They sent an engineer out to me and he advised that the installation of the line was free as there was already an existing line there.

 

I must say I have had excellent customer service from BT. I had a problem with my internet at first which we later found was down to me pc and not the internet connection. I traded the pc in for a laptop and have had problem free broadband ever since. Every company has the unhappy stories. these are the kind fo stories that get posted and talked about the most. People also say the bad points and not the good. Its all down to the experience you recieved granted but I had the worst service by what was NTL and that is why I moved to BT. My bills are excessivley lower now and I get a better service.

 

In all I thank BT for the good problem free service I have recieved.

 

 

Good morning so i am not the only person who has a poor connection  I WAS on dial-up for a few years till i found out i was at the bottom of the food chain and got through when everyone else had, and got cut off so often.......I now have a home hub but find that downloads can affect my settings. I avoid the helpline and the charges by going through to an ordinary advisor who then transfers me - i have had some useless people on line but out there there are some gems -including one of their trainers who yes she is asian but comes from Blackburn - not india or pakistan. My signal is very poor sometimes and I am going to complain - long and patiently and I expect a positive result especially as Tesco is wanting to take over my phone bills.   When I had problems with the set up I was credited with 3 months charges.

 

 

I'm reading horror stories throughout the Broadband forums and have just posted a similar reply on Tiscali. I would have no hesitation in taking BT to Court. I first took BT to the Small Claims court for bad service (on my voice line) and have followed up with two more Claims with other Corporates. I have won all my Cases. In BTs case, they were a no-show and the judge asked if I was sure I was claiming enough! BT will not brief a solicitor to attend Court for small sums (in my case less than £2k). It is immensely satisfying to win compensation for lousy service from under-performers like BT. Malctrader

After many years with BT, one of their original customers, I have managed to get my contract cancelled due to appalling support from their outsourced support system after arranging to have my account moved from my business line to my private line.

I retired... no longer needed the extra quality of service. I specifically confirmed that the transfer would not affect the service received and that, in particular my website and the FTP access would not be affected. Everything seemed fine, so fine that I decided, as I had to start a new contract, to opt for a slight saving and go for 18 months instead of 12. Sorted......or was it?

About half a dozen e-mails later, asking the same question i.e. details of the original number and the new one, finally got me a telephone call to say the new service was to start on a certain date. As promised the change would be seamless, nothing to do they assured me. Fine, except the FTP server stopped working and I could not update my website. The help desk said " what is an FTP SERVER?".

I eventually was told to contact yet another number. I was on the BT merry-go-round for some days. I was told I would have to pay £25 to have access to my website which was now in the safe hands of Geocities. That is as well as my monthly BT Total Broadband sub.

Move on several weeks... still no joy, followed instructions given by the Indian help desk and managed with their help to erase files on site. One important one I had lost the back up to as well.

Eventually I was able to get my old site working again, I was able to get intermittant access to it. Trying to make sense of Geocities facilities was a trial. Eventually the facility stalled and I was unable to get back into it. A sort of destructive limbo I found out. I lost files.

When transferring my service BT failed to do certain things. They did not stop the old service, they let it lapse. The service then diminished to a very small webspace and the Geocities system with charges.

I had to keep it going.... and did so until my jazz/bigband music news website fell foul of small print. Apparently they will allow you a small amount of space but there can be no external links! The logic escapes me. because of this they closed me down.

The British end of customer service apologised genuinely . They thought I had been treated badly but hands were tied. I told them I had no confidence in the service now since it was outsourced. I wanted to cancel the month old contract. This has been done. I have my migration code and will be with Pipex, apparently the only ISP with British based support.

Having to deal with strong indian accents over bad telephone lines, having to deal with people  who have no in depth knowledge of the sytem, who can only help you if they have a script for for your problem is frustrating in the extreme.

One thing they do very well is stop you actually speaking to an engineer, prevent you from contacting a customer service agent directly, they are always not available.

Another charming nuance is that whatever time of the day or night you ring, you will be kept waiting because even 3am is the busiest time. They tell you to telephone again early afternoon. This often happens to be the actual time you are telephoning anyhow.

 The only people who should use the BT service in my humble opinion are those who have technical knowledge and are less likely to need help. Even they will be amazed at the complexity of BT's laberynthian service now. Others may be in for a very frustrating and anger making ride.

I used to recommend the service when there was a British support system. Now there is no-one I dislike enough to recommend it to.

 

The number you want is 08000280738. This is the UK-based Broadband Customer Services Dept. They are not working from a script and know which depts (and there are many, I've spoken to most of them) to contact to progress technical and billing problems. After 3 months trying to get the broadband helpdesk to understand the problem (in my case a DACS on the line), during which I was asked repeatedly, questions which were not pertinent to the problem, I now have someone who has taken ownership of the problem, has updated me on progress and will keep me updated until resolution.

