BT Broadband Warning: Incompetent and Contemptuous

E_Bob

A warning for anyone considering BT Broadband:

We have had a contract with BT Business for many years for our home telephone and broadband. In September 2025 I applied to switch to “full fibre” broadband, which I was told was available for my property.

6 months later and after about 4 visits from different engineers, and 2 missed appointments, we are still waiting for the service to be installed. Each time an engineer attends, we are told that further work needs to be done before the fibre can be installed, but that work never seems to get done. We have been given a succession of dates for completion of our order, all of them unmet. The incompetence is breathtaking.

(On one of the appointments, their installation engineer caused damage to the brickwork of our period house by careless and incompetent drilling.)

In the meantime, without reason or warning, BT have cut off our telephone and broadband completely and we now have no service (even though we are paying for it).

Despite my complaints, which have been “escalated” to a “Chairman & CEO Business Complaints Specialist”, BT disgracefully refuse to do anything at all to provide a solution and we are left without any telephone or broadband.

flaneurs_lobster

To confirm, you have a business contract with BT Business for phone and broadband services? How long has the contract left to run?

The terms for business contracts differ considerably from those for domestic services (as do the protections given under consumer and other laws) so there may be fewer options available for redress before legal proceedings might be appropriate.

What were the reasons given for the delay to installing (I assume) Full Fibre to your premises?

Define "damage to the brickwork", pretty hard to put a cable through a brick wall without drilling a hole.

Yorkshire_Pud

I think it will be Openreach who have to do all the drilling and wiring to the property not BT. I’ve had my own full fibre nightmare with plusnet and openreach. It took five months to get the ff installed. Openreach are uncontactable by the consumer and the provider have ‘tiers’ or as I call them tears of engagement with OR whereby they cannot contact a human to sort a problem unless it gets elevated to tier two or three which takes time. Openreach as an organisation cannot communicate effectively with the provider or consumer, neither do they care if they do or not because there’s always simpler jobs to be getting on with.

I went to the comps ombudsman and they upheld Plusnet refusal to pay auto (lol) compensation after my five month delay. If you look at the CO Trustpilot reviews you can see how well they don’t do. They seem to be an industry stooge. All very depressing and frustrating.

There isn’t effective Government regulation of this industry and when the full fibre infrastructure is eventually in place I expect all the companies will be jacking up prices to unaffordable levels a la water industry.

Yorkshire_Pud

Also when OR did install they drilled the 12mm hole through the wall from inside, makes sense for location of internal box but pushed hard and managed to bust off a biggish chunk of stone from the period external facade even though his supervisor was outside and could have said ok slow down I can just see the drill tip coming through and then drilled from outside for the final little bit. He ended up installing the external box over the broken hole (looked like it had been shelled).

26BlackCats

Yes, I agree BT are incompetent and contemptuous. I have had weeks of problems due to a planned upgrade to fibre. The installation of the FTTP box was done on the date, the installer was good and competent. But the service didn't work. His mate who was working round the corner came to check the installation, which was confirmed as good. 10 days, 3 engineers and 2 new BT hubs later, the service was declared unfixable and the account closed (or so I thought!). To cut a long story short, an EE router on a new account finally worked with no further engineer visits. That took nearly 3 weeks to achieve.

Cleaning up the mess with accounts is currently ongoing e.g. I have received escalating communications from BT, for the a/c they closed, to pay a bill for a service I don't have. Apparently within that I was charged a) for BT sending the mobile mini-hub they provided after nearly a week of no broadband or WiFi b) for cancellation of the account they closed because the service couldn't be fixed. Everything I was told was reversed 5 mins later e.g. only a soft credit check for the new service, this was false and I have had 2 credit checks, one from BT and one from EE within a week. I could go on and on.

I'm currently fighting for compensation: for time wasted having to wait in, on long phone calls (1.5 hours was the record), the credit checks, wrong bills, inconvenience and stress of the whole encounter. I missed a call yesterday to discuss this so I was hopeful. However today a woman I spoke to said they don't do this. I'm completely underwhelmed by the care shown with regards to the impact that BT have on customers' lives.