The best way of complaining about BT and BT Openreach's constant failures

Danio

Hello MSE,

I've read these forums quite a lot but never posted. Now I'm struggling with BT and BT Openreach and currently have an on going eight page word document with the many things hey have done wrong and could really do with your advice.

I could go into vast amounts of detail on here, including minor failings such as not returning promised phone calls and giving incorrect information but I'll go with a general outline of what's happened. I have dates, times etc. all logged but I won't write every detail here either. Apologies if I leave out any detail that you need to advise, let me know and I'll reply.

Myself and my partner are previous customers of BT and have been for some years and happily so. We decided to move house earlier this year to a new build and moved on the 1st July. Everything was arranged in advance for our service to be transferred though we were made aware that a pole would need to be erected to transfer the connection and phone line from one side of the road, to the other where the new build houses are. But all this should have been fine as we were given a date for it to be put on and an additional date for an engineer to call to connect our phone line and broad band.

This of course, never happened. On the date the pole was supposed to be put up, no one turned up. Calling BT we were put though to call centres in India, spoke to a different person each time who always insisted that the work had been done. Multiple dates have been given over and over since then yet nothing ever happens. Blame has mostly been placed on BT Openreach who do in fact seem quite useless in the way they communicate between departments.

We have had more engineers turn up from BT Openreach who stated that they can't do anything as BT Openreach haven't yet put the pole up. We have been given so many dates for when work is supposed to be complete but then nothing has been actioned. There is now a named person from BT trying to chase things for us though in all honesty she has achieved nothing. During the first month of phone calls, the call centres in India consistently lied to us as we later found out from our named contact that after each phone call to the Indian call centres, the complaint was closed as "resolved".

It's over two months now that this has been going on (longer as our land lord had started the process and arranged for this pole to be put up far prior to us moving in). It's caused us a lot of stress as I rely on the internet for my work and I'm not always able to get to an office. I've sat in McDonalds for hours trying to get work done.

Our contact at BT has promised us compensation when everything has been resolved. I'm starting to wonder if this will ever be resolved so should I do something now? Ofcom just said "keep dealing with BT".

Is there more that I could be doing? Should I send off my complaint letter now or wait? Who should I complain to?

Any advice really appreciated.

LazyTyper

Sounds like a nightmare.

I should point out as well that Openreach and BT (Retail) are completely separate entities, although both part of BT Group. They have to treat each other as separate companies (BT is essentially a customer of Openreach).

Have you raised a formal complaint with BT?

If not, check out http://www.btplc.com/thegroup/RegulatoryandPublicaffairs/Codeofpractice/

If after 8 weeks it is still not resolved, you can take it to an ombudsman (CISAS or Ombudsman Services: Communications, depending which BT is a member of).

Hopefully with a formal complaint open things will get resolved soon.

Uxb

One point.
have you ordered a business grade tarrif line as you are 'relying on it for business'.
Reason being...
If it is a domestic line then BTOR will in effect 'do their best' which might indeed be quite some time while a business line comes with various SLA's depending on the service level taken up detailing exactly how long BT have to fix a fault/issue.

Retrogamer

In terms of compensation or recompense you may have some come back to BT Retail who you pay for your services. Loss of being able to work won't carry any weight though unless you have a contract specifically to cover business use. Even then, there is a maximum liability amount tied up in the T&C's of most contracts.

The problem with chasing this up, is BT Retail (mostly overseas support) will tell BT Wholesale (mostly overseas support) who will tell Openreach (mostly overseas support) who will instruct the engineers in the UK what needs to be done.
Where as if you have an LLU provider with good support, they can chase Openreach directly.

Raise the issue with ISPA and if they can't resolve the issue still raise it another two times with them. On the third complaint if they still can't resolve it you can request a deadlock letter which allows you to Escalate the matter to CISAS where it's usually given a higher priority in the stack of complaints