I  have had these people willing to help before. You may be lucky. My experience has been that all of a sudden they get swallowed up or go elsewhere.

After they cut me off for three weeks refusing to believe that what I said was the fault, was the problem, and this current debacle I cannot take anymore wondering each day if I will get through the day without a problem, literally dreading the possibility of having to telephone India to connect to Durham, bad lines and amazing ill informed support staff with Anglicised names..

I am not being flippant but does someone in BT believe that I believe that the Davids, the Darrens, the Shirleys that apparently live and work in India are British! Somehow this translates to some sort of insult to our intelligence.

I am not too happy that people in another country are effectively in control of our computer infrastructure, the nuts and bolts of the financial world, including our banks. I know that colleagues of mine in the USA have exactly the same concerns as I do, should I presume and say we all do? They have a massive amount of outsourcing. Project all that forward to the time when there are serious international problems.

 

Your response was most interesting.

i have just complained to Ofcom about BT.  I returned to BT in May so that I could go on AOL broadband but it took BT 4 weeks and 3 engineers to solve why I couldn't gt a connection.  Since then I have continually had connection problems, knowing it was a problem with the line (as per the fourth engineer's visit) I tried to contact BT but their automated line checking service could not find a fault (totally useless according to BT engineer) so the voice says goodbye and thats it.  If I try saying it is a broadband problem the automated voice says I am not on BT broadband - goodbye.  Meanwhile I am stuck having to phone AOL on an 0870 number for approx 40 minutes each time plus follow up  calls for them to contact BT.  BT (Openreach) have been out numerous time to the local junction box and each time my connection come son for a very limited time - currently I am losing connection twice a day.  I am sick of BT  I have spoken to Trading Standards and they consider this a breach of contract on BT's part as they are not providing reasonable care and skill.  I am in the process of claiming for my lost days/weeks on AOL which I still have to pay for, my telephone calls to AOL and any amounts I will have to pay fto AOL for recinding their contract. 

I regret the day I returned to BT from Telewest, now Virgin Media, as I never had one single complaint all the years I was with them

I totally agree!!!

BT provides the worst customer service possibly in the history of mankind. I made five formal complaints over two agonising weeks via their email complaint system. I've been calling 0800 800 150 to let them know that i am moving house! Based on their website this should be 'easy and stress free'. I have waited on hold for a total of 16 hours, half waiting my the receiver and the other half on speaker phone. i went out and bought a speaker phone especially for BT's customer service. Within the 16 hours, most of it on call waiting, i was transferred between seven people who didn't know what the hell they were doing and kept passing me to the wrong staff member. i ended up in sales five times. they seem to be the only staff members working. after the fourth time i did get through to a real person who was in charge of address changes but unfortunately their system was down so he took down my details of where i was moving from and where i was moving to and what date i would like this to happen. he said that someone would phone my mobile to confirm this. instead of what i expected happening someone phoned a couple of days later to leave a message telling me that they didn't have enough details to make the address change and i needed to phone them again!!! plus they didn't make the address change in time and i have already moved houses. i am writing this now as i am yet again on the BT customer service line trying to switch lines so i can stop paying for a landline that i'm not using and get a phone line in my current place. i am now spending the evening hanging out at my old flat trying to rectify the situation and am still on hold! I hate BT!

I hope you have better luck than a friend, she moved into an empty house and rang BT to find out if the phone was theirs or the cable company.  After 7 hours of calls they said they didn't know,  she rang ofcom and they gave her a number to ring who immediately confirmed she was with BT.  Why couldn't BT ring this no?  She got back to BT and asked them to transfer her old no but what did they do they cancelled her account and her old no and gave her a new one.  When she complained they said her old no had gone into a pool and would take 7 weeks to get it back.  She got the no of BT executive office, 0800 671 502l  they may be able to help you.

thanks for that BT executive number. i'll have to return to my old flat, again, tomorrow to try and see if i can get through to someone useful. BT customer service makes me want to become an alcoholic.

i'm not sure if you've found a new broadband provider or not. although my time dealing with BT landline has been depressing my internet provider, Nildrum, are fabulous. I phoned them in the middle of the day to change my address and they did it instantly. i've never had a connection problem with nildrum and my computer programmer friends and their work colleagues all use nildrum as an internet provider. plus you get 500 minutes free to call landlines and national numbers. best of luck.

They are truly awful.

(btw- If you are on Facebook, join the group "British Telecom (BT) Horror Stories")

here is my horror story...

My pain with BT started before I even became a customer. All I wanted was a phone line so I could get ADSL through a 3rd party....

I sign up online for a new line. I get told I need to call a number because for some reason they can't complete it online. I call and get told to leave a number and someone will call me. A day later they do- asking for all the same information... and then telling me they can't take the order and someone else will call me!

