When is an upgrade not an Upgrade? When it is BT

whatapallaver

Here’s a cracker.
I received an email on 15th July, joyfully informing me that my service had been upgraded on 4 levels. Fab. 3 were of no interest to me, how would the promise to fix my line quicker excite me. The fact that my BT Sport package had been upgraded did pique my interest, however. I already had BT Sport (Lite – they do not tell you that until you check your Account, of course), so I was thoroughly expecting to have been upgraded to a Grown-ups version. Perhaps the full package I had had when I first signed up? Yippee.

So, the kids wanted to watch ManU versus Leicester in the Community Shield. No worries, we’ve upgraded. Not.
Needless to say, having quickly determined that we could not get it on our Sky box, I whipped out the Laptop thinking I could only get it via Live Streaming. A few password changes later (why oh why are they different?) revealed that I needed to spend money to upgrade.

An on-line chat with BT seemed to be going well – “I can upgrade you”. Six quid a month. Nope.

A Complaint – for a misleading advertisement, which was acknowledged by email to say that I needed to call BT. I rang BT on the Monday, and spoke to my “friend” in India – Six quid to upgrade. He could not fix the issue of my not wanting to pay £6 for a match I, and my kids more importantly had missed, but did want to close the Complaint ticket, claiming that the misleading advert via email was a phishing attempt. I have now invested over 2 and a half hours with BT.

Of course I was not about to allow the ticket to be closed – there was an alleged Phishing scam going on here from bt.athome@ecomm.bt.com. Serious stuff, methinks. Sadly there was no reply from BT Phishing, Nothing from the chaser I sent, but I did have a scheduled call from the Monday guy’s boss as promised on Saturday. Still persisting with the story that BT had not sent he email, and still asking for 6 quid. Was also told that the match was available to anyone who wanted it last Sunday. I did not bother to tell him (as I had “my friend”) that I did not have, nor want a BT Vision box – one reason being that I had been previously told I could not have one. That was presumably because I struggled to get 1MB Broadband, before lashing out on Infinity, with the resultant extension of my contract with BT. Still not sure how I could have watched the match, as it was neither available on my Sky Box or my PC, unless in the latter case I signed up to some website that promised everything for free. Perhaps that is what BT thinks I should do?

Anyway, after 2 attempts to forward the misleading email to him (he obviously does not have the patience the rest of us has come to live with using BT Yahoo), we then had an amusing debate about what the actual email was informing me about (BT are now accepting that this was sent by them, a fact that appears to still be eluding BT Phishing). The Boss is now telling me that this email is not actually announcing an Upgrade to my package, but that, in view of the fact that BT had recently increased its prices, they felt that they should tell us all that they are spending it wisely. I have now wasted over 4 hours to discover that BT are going to televise a few extra Football matches, that I will not be able to watch.

I am also, obviously an idiot. An idiot for thinking that BT would be faintly interested in the fact that an email they send out saying that they have made 4 Upgrades to my Account could possibly be of any value to me.

Until recently (a week last Sunday in actual fact) I was against Openreach being split out from BT. Being of a certain age, I guess I was prejudiced into thinking that a former Public utility now in the private sector should be allowed to operate intact. After this experience, not only will I move away from BT just as soon as I can, I for one will happily see BT broken up. It is what it deserves after this latest in what has never been an entirely happy customer experience.
:mad: