At the time of writing there are already some 75 posts on this topic. The majority of these mutually support the proposition that BT provides an inadequate broadband service, offers appalling customer service and is virtually un-contactable, except by means of an Indian call centre that appears to be staffed by the technically and commercially incompetent. Additionally we all hate all of the waiting EVERY time a call is made to BT. That strange "Is it a man or a woman making the pre-recorded announcements?" is clearly designed to annoy me personally! "We are very busy at the moment" is pure arrogance. My response is, "I'm the customer and I'm paying for better service than this."

I wonder how it is possible to get the message across to BT senior management, including the clown that got himself profiled in last weekend's 'Mail on Sunday', as well as toothless Otelo, that payment of the monthly service fee must mean that BT provide users with an adequate broadband service at consistent speeds, an acceptable level of customer service and that the current arrangements are totally unacceptable.

I changed on Dec 6 from BT Yahoo unlimited at £26.98 p.m. to BT Total Broadband Option 3 at £19.99 p.m. for one year. Anything that could go wrong went wrong and soon after I began to rue my decision to stay with BT, mainly to get the home hub for free and then cheap internet calls. It just goes to show there's no such thing as a free lunch.

My brother who is disabled and cannot speak has been left without a telephone line now for over 60 hours. On 23/2/08 BT wrote to say someone wanted to take over number etc and after 6 hours on phone on several occasions I was assured that this would no longer happen. Then on 12/3/08 low and behold the line was disconnected and despite 3 hours on the phone with various people , after 60 hours of disconnection I am no nearer having the line reconnected.

I was promised a phone call back with 4 hours today and yes I did get the phone call but as she was about to transfer me to someone else who could help the line went dead so I still have not spoken to anyone who can help. I myself am disabled and we need the telephone line to keep in contact and for him to dial me and use his speech machine to tell me of any problems and then I can arrange for a doctor or tradesperson to call on him.

The stress of this is making me quite ill, I am in such a state in case he has a fall or something more serious happens and he cannot get assistance. I understand the need for these call centres and in countries where they are more economical to operate , but it must be so difficult for these operators , I have become so upset during the calls because getting my message across is so difficult and apparently managers do not start before midday. I would welcome any suggestions of how to get satisfaction from BT.

I would suggest that you go to Money Claim online and issue a County Court Summons.

This is the only way to get BT to do anything.

Ringing them on the phone is a waste of time

Let a judge decide trust me

Today I received an interesting email which I would like to share with everyone regarding BT Complaints. This is also on my BT Complaints website where you can find resources to help with your complaint and also submit a complaint that will go into a report for investigation.

"I recently visited your very impressive BT complaint website. I thought I would offer you the option of sharing a little gem that I recently came across in the fight against BT and their ‘Call Centre of Death’.

Without going in to massive detail I was the victim of a spectacular and sadly all too common BT *** up. The resultant billing error was so ridiculous that I was barely able to comprehend the stupidity required to make this error in the first instance, let alone comprehend a solution.

It was then that my brainwave struck me…Instead of even picking up the phone I decided to write; not to complain about stupidity but instead to approach the problem from a more interesting angle…Fraud!

I was obviously aware that the origins of my billing error were not related to fraud or criminal activity; naturally it came down to the hopeless attitude that a BT Goblin in the ‘Call Centre of Death’ had demonstrated to me months earlier. However, it was precisely the inefficiency as displayed by the ‘Call Centre of Death’ that made me try my alternative solution.

I sent a letter by recorded mail that simply stated that my account had been fraudulently accessed and my BT account had been amended possibly for a criminal purpose. I further stated that this ‘criminal’ activity had resulted in the compromise of my personal data and that I wanted a full investigation in to the matter. As an add on, I mentioned that my quarterly bill was also incorrect and I trusted once a full investigation in to the suspected fraud was done my bill would be amended accordingly.

The results were interesting, I received a call three days later from a lady stating she was in the presidents office at BT. She informed me that I could sleep easy, it was not fraud, but in fact had been employee error that had caused the problem. (No Sh*t!) She refunded my bill and gave me three months free line rental, also saying that my future bills would reflect my ‘line rental only’ option.

I was delighted by this until last week, when I received a promotional letter that effectively stated my account was still set up on the incorrect price plan …. Another letter complaining of suspected fraud (attached) has now been issued and I await the response with baited breath.

The moral of the story as far as I can see is that if everyone with a billing error wrote and made a complaint of fraud / illegal activity BT have a much greater obligation to investigate and get it right. In my case this has been far more efficient that having to queue on the phone for over two hours to then be frustrated by further call centre incompetence.

I have a small but dedicated Facebook group imaginatively entitled ‘BT Are Rubbish’ where I *** about these things as they occur. Feel free to look us up / join or use any material you find on there!

ME AND MY WIFE WILL BE JOINING FACEBOOK AS SOON AS WE CAN GET BROADBAND!!

You can be sure il be joining your group lmao!!

WOW ive been a member for around 6 long months(not for the others not me lol) and have never seen a topic with so many views even more i think then the hastings direct cancelation rip off which is the reason i ended up joining this site.

i didnt even know this subject existed ,it started over 18mths ago so WELL DONE to whoever started it!!

Im currently in the middle of debating whether to report bt to every single consumer magazine,paper colum ,tv program i.e watchdog and to very relevant authority that regulates them,i may have to report them for attempted theft if it doesnt get anywhere,sadly because bts main service comes from india we are *** for being able to go down to the call centre and cause so much stress to the customer complaints team that they all resign on the spot!!

Right well it all started at chrtistmas when b.t legally threatend to cut us off as we hadnt paid our quarterly bill YET,we normally get the bill in say 3rd sept then pay up by the time the next bill is due in say 2-3 monthly payments depending on the bill value and what other running a house costs came up,BT NEVER HAD A PROBLEM with this and even brought it the quartley charge that recognises you dont pay by direct debit,it got to about 2 weeks before the next bill was due to come out 3rd december and we still had one payday 25th november which we planned to pay off the final amount due before decembers bill came in.

Recieved a letter from bt saying we are gonna cut you off unless you pay up now which we couldnt as we dont get paid untill 25th of every month,rang the india call centre who were very polite(at this stage they always are )and said we can pay the last payment on the bill due by direct debit and then we dont get cut off then we can cancel and go back to the way we pay and get charged more for the privelage of not having your money grabbed by them every month.

All well and good now at this point ,recieved next bill 3rd december and paid like we normally do.

Here comes the reason why bt why and will always be THE WORSE EVER FOR CS.

Recieved 3rd march bill and to my amazement bt had re setup illegally our account to direct debit quarterly or something and the letter stated THANK YOU for paying by direct debit(we never agreed to this) and that your bill of £140 quartley will be collected by direct debit 15th march ,

it took me 5 minutes to get over the shock of finding out that b.t had illegally re set up a direct debit without ever informing us or getting us to sign a direct debit mandate or complete a telephone sign up.

Took me another 5 to realise if we had not recieved the bill,as some go missing,then me and my wife wouldnt have found out they had done this untill she tried to draw cash or checked her online account and find we had gone over drawn and had been charged £50 by abbey for goign overdrawn and for the processing the actual direct debit that would have caused this.

We had recieved the false letter saying thank you for signing to dd and your bill will be collected shortly,again we never ever agreed to pay by direct debit in one go and never will do even for splitting the bill over the 2-3 payments before we get the next bill

Got straight to india call centre last thursday who basically tried to fob me off and say nope we couldnt pay the way we normally pay and that all they could do was delay the bill till 25th march when we next get paid,after about 30minutes of making complaint legal wrangling(it felt like i was in a courtroom on call)said couldnt afford it and made the offer to pay how we normally pay,the guy in india apologised for the illegal set up and confirmed to me the dd instruction was cancelled and the letter has been recieved by me to confirm this,but he still insisted we had to pay by 25th of march(the listening skills of indian call centres are appalling in the extreme).

It took a complaint to the person higher than him who didnt ring me back on saturday as promised,and then a call back by me on saturday last to eventually resolve this and now we are back down the normal route of paying the bill by last pay day 25th before the next bill due on 3rd june.

Thats a wrap for the complaint.

But im still considering ethier going down the compensation route to bt for time wasting and illegally setting up of a direct debit or do i PUBLICLY NAME AND SHAME THEM INSTEAD OF ON HERE.

Answers on a posting please??

i do apologise if it was too long winded to bother reading it all.

Hi there. You are not alone rest assured!
On my BT Complaints webpage I have had literally 100's of BT Complaints

Its a good place to read other peoples BT problems and a place where you can send in your complaints rather than wasting your time with BT Customer Service who I found to be a complete waste of time. All complaints will be put into a report and sent for investigation. The responses have some helpful hints and tips on what to do, who to contact and so on. Submit your BT Complaint here

Have you personal success with this course of action?

Would like to know because I would rather a better route than playing their game of attempting to get me to go through their onerus and obstructive processes that they hope I'll just give up.

I'd already emailled the CEO who replied and passed it to their 'high level complaints team'. I think the only step I avoided was the initial wait on hold to complain!

(2 missed appointments, then did a 3 point turn on my lawn when he finally turned up after reversing into my hedge and trampling over my plants.)

Quick afternote.

This was intended as a reply to 'Cutomerabuse' who mentioned Court action!

Yes it is definitely worth it. I am waiting from a review from a county court judge right now. I have 2 court cases going on at the moment and I would recommend it to anyone. We should be be peturbed by court action. Its the only way that they are going to listen to us.

I was extremely frustrated by the sheer incompetence and going down the ofcom route is a waste of time. I have nearly 1000 pounds of charges relating to the cases and a measly 30 pounds is an absolute joke.

Believe you me you will get what you want in the end but it can take up to 8 months.

Dont let them bully you like they did with me.

I'm an ex-BT engineer who went independent covering Gloucestershire, Herefordshire and Malvern area. I just wanted to say that if anyone has any problems with BT customer service or faults (landline or broadband) I can help you resolve them, I have contacts at a high level, and a knowledge of how things work.

With respect to BT line tests, they will not pinpoint faults 100% of the time. So although your line test may show ok and customer services say the fault is in the property, this is not always the case. In my experience 50% of faults are exterior to the property and thus BT's responsibility to fix [for free].

I go to around 10 jobs per week that are fault related and around 50% of those are exterior faults, even though the line test has an ok result.

Also, most broadband faults are caused by faulty extensions within a property or noise on the line. Dont be fooled by a remote line test that says everything is ok externally though. The best way to identify the fault is to plug your router or modem into the test socket on the master socket (the first socket in the property), by removing the screws on your NTE5 - which most properties have now - and removing the bottom half of the cover which will reveal a socket (test socket) and seeing if your modem/router then works. If it does then the fault is internal, if it doesnt then chances are the fault is external, unless the fault is with the NTE5 or the dropwire, or of course the broadband equipment.

If anyone has any queries I am happy to help.

Steve

www.thebtman.com

info AT thebtman.com

customerabuse:

Yes it is definitely worth it. I am waiting from a review from a county court judge right now. I have 2 court cases going on at the moment and I would recommend it to anyone. We should be be peturbed by court action. Its the only way that they are going to listen to us.

I was extremely frustrated by the sheer incompetence and going down the ofcom route is a waste of time. I have nearly 1000 pounds of charges relating to the cases and a measly 30 pounds is an absolute joke.

Believe you me you will get what you want in the end but it can take up to 8 months.

Dont let them bully you like they did with me.

Send me an email. Dont go down the court route, its time consuming and stressful. I can resolve the whole issue in a matter of days, not weeks.

Steve.

info AT thebtman.com

born4thesurf:

Hi there. You are not alone rest assured!
On my BT Complaints webpage I have had literally 100's of BT Complaints

Its a good place to read other peoples BT problems and a place where you can send in your complaints rather than wasting your time with BT Customer Service who I found to be a complete waste of time. All complaints will be put into a report and sent for investigation. The responses have some helpful hints and tips on what to do, who to contact and so on. Submit your BT Complaint here

Completely pointless and cluttered website. Tips...help....reports....investigation...etc etc blah blah.

Just send me an email if you have problems and I will resolve almost instantly, no problem.

info AT thebtman.com

Just joined the group whilst raging about BT.

Please, can anyone help ?

I'm too livid with BT presently, so cannot bare to recount my tale of woe. . .

Been looking on the web unsuccessfully for the customer services director/any other directors' names. Came across this site and this thread . . .

Can someone please ( Stewart of Business Terminators - your post suggests you have found out . . .) post or email me their names, job title, email addresses - even their home addresses so that I can tell them what for . . . I've found the name of the Managing Director, Consumer at BT Retail with effect from May 1, 2008. If I'm allowed to post this then please tell me and I'll do that.

Trust this isn't against the forums rules, but just this second joined to try and find that info..

Look forward to your posts/emails

Lee