Well I have spent 6 and a half hours on the phone during a total of 7 occasions and I have never got through to anyone who was any help. I have had the broadband service working for 3 hours total since the 24th of November 2006, and of course they are charging me the full charges and have done nothing about even pretending to be responsive to my situation.
Each time I ring they take me through the same demeaning questionnaire, geared towards implying that all problems are the user's fault, they do not ever keep a record of the previous calls and the results are always the same "we have to send an engineer to the exchange to fix the connection" but this result is never logged or referenced anywhere the next time you call, let's skip the issues about unintelligible English (I am Eurasian myself) and obvious slavish script-reading though they alone could drive someone round the bend.
I figured out by myself t the bit about demanding an engineer's visit but I have never succeeded in obtaining one, they obviously never ring back, and I have not obtained the MAC code or any refund for the total lack of service. The voice connection by the way has worked fine since the start (I don't mean VOIP as the Internet has been malfunctioning).
I am also at the end of my tether and have avoided ringing them since January since it makes me ill. The problem is I am dysfunctional without home connectivity and I do really need it to be fast. What we need is success stories in dealing with the BT quagmire, Jason, what are the resources in order to put some group pressure on BT to perform or at least get them to cancel the subscriptions for the long-time problems? There must be some recourse.
Most people don't have any malfunctions with BT, but the issue is not that; it is the totally lousy Customer Services approach and policies at BT. They have figured out that it's cheaper not to fix anything and just ignore the victims of any malfunctions, and they really should be punished for this attitude.
Sam325

Hi Dozza,

I have had problems with customer service, I always seem to end up in the Indian call centres it was very frustrating, I always asked to be put through to the England call centres which they have always done for me. Good luck Dozza.







Edited to remove third party email address
Community Editor

I have had the most frustrating few months of my life trying to get connected to BT Broadband. We had 3 failed activation dates before they bothered to investigate properly and discover what the problem was. It eventually transpired that it was due to a "tag" on our line which BT Wholesale insited belonged to NTL. We don't even have cable in the area we live, but they kept on insisting it was NTL and so I spent many many many hours on the phone trying to get it sorted out. Turns out that Tesco Broadband contract out their work to NTL so thats what the problem was. My apologies to anyone working at NTL for the nutty woman who was insisting that she had their "tag" even though I know now you don't send your broadband down the telephone line.

BT's customer service is absolutely awful, every time you ring (which you pay for) and are kept in a queue for up to an hour sometimes only to be forbbed off time and time again. They really need to step up their systems and customer service training so each time you ring you don't have to start from square one. I must have spent about 15-20 hours on the phone in total and I'm probably being pretty conservative in that estimate.

Anyway we're are all sorted now ( touch wood) apart form the first hub only lasting a week. My heart goes out to anyone in the same situation, it can really drag you down.

I have experienced something but whether or not I would call it customer service is another question!

At the begining of February this year I asked BT to transfer my account to Option 1 so that I could take advantage of the Sky Broadband/TV/Phone offer and after at least three weeks my account was transferred. However, despite numerous calls to far flung countries BT is STILL advising Sky that I do not have an Option 1 account and therefore cannot transfer over and take advantage of my free weekend and evening calls.

I do not know if this is sheer incompetence or a ploy to keep my custom either way it is not working as I now keep in conntact through MSN and refuse to use my phone at all on principle that I will not pay for calls that I could be recieving free.

I am now going to fire off a written complaint to see if that will produce better results and if that fails my next step is the Consumer Advice Centre.

ben.verwaayen AT bt.com

send ben an email,i am sure he will sort your problem out,he is one of the top men at bt

more info on this top man,talk about going to the top

http://www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2005300000-2006260169,00.html

he sorted mine out for me

When I installed my hub BT advisor was on the phone instucting me for 40 minutes very helpful indeed and the call was an 0800 number so at no cost. When my Outlook would not connect the next day another Bt advisor took control of mt PC and did all the necessary work again at no cost. Several of my friends with other ISP providers have had endless trouble when getting connecting and have got little help at all and when  trying to change providers have had endles trouble so BT can not be too bad.

BT customer service....where do i start! Just for a starter i have managed to make a cup of team, answer my mobile to a customer, search the internet, sign up to Moneysupermarket.com and write this with one hand all while i am on hold. This is also my second stint of holding after being on hold for 20mins initially and eventually speaking to someone, who was obviously not from England, that i could not understand. Having asked politely to speak to someone else the kind gentleman put my call through to the exact same departement only at the beginning of the wating line again - luckily the woman, this time, has dealt with my call...

Whenever i have the missfortune to have to contact BT i resign myself to the fact that it will take a couple of hours, minimum and i promise this is not an overstatement by any means.

 I could go on, i am the director of a small business and we have three seperate phone numbers, two boradband connections plus a personel phone account with BT.

 Dozza puts it far better than i can when he says 'the abyss that they call BT Customer Services' - i would hate to know how many departments actually exist and who is working in them, the stuff nightmares are made of!!

One thing though, no matter how many departments there are, each with their own phone number, it is still very difficult to find a usefull number on the back of their bills.

 

raging:Just for a starter i have managed to make a cup of team, answer my mobile to a customer, search the internet, sign up to Moneysupermarket.com and write this with one hand all while i am on hold.

 

Well, at least you made good use of the time....  Welcome to the fold.

 

Cat

varadero:No, you are not alone. I spent the best part of 10 days trying to persuade someone in India that my Total Broadband connection had degraded to the point that dialup was actually quicker. Having been treated like the village idiot by BT, I finally persuaded them it was their problem not mine (I'm an ICT technician), BT finally admitted it was an exchange fault and fixed it. HOWEVER, just 4 days later the service completly disappeared for 4 days. Again, Indian call centres treated me like the village idiot and said it was my fault, my equipment, blah, blah, well it was actually a brand new BT Hub phone situated right next to the BT phone point with a BT filter on it.

Well after 4 days, broadband reappeared with no explanation. I phoned BT (in India again), to arrange some compensation for the loss of service, not to mention the cost of calls, and they agreed but as the Broadband billing centre was closed (20:20 p.m) they would call me back the following day. They never did!

My phone bill duly arrived, no deductions, so I phoned them and guess what, they had no records of the 10 phone calls I made, no records of the actual fault record ref numbers, in fact they more or less told me to take a run and jump if though I had their call centre numbers on my itemised bill!

So, my message is clear, think long and hard about giving BT any of your custom, they do NOT deserve it.

Next time I have issue with BT, I will record the calls on audio, get a ref. no. for every call and woe betide them if they don't play ball.

 

I'm having that problem too!  Every few days it slows to 35kbps d/l (that's dial up or worse, isn't it?) and every few days they fix it and it returns to 300kbps d/l (which is what I'm paying for.) Then it slows down again.  It spends more time running slowly than it does running correctly!  Naturally, I'm not entitled to any sort of discount, despite the fact that I haven't got BT Total Broadband!  I have BT Total Dialup!!!

Absolutely ridiculous! 

I have recently made my first cautious steps onto the property ladder, and as if that in itself wasn't stressful enough BT have been absolutely USELESS.

The hold times have been well documented so I won't dwell on them too much. They wouldn't be so bad if you were confident that when the phone was picked up you would be speaking to someone who knew what day it was. But I just sit there absolutely dreading what the person is going to say, it's like waiting to be shot.

Last Monday I was promised that someone would call me back within 2 days regarding activating my telephone line. No one called. My emails didn't receive a response. So I rang them up on Friday, and after 1 hour and 3 minutes of pain I had literally lost the will to live. I asked why no one had called me back and the advisor informed me that I had apparently cancelled my order! After arguing for a good while that this definitely was not the case, the guy was friendly enough and I thought we were getting somewhere when he took direct debit details and told me that my phone line would be activated on Monday 9th July. He then put me on hold so that he could get me my new BT telephone number.....

....and the area code was for the bloody Shetland Isles. I live in Chesterfield. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. He still insisted that my line would be ready and that the numbers they initially give out 'aren't always accurate' .

No sh*t.

You have probably assumed that my presence on here suggests that my issue still hasn't been resolved. You would be correct. How can we be in a situation in the UK whereby something as basic and necessary as a phone line is monopolised by a company too incompetent to provide it?

I might write a dissertation on that subject whilst on hold.

 

 

it would probably be easier to just move to the Shetland Islands....

Last month when I was having touble receiving email on my outlook i phoned the free 0800 number and aske to be put trough to London techical. they put me through immediatly and a young lady with great patience listened to to what was the touble she then took over my computer corrected all the imputs and put it right in ten minutes from my first phone call everthing was working normally, she aked if I needed any further help with anything and thanked me for using BT. she called the next day as she had promised right on the dot she had said to see all was still OK. which other service can beat that 

Which BT are you phoning??? You are either pulling our leg or the luckiest person on this planet!!!

Do you have any connections to BT ? (by connections i mean family, friends, etc....anyway...)

 

Dear Dozza

I share your views on British Telecom Plc being the worst Customer Service ever. You will get nowhere via customer service - it is a joke - you will just spend hours getting battered from pillar to post. I know I have just came through it. My line developed a fault on May 17th - no line - no broadband. I called on the 18th , 19th , 20th , and all the way to the 12th JUNE.

At that point I was raging slightly as ny home office business was collapsing around me as I am internet based. The best action is to send recorded delivery letters to the directors of British Telecom PLC at their home address. Within two days of this the Directors Office secretary was dealing with my complaint, phoning me every day on the dot to explain why it was not going to be resolved. Unfortunately I cannot say it helped speed up the solution but at least she was dealing with BT inadequacies and not me. My line was eventually repaired almost 2 sixths of a year later. My business almost gone I was delighted to be awarded 89 pence per day for the inconvenience. So despite a breach of trust in promising it will be fixed 49 days in a row, despite costing me 20k per month. Obviously that insult has got me going but I do think the letter by recorded delivery is the best approach and you can access these details at Companies House for a small fee , worth it for the therapeutic value of letting a director know he or she is not disconnected from the mayhem they create.

Best of luck   Business Terminators  

 

---

Stewart

We have been customers with BT for the past 3 years and when we moved house we wanted to have a BT line in our new house. When we phoned BT and they said that we need a new line installed and wound need to pay £124.99 but when the BT man arrived at our house he said that we did not need a line installed as the house already has a BT line and then he reconnected us to BT.
I have since tried to get my £124.99 refunded back to me as it clearly states that existing BT customers that move to a house with a BT line will be reconnected for free. Unfortunately the customer service i have received has been extremely poor. I have been told that the BT line hasn't been used for the past 3 months so we've got to pay the £124.99. I have been told that my account is closed yet i am paying you £11 per month for line rental? I have been given sky's customer services number and other wrong numbers? i have been told BT never installed this line at this property? and i have been told that BT do not own this line.
The BT man came and reconnected the line and BT gave us our telephone number and i have had BT Bills, yet your customer service assistants claim its not BT's line? All i want is my £124.99 refunded back to me as this is the fifth time i have complained and nobody seems to know what they are talking about.