrote: »

Forgive my ignorance, but what is WLR billing?

Drunkstar's link provides some clues, but still leaves the acronym unexplained so to clarify...

WLR = Wholesale Line Rental - ability of other communications providers to offer you BT lines and bill them as their own.

WLR3 is (obviously) version 3, which is all part of the regulatory settlement that BT agreed with Ofcom to head off any prospect of them being broken up. Essentially, Openreach now operate the copper lines from the local exchange to your house. They treat all CPs, including the downstream BT retail businesses, on an equivalent basis...same products at same price in same time with same quality. The logic is that BT can't leverage their dominance in the end-user connectivity space into the retail telephone space...so by hiving off the bits that need to be heavily regulated (Openreach) it allows them more regulatory freedom in other areas (BT Retail).

So, when BT offer you a home phone service (which strictly is "BT Retail"), rather than the situation to date where they've taken an opaque internal voice telephony service (opaque in the sense that no-one can be sure if they're getting better service/pricing than other CPs) they take the same WLR3 service as any other CP....at least that's the end game but there's a rollout period and we're in the "teething trouble" stage at present.

There's a complicating factor that for a calls service BT Wholesale is involved (they provide the core network), but that's another story...

Scotty1985

I have emailed both ben verwaayen and jill lewis with my issues, hopefully they can sort it out. Ben especially seems to be well liked here.

Any other ideas?

Hazzanet

All is now clear... thank you

reformedspender

Scotty, I'm exactly the same pickle as you are. All I wanted was the name on my bill changed from our landlord's name to mine, but BT have had to put a 'stop' on the line and start it up again. Consequently, we've been without a phone line for two weeks now. I've spent hours and hours on hold (unacceptable in itself) only to be told that they are 'allowed' 10 working days. That should be today, so we'll see if we get connected.

BritBrat

I have emailed both ben verwaayen and jill lewis with my issues, hopefully they can sort it out. Ben especially seems to be well liked here.

Ben is great as for Jill well she should have sex more often.

Scotty1985

Got a reply from Ben - passing it onto high level complaints team - they are now working on getting my phone line active again but they told me last night their systems were locked down!

No reply from Jill

Am gonna call the high level complaints team again this afternoon to hear their latest excuses - paid full bill which I shudnt have to on Sat and now 5 days later still NO LINE!!

I HATE BT!! :mad:

Scotty1985

Just had another call from BT to say, the system error is still there and they are looking into it. :mad: