No Broadband for 22 days

Dear BT Complaints

At least your website has given me some “mental therapy” in knowing I am not alone; when trying to contact BT and explain issues, you can end up feeling totally alone and not knowing where to turn or how to deal with the stress invoked by hours of trying to communicate with multiple, faceless call centre operatives based in India.

You can’t even shout at the individual people as they know nothing of your problem and are not personally responsible. The following is the text of my e-mail communication to BT. Pending the scheduled engineer visit on 15th February, I still have no broadband service in my new home and, hence, cannot live there.

“My complaint is to do with the level of customer service received from BT and the fact I have had no broadband now for 22 days and counting, due to a BT employee error.

Timeline of events:

1. My new Total Broadband service was activated on 6th January & I was very happy with it.

2. On or around 18th January, someone called Hussain 'from BT' telephoned to advise me I was being given free evening & weekend calls. I said I already had this as part of my BT package, but he said I definitely did not & he would sign me up for it.

3. On 23rd January, I noticed the broadband light on the hub had turned amber & initially thought this was a technical 'blip'. I left it overnight.

4. 24th January when I was due to work from home, I got up early to check the internet connection & found it still not working. I then spent the whole morning on the phone to various BT employees who initially told me I had cancelled my own contract & they would charge me over £200 for doing this.

After being passed around several departments, the Order Management team confirmed a BT employee had cancelled the contract in error, putting through the package for free weekend/evening calls which I indeed already had. They said despite it taking 5 seconds to push the cancel button, it would take 5 working days to reactivate the account. When I explained none of this was my fault and I relied on my connection for work, I received a call back to say the activation would be fast-tracked and reactivated within 48 hours.

Meanwhile, I lost an entire day at work and had to subsequently work on my day off to make up for it. I also had to relocate from my home to an alternative location, at my own expense, in order to continue working from the next day onwards. Despite the assurance my order would be fast-tracked, my connection was not reactivated until the full 5 days at midnight on 31st January.

5. 1st February I received an email informing me the broadband was reactivated but I could not risk being unable to work, so did not travel back home until 7th February. On return, I found no change to my hub status & it was not possible to connect to the internet. I spent a further 2 hours on the phone to different BT call centre operatives, who told me they had no reference to my previous issues because their notes were archived after 5 days.

I therefore had to go through the whole sorry story again, before being told I would need to be sent a new hub, which would take 2-3 days to arrive. I explained it would have to be sent to an alternative address as I would have to travel away from home again in order to continue working. I spent at least 15 minutes going through the alternative delivery details with the operative who repeated everything back to me twice, having obtained permission to do this from his supervisor.

6. On the same day, I also spoke to the billing services department to ensure I would not be charged the cancellation fee and that I would receive a rebate for the period of service unavailable. I also stated I wished to make a complaint as I did not consider a simple rebate for days when broadband was unavailable was acceptable. I was given a reference number VOL01141504721 & told someone would contact me within 7 working days regarding the complaint. To date, I have heard nothing.

7. For the next few days, I worked from the alternative location and awaited delivery of the replacement hub. This did not arrive, but I did receive an email confirming the order was completed. However, the mail quoted the original home address. Thus, my instructions were ignored and the package delivered to an address where I knew I would not be present due to lack of internet. By pure good chance, gardeners were present at the time of delivery and put the packages somewhere safe.

8. To try and resolve the BT problems, I cancelled a flight that was non-refundable in order to return home and arrived on Sunday 15th February. I installed the new hub, but the result was no different to all the above trials. I spent a further hour on the phone to various BT employees, being escalated to 'Priority Care'.

After a repeat of diagnostic tests, most of which I had already done with the first person & one of which involved unscrewing the phone socket box from the wall (!!), it was decided an engineer would need to be called. An appointment was booked for Wednesday, 18th Feb and I will have to take a second day off work to travel back and be there for the appointment, which should take place between 1pm and 6pm.

9. To date, I have had to make four separate round trips of 136 miles (544 miles) with the associated petrol costs and four toll charges (£24). My cancelled flights totalled £60. I've taken two days off work, been forced to continue paying £23 per month to O2 for a broadband connection that does work, despite having moved in December; have endured countless hours of telephone calls to BT, all thanks to the mistake of one BT employee.

