Disagree with Ombudsman's decision on BT complaint

Stenwold

What would an employee gain by risking their job to fraudulently charge your account? Thinking it's anything other than human error seems absurd.

Mistakes happen, BT apologised and gave you a free month. I'd say that's fair.

jayiwa

Stenwold said:

What would an employee gain by risking their job to fraudulently charge your account? Thinking it's anything other than human error seems absurd.

Mistakes happen, BT apologised and gave you a free month. I'd say that's fair.

Some companies award staff who generate more incomes, e.g. selling more services to customers. If this was the case for BT, staff could be encouraged to hardsell products to customers so that they earn commissions. And that assumption just ties into my situation.

The full story is that a landline service was added to my account during my conversation with them about a broadband problem. During that conversation I didn’t discuss anything about landline issue, so the advisor shouldn’t have the screen prompt for landline services in front of her. At the end of the call I didn’t agree to take any additional service, but magically a new landline service was added. Fraud or not I don’t know, but it’s more absurd not to question how this “human error” occurred.

JamoLew

Sometimes the way "deals" work is that you can get a cheaper package if landline is included with broadband

jayiwa

JamoLew said:

Sometimes the way "deals" work is that you can get a cheaper package if landline is included with broadband

I’m aware of that and my package is already inclusive of both (basic) landline and broadband. The new service added to my account was some fancy features that I didn’t want and will never use (and didn’t ask for). But because it’s a chargeable service, there’s presumable incentive to the advisor to add to my account so that she could earn commissions (?).
The reason I don’t believe it was a human error was because 1) there shouldn’t be a screen prompt in front of her, 2) human error in my definition is an unintentional click of a button, BUT to add a new service to the account requires more than just one click. So, someone seemed to have gone out of her way to bring up the screen and make a few clicks away. It just doesn’t sit well with me as a “human error”.

JamoLew

jayiwa said:

JamoLew said:

Sometimes the way "deals" work is that you can get a cheaper package if landline is included with broadband

The reason I don’t believe it was a human error was because 1) there shouldn’t be a screen prompt in front of her, 2) human error in my definition is an unintentional click of a button, BUT to add a new service to the account requires more than just one click. So, someone seemed to have gone out of her way to bring up the screen and make a few clicks away. It just doesn’t sit well with me as a “human error”.

How do you KNOW this - unless you work for BT, you cannot possibly know what systems they have in place
You've had plenty of advice of how to move forward
I'm out

Stenwold

jayiwa said:

Stenwold said:

What would an employee gain by risking their job to fraudulently charge your account? Thinking it's anything other than human error seems absurd.

Mistakes happen, BT apologised and gave you a free month. I'd say that's fair.

Some companies award staff who generate more incomes, e.g. selling more services to customers. If this was the case for BT, staff could be encouraged to hardsell products to customers so that they earn commissions. And that assumption just ties into my situation.

The full story is that a landline service was added to my account during a my conversation with them about a broadband problem. During that conversation I didn’t discuss anything about landline issue, so the advisor should have the screen prompt for landline services in front of her. At the end of the call I didn’t agree to take any additional service, but magically a new landline service was added. Fraud or not I don’t know, but it’s more absurd not to question how this “human error” occurred.

Giving a hard sell and adding charges to your account fraudulently is not the same thing, and therefore gives no credence to your conspiracy theory.

Do you know for a fact how the BT internal systems work, or is that another assumption?

jayiwa

Stenwold said:

jayiwa said:

Stenwold said:

What would an employee gain by risking their job to fraudulently charge your account? Thinking it's anything other than human error seems absurd.

Mistakes happen, BT apologised and gave you a free month. I'd say that's fair.

Some companies award staff who generate more incomes, e.g. selling more services to customers. If this was the case for BT, staff could be encouraged to hardsell products to customers so that they earn commissions. And that assumption just ties into my situation.

The full story is that a landline service was added to my account during a my conversation with them about a broadband problem. During that conversation I didn’t discuss anything about landline issue, so the advisor should have the screen prompt for landline services in front of her. At the end of the call I didn’t agree to take any additional service, but magically a new landline service was added. Fraud or not I don’t know, but it’s more absurd not to question how this “human error” occurred.

Giving a hard sell and adding charges to your account fraudulently is not the same thing, and therefore gives no credence to your conspiracy theory.

Do you know for a fact how the BT internal systems work, or is that another assumption?

I do. And thanks for your feedback.

iniltous

You don’t say what the ‘landline service’ they added to your account was , and although no doubt certain products are ‘pushed’, it’s hard to see  the commission on a ‘call waiting’ or ‘call diversion’ being anything other than tiny , given the small value of the thing being sold , added to the fact , all call centres to some extent record and monitor the calls , so if someone was just adding services without any regard to what the caller said, then that member of staff is risking their employment on a little commission.

If the arbitration service have reviewed the call, then perhaps whatever it was , was discussed, you declined, but the agent made a mistake , the arbitration service obviously sees it as  nothing more than an error , rather than some corporate plot , or wide scale dishonesty.
As far as your next move, if you feel so strongly about it, see out your minimum term and move to someone else, but TBH, to say I don’t like the independent judgement so how do I go about getting a different judge, is always going to get the type of responses you have had , smacking of sour grapes.
FWIW , if there were a league table of company’s to ‘trust’ in this industry, I dare say the one you want to leave is much better regarded as trustworthy than many if not most....if you are considering a ‘cheap’ provider it may be worth pausing , as they may well be cheap for a reason....BT call centre reps are paid well in comparison to many call centre company’s, so which company’s employees are more likely to ‘bend the rules’ ?

You don’t say how long the rest of your minimum term is, presumably you must have a relatively long period to go , otherwise why wouldn’t you just migrate elsewhere and if that means a little ETC , for the sake of your principles, it would be worth it.

jayiwa

iniltous said:

You don’t say what the ‘landline service’ they added to your account was , and although no doubt certain products are ‘pushed’, it’s hard to see  the commission on a ‘call waiting’ or ‘call diversion’ being anything other than tiny , given the small value of the thing being sold , added to the fact , all call centres to some extent record and monitor the calls , so if someone was just adding services without any regard to what the caller said, then that member of staff is risking their employment on a little commission.

If the arbitration service have reviewed the call, then perhaps whatever it was , was discussed, you declined, but the agent made a mistake , the arbitration service obviously sees it as  nothing more than an error , rather than some corporate plot , or wide scale dishonesty.
As far as your next move, if you feel so strongly about it, see out your minimum term and move to someone else, but TBH, to say I don’t like the independent judgement so how do I go about getting a different judge, is always going to get the type of responses you have had , smacking of sour grapes.
FWIW , if there were a league table of company’s to ‘trust’ in this industry, I dare say the one you want to leave is much better regarded as trustworthy than many if not most....if you are considering a ‘cheap’ provider it may be worth pausing , as they may well be cheap for a reason....BT call centre reps are paid well in comparison to many call centre company’s, so which company’s employees are more likely to ‘bend the rules’ ?

You don’t say how long the rest of your minimum term is, presumably you must have a relatively long period to go , otherwise why wouldn’t you just migrate elsewhere and if that means a little ETC , for the sake of your principles, it would be worth it.

Thanks for the impartial advice and not judging me.
I’m actually surprised to hear from you that BT’s call centre reps are better paid than many others, whilst I found other companies’ call centre reps to be more knowledgeable of their products, albeit more competent in many ways. Hence, I made a statement about accumulated frustrations with BT. This is purely based on my personal experience, which of course would differ from many of you. But I digress. 

My minimum term is sadly a long way (almost 18 months from now), in fact I just renewed the contract a few months before this incident happened. Hence, I was whinging about the possibility to leave early - otherwise, I wouldn’t waste my time taking my chance with Ombudsman and putting myself on this forum for judgement.

Anyway, it seems the unanimous verdict is to accept what I have now and see the contract to end, then take my business elsewhere from this company.

iniltous

TBH, that’s the obvious thing to do, hopefully whoever you do join won’t disappoint you , but there is always the chance it’s out of the frying pan and into the fire, the vast majority if not all of BT  customer facing representatives are U.K. based , something that not all providers offer , and although off shore isn’t a synonym for criminal behaviour, the fact is most people would prefer to deal with UK based reps, as far as the remainder of the minimum term, it’s pretty standard policy , not just BT , but every provider, to insist on the customer to fulfil their side of contract , unless there is something that the company offered that they are not delivering, you are not going to be offered the option to leave penalty free, especially in your case it’s subjective not objective , you state they wilfully charged you for something, they ( and the arbitration service ) say human error....so in the circumstances they and everyone else I would imagine , would say , ‘ETC apply if you want to leave’ , arguably offering you the option to leave penalty free in these circumstances would tacitly be saying they agree with your assessment, which they don’t.