I am now at the end of my tether, still do not have broadband working and am fast losing patience with BT as a service provider. Very soon I will be reliant on BT 100% and this experience does not leave me with any confidence I should continue to receive services from them.

10. As stated in my telephone complaint which has been 100% ignored, in addition to a fully working telephone and broadband service, I expect BT to make suitable reparation and compensation to me for the appalling and unacceptable service I have been subjected to, causing considerable inconvenience and stress to me personally, all based on factors totally outside my control.

11. I look forward to hearing your response.”

Best regards,
Alison

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BT Customer Services Department Complaint

Dear BT Complaints, I'd like to share with you my compaint about BT customer services department and my complaint is as follows:

I paid £130 for line connection this was done with no test to the line as if it had it would have found a fault on the line. I had dial tone but broadband was .56 of a Mbit!

I telephoned on the 7th of feb and after going through all the scrips and checks I was told after approx a hour that there was a fault on the line and that the technical desk would ring me on the 8th of feb at five o'clock this never happened.

I rang them and waited 15 minutes to speak to someone when I did get through we started to through the same script and checks as the night before, I was told to take the front plate off which meant we would be cut off when this happened I was called back but each time I answered I was cut off at this stage I lost all hope in getting help.

Questions:

1. If you could not get through to me on landline why not try mobile which he had.
2. Why was the line not checked when connected I did wait in house all day for this to happen.
3. I paid £130 for this connection which is not to the standard expected.

If you can not provide the service that is expected I will cancel all services with Bt and use an alternative provider who can provide the service required.

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No Broadband For 19 Days

Dear BT Complaints, I can honestly say that my recent experience of BT Broadband Technical Support has been the worst Customer Service experience of my whole life! This is a potted version of events.

1. I lost my BT Broadband service on Friday 13th January.
2. The service was eventually restored on Thursday 2nd Feb.
3. I made over a dozen calls from to BT’s Broadband Technical Support.
4. I was eventually contacted by nice man in BT’s Leeds 161 office who got things moving.
5. The key issue was that during the process, ‘someone’ cancelled my broadband account, which meant the local engineer could not change the faulty part, even though he knew it was faulty!
6. This issue was known to me on 16th Jan when I was called by an engineer who was at the local exchange, poised and ready to fix my problem. So, I asked him to restore the broadband service to my number, only to be told that I had to do it. (WHY I hear you ask!??)
7. So I rang broadband support on 16th Jan and asked for it to be done.
8. Rang again and again during the week.
9. At some point my problem was escalated to ‘level 2’ support, which sounds promising but still didn’t get anything done.
10. On 23rd Jan I am rung again from the local exchange to be told there is still no broadband service on the number.
11. I ring broadband technical support again, explain the problem, ask them to reinstate the broadband service, and get very angry.
12. I repeat this process for the next four to five days.
13. I am contacted by the Leeds band of BT guardian angels who take me under their wing.
14. Thursday 2nd Feb, and we are finally back online!

Summary of BT Failings

1. They terminated my broadband service so that the fault would not interfere with the land line service. However, I have another landline which we use almost exclusively for voice, and the original broadband fault caused me minimal disruption because it was cured by simply rebooting the router. So, they took away my broadband altogether to give me a voice service that I didn’t need! Nice one!
   
2. BT’s Broadband Technical support desk is manned by very well meaning people. However, they do not speak directly to the local broadband engineers and have to rely on notes left on the fault log. This means that I usually knew more about the problem than they did. They also did not seem to grasp that the problem was because the broadband service needed to be restored to my line. (Unless they did know, but didn’t want to tell me that I had been put into a long queue of people waiting for the same thing to be done, or maybe even behind setting up new customers’ accounts??)
   
3. Each time you call the helpdesk you have to go through:
   Select the options.
   Listen to someone telling me to try rebooting my router.
   Security questions.
   Re-explain the problem.
   And then, after I became a ‘level 2’ issue,
   Hold while transferred to ‘level 2’, followed by:
   Security questions.
   Re-explain the problem.
   
4. This can easily take 20 mins and several cycles through the ‘eine kleine nachtmusik’. 

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Voicemail Stopped Working

Dear BT Complaints, last December I moved my phone billing back to BT to take advantage of their pre-payment discount and fixed monthly all-in tariff together with services such as the 1571 voicemail facility which I already had with previous company.

About a month ago 1571 stopped working. Callers get the message that it is not "enabled". I get the message that I am "not subscribed to the service" despite confirmation from BT and the last 2 call centre "engineers" saying they understood the problem which would be fixed in "3 working days"

31st January came and went with no fix; as has today (6th.February).

I need the 1571 service as I often fail the hear the phone and bought a new BT phone with a 1571 button that flashes if a message has been left.

I can't face another wait to get through to BT Customer Services on 0800 800 151 only to have to restate my problem and be given another date when it will be fixed.

Help!

Mike Perrett

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BT Infinity - Super Fast Broadband Complaint

Here's a recent BT complaint sent in about BT's super fast broadband service BT Infinity. 

Dear sirs,

At the beginning of January a letter from BT came through my door stating that BT infinity superfast broadband had arrived in my area!! As the normal broadband speed is very slow ( 1-2 mb ) in my area I was excited to think that super fast broadband was coming!! The lady on the phone said yes I could have it and my speed would increase to 21.9mb. I was delighted with this news and signed up for BT infinity.

The engineer called on the 18th of January to connect BT infinity but could not get the speed I was told! He said the overhead lines to my house were badly degraded and need sorting out! He did not have the skills to climb poles and fix this so he said he would tell control and another engineer would call to sort the overhead lines.

On the 2nd of February another engineer called but had no idea about sorting the overhead lines and thought he was just doing a standard installation, needless to say he could not achieve the promised speed and left my house leaving behind a second hub box? Wires and mess and no working broadband at all!! After about an hour of telephone calls to BT I have been told that BT have no intention of sorting out the degraded overhead lines and I would only be able to have a max speed of 12mb!! I have cancelled BT infinity as I am not paying for super fast broadband that is slower than standard broadband!!

I still have no working broadband and after another hour long conversation I have been told an engineer will call to my house in the next 24 hours to sort this!

I am appalled at the very poor service from BT and can inform you that at least 6 potential customers in my village will not be signing up for BT infinity as I have told them about lack of care and interest shown by BT. I have also put a warning on the village website advising potential customers of BT not to bother!

I doubt I will get any response from " customer services " as nobody seems to care. Now I have informed you of this I take you will not be offering BT infinity in this area or if you do customers will be told before they sign up that super fast broadband is very slow broadband and is not worth the extra money!!

A very upset and disillusioned customer.

Karl Oxley

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Switched Telephone and Broadband Provider - Not Good!

An angry customer who switched telephone and broadband provider to join BT complains about pretty much everything! Not a good case study for anyone thinking about switching to BT services.  

Dear BT

I‘m writing to tell you the tale of woe that your company has brought upon myself and my partner. I will quickly go through the whole experience has it happened:

Had a phone call from a BT sales adviser in October 2010, he asked me what I was currently paying my Sky and Virgin packages and worked it out that BT would be cheaper and my phone bill would work out a lot cheaper. I explained that I currently pay between £25 to £35 on my monthly phone bill for Virgin which includes the broadband.

He convinced me to buy the whole BT package, BT Vision, Internet, Phone and WiFi, even said we didn’t have to do anything because BT would take care of everything. Sounded like a good deal? He said it would take a couple of days to reconnect us at a minimum cost, I mentioned at the time that we had already got all the BT connection already around the house. Then it would take a few weeks to get the TV and Internet sorted and that BT would contact us. Again I asked if we needed to do anything and the answer was no BT would take care of cancelling all the other contacts.

BT customer services did get in touch with us within a couple of days and Tracey my partner arranged for them to come and do the reconnection. When he came it took him 5 minuets to do the reconnecting if that.
We then were still waiting for someone to ring about the TV and Internet, then the first bill came £127 reconnection fee and 3 months upfront payment on the unlimited anytime plan at £55.80. (nobody ever mentioned this and £127 for 5 minutes work, ridiculous!!)

I then made contact with your call centre abroad somewhere, and got nowhere trying to explain what had happened to a Asian guy on the phone who in the end advised me to write a letter of complaint. That was in December.

Throughout Christmas and the New Year and January still no word or call from BT regarding TV and internet.
Get another bill from BT for £56.02. Worked out the monthly average at £44.8, which is way over the costs we had which Virgin which included the broadband.

Ear ache from my partner eventually made me ring your phone call centre again this week, explained in detail the whole story, at one point I thought the guy from the call centre had nodded off because of the long pause, but he said he couldn’t do anything and would ask his supervisor to ring back within the hour ( I rung at 5-15pm ). I waited until 10-45pm last night before giving up and going to bed.

Lastly and not least, we were promised that BT would contact Virgin and sort out the phone, WELL YOU DIDN’T and we have still the standing order going off our bank account.


Can someone please give me an explanation on what’s going on, I feel sick on going back to BT, this has already cost me over £150 extra in payments than just keeping everything as it was. Your call centre is inefficient and the people don’t know how to deal with conflict, and you have salesman that tell customers a pack of lie’s!

Yours Sincerely, A very disgruntled customer

Andy Hallas

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Broadband Complaint and Compensation Claim

Here is another BT broadband complaint about troubles switching broadband provider and refund requested.

Dear Sirs

I recently moved my personal phone and broad band services form BT to Sky - due to huge cost savings available. Shortly afterwards a BT sales person contacted me to ensure that BT kept by business lines and Broadband with BT. He offered to reduce my broad band costs from £95 per quarter to £30 per quarter . I agreed to this and an order was set up.

The sales person insisted however that I needed to move by broadband from line 01452xxxxxx to another line of 01452xxxxxxx. As we have 2 lines with this number I asked which line our IT support people should use for connecting the ADSL router. he informed me either lines will work.

The work was scheduled for 19/01/2012. I booked our support company AL Networks to carry out the changeover in our offices on that date. BT then wrote the day before to cancel this date and gave me a new date of 24/01/2012. I rebooked AL Networks to attend on the 25th to carry out the network changes, router set up , new passwords, software etc (as per BT correspondences).

On the 25th, Al Networks attended. After an hour, they were struggling to access internet services given all the details that BT had provided and concluded that the ADSL line could not be working. On contacting BT , I was told that the order was live but not yet actioned. I then received a call back after around 30 minutes to say that the lines 01452xxxxxxx were not compatible with broad band. As my son in law is a BT broadband specialist I queried this with him. He confirmed within 10 minutes that the lines were fine for broadband. Further calls to and from BT disclosed the fact that I did not need to change lines at all and that I had been sold a limited usage broad band service - all this despite the fact that this is a business account.

Finally BT Reading called and confirmed that I should switch back to my old number to get broad band as the old line had not yet been turned off. He confirmed that it was not being turned off. Once Al Networks had reconfigured everything to the original set up we were able to start working again now that our broad band was working. Harminder confirmed that he could offer me a new price of £54 per quarter for broad band which I accepted at this time just to get the broad band working.

My complaint covers the fact that I was approached by BT to sign up for a new contract at lower price. The result has been that I now have to pay for 2 hours on site for Al Networking (£75/hr plus callout fee = total £225) just because BT is a disorganised shambles. We lost 2 hours of work (we are an on line retailer) which equated to around £500 of lost sales. Further we are now paying £24 per month more than quoted by BT for broad band per quarter. Over 2 years (the contract length this will cost me an additional £192.00. Finally my own time of 2 hours that would have been charged out at £75 per hour = £150

My total out of pocket costs for BT's inability to organise themselves is £1067.00 plus Vat.

At this time I would ask you to put me in funds to this value either by cheque or credit to our account. Failure to respond to this request or e-mail will result in an invoice being issued. Failure to pay within a reasonable time or to acknowledge the the invoice will result in the debt being handed over for collection.

The whole episode shows how poorly organised BT is.

I look forward to an immediate response.

Kind Regards
Vivian Blick

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BT - What don't you understand? My house burnt down!

This BT customer services complaint clearly highlights the fact that BT do not listen to their customers. This poor customer had their house burnt down so on top of the stress and worry of this, they had BT to contend with! Here is their complaint.

Dear BTcomplaint.com

On January 1st 2012 my house unfortunately burnt down. As soon as the Bank Holiday was over, I contacted BT and explained the situation. I asked for the phone line and broadband package to be set up in the rental accommodation I moved to. I explained that I needed to be able to communicate with a range of people involved in.insuring my home.

The woman I spoke to said that I was on the wrong package and that if I agreed to take BT Vision I would not incur any charges, although I was changing the contract. I was extremely stressed and distressed at this point and when I realised that BT Vision was not for me – I don’t watch that amount of TV to justify it, I telephoned BT the day after and said that I wished to cancel the BT Vision package and that I was thinking of moving to another, cheaper provider.

The operative I spoke to said that inn that case I would be charged £160 cancellation fee because I would be cancelling my original contract. Because I really could not afford this, I agreed to stay with BT. The operative told me that the original order for the phone and Broadband package, due to be installed on Jan. 18th would be cancelled and they gave me a new date – 23rd. January.

On January 18th the cancelled order appeared to have been filled as the phone line was working with the number the operative had given me and a home hub was delivered. Unfortunately, the Broadband would not connect. We contacted the helpline, which I believe is located in India. They allegedly made several checks on the line and assured us that the Broadband would be working within 48 hours – needless to say it wasn’t. We were then bombarded with texts to say a home hub would be delivered on the 23rd and that an engineer would call.

We waited AGAIN and on the 23rd. an engineer did in fact arrive, as did a second home hub (which I expect I have been charged again for) It then transpired that the number we had been given by BT and which was working, was in fact incorrect. We were then given another number (Of course we had advised everyone of the number we were first given). Eventually, 2 hours after the engineers visit, we were connected to Broadband.

Today, when I visited the remains of my gutted home, I found a letter from BT welcoming the new occupier!

This is after repeatedly telling BT that the house is inhabitable! BTs advertising campaign says ‘It’s good to talk’ – perhaps they should try to LISTEN a little more.

Mrs. J.W. Granger

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Complaint to BT - Moving House - No Broadband!

Yet another broadband BT customer services complaint about problems moving house. Why can't BT do the simple things right!

Dear BTcomplaint.com

Last month we telephoned BT to let them know we would be moving house on the 21st December 2011. We wished to continue using the services of BT at our new address. The lady on the end of the telephone assured us that everything would be fine. We would receive an email confirming as much. She explained the email would not mention Broadband but not to worry as she would sort that separately. We were given a date in January for an engineer to come tour new address and connect us.

The original date was cancelled, we were given a new later date of 11th January 2012, for an engineer to come out.

We were sent a BT message by text prior to 11th Jan telling us, the engineer appointment was cancelled as our phone line was now working. It was NOT working, so I had to re-instate the engineers appointment.

On the 11th, the engineer came out (a pleasant young man), he went to sort out the green phone box on our estate I believe, then about an hour later he came back and our telephone was working. I asked about our Broadband Internet connection, he said he didn't do that but it would just come on now the line was connected. However the Internet connection was not working. We received a message to say the Internet would start working after midnight. We waited up it did not.

The next day my husband telephoned BT, BT told us they do not do BT in the area! Bizarre as our old address is just 50yards away. We had BT Broadband there no problem. (We thought the problem here might be that our new house is a new build.) However our neighbours have had no problems.

So we decided to telephone SKY and see if they could off or us broadband.Sky told us our landline was with TalkTalk and not BT, even though a BT had recently visited the house to set up out BT phone line. Sky said it was definitely TalkTalk (we have never had any dealings with TalkTalk and have never even approached them) so be told that was bizarre.

On a separate note I have appeared to make contacting BT sound easy, when it was not. It involved lenghty waiting, being put on hold, transferred and being told to dial other numbers. As I write this apparently the people we need to speak to are not open until Monday!

We are still without Internet.We do have a line, but goodness knows who it's with. The most annoying thing is we have no person/point of contact at BT who we can speak to sort it out. No one at BT who we can speak to to sort it out. No one at BT so far will take up our issue so we're passed from pillar to post!

You will agree we have not received to date good service. Please would you contact us with regard to this matter asap. We are still without Broadband. We have a land line that BT connected but no idea who it is with.

Yours faithfully
Rachel Akathiotis

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