On the second attempt the next day, I manage to get an order number with an installation date in 10 days time. (Aug 10 between 8 and 1pm ref: VOL011-4575187312 in case anyone from BT ever reads this)

On the 10th nobody showed up, so I wasted an entire day of leave. I then tried calling 0800800150 and, after staying on hold for 20min, I was told they could not help me. I was told to call 0800 022 3089. This number rings and rings. I called it repeatedly over several days. Eventually I let it ring for 1hr 10mins and someone answered! She confirmed that my installation was set for the 10th and said that she'd have to check with the installation department. She took my cell number - and said I would get a call back. She could not provide a reference number or a direct number to call. She assures me that someone will contact me. 2 days later, still no call.

So I called again. Phone rings for 35mins without answer. No way to actually speak to anyone that can help me so far or that knows when someone is actually going to connect this line. So I fill out a complaints form online.

In the mean time I get a note that my direct debt has been set up! So it seems they manage to organize to take my money but not actually provide service.

I call again and finally get someone that can pull up my order after 40m on hold. I was finally helped by Helena and Angela, superisors at Customer Service. The first nice, real, helpful people I've spoken to. They stayed on the line while the phone rang and rang at whatever department was required until someone actually helped me. So, on the 17th Aug, I was given a second installation date for Friday 24th Aug.

Then the next day, I was called again by a completely different department and given a new installation date of Thursday 23rd Aug! Earlier. Great.

EXCEPT that the engineers stood me up on the 23rd (between 8am and 1pm) Once again, I had to take the day off work
Once again, I tried to call (08000223089) and was on hold for 50 minutes. Once again I dialled 0800800150 because someone actually answers that number, only to be told they could not help me and that I should hold for the other department...
again I was on hold for 40 minutes. When someone picked up, they said they couldn't help me either and I'd have to be transferred again. When I asked for a supervisor, they simply hung up. charming but by now, expected.

So on to the 24th. Maybe they will come today after all... (Aug 24th between 8-1pm). Once again a NO SHOW! (3rd time)
I then get a call from BT at 2pm. Imagine my surprise! Except its not the installation team, it's BT customer Service informing me that my installation is 'confirmed' (ha ha what a joke) for the 4th September!

The person on the line has no record of any previous 'confirmed' installation dates, of which I have now had three: 10 Aug, 23 Aug, 24 Aug) All for an order placed on the 1 Aug. She can't help me at all, can't contact the installation team. Can't see my record or in fact any history of my complaint. I can't call BT OpenReach who installs the lines, 'as they don't deal with customers' (really? well nobody seems to, so that's no surprise). I ask for a supervisor. I'm told there are no supervisors! She tells me my installation date is the 4th. I don't believe her. Would you?

I call 0800800150 - they answer but can't help me because my account number begins 'GB', so I'm transferred to a 'specialist department' that I wait 57m on hold for. When they answer, it's the billing department!! They can't help me. I'm transferred again... nobody wants to talk or listen to my story, they just want me off the phone as fast as possible. Nobody will transfer me to a supervisor. So I'm on hold again... for another 35m.

The person who eventually picks up informs me that my original order (VOL001-4575187312) was cancelled because it was 'delayed for some reason' and that's why nobody turned up three separate times. My new order is apparently now VOL011-4848100963 with installation for 4th Sept.

I ask what their policy is for making your customers waste 4 days of vacation time waiting for non-existent installers. I am told that I can lodge a complaint (which I've done several times to no effect) and wait and see if they 'turn up on the 4th'. No guarantees sorry....

So I cancelled the order and called Virgin. BUT the farce continues...

On the 30th, an OpenReach engineer turned up on my door (this date was NEVER mentioned) I told him to go away.
On the 31st, I got an SMS from BT saying that my appointment for the 3rd was cancelled and being moved to the 4th! They never mentioned the 3rd either, ever.
On the 4th, an engineer arrived again. I didn't answer the door.


So for ANYONE looking for a phone. AVOID BT. Like the plague.

My questions for BT - if anyone actually reads this:

1. Is it your policy to simply cancel orders that YOU screw up? Does that make your stats look better or something?

2. Do you offer any redress to your customers for this kind of service? Specifically the 3 (maybe 4) wasted days waiting for a 'confirmed' installation?

3. Why is there no way to call your installation team?

4. Why do you not provide a number for the actual installer?

5. Why does nobody call me to cancel confirmed appointments that YOU MADE?

6. Why does your customer service line for 'special' orders (VOL011-4575187312) not have a call back feature? Why am I left on hold for hours on 08000223089?

7. How do you maintain a line monopoly? Your operation is a disgrace.

My next call is to the consumer watchdog and a very public blasting on every blog and website I can find that deals with the question of your incompetence.

Try ringing the BT exrecutive offiice 0800671 502 - it worked for a pal

I am walking on air, no longer depressed at the possibility of having a problem and having to speak to the totally incompetant, unsympathetic help desk at BT.

For me  at the moment Pipex is a breath of fresh air, a British helpdesk and an ability to to cope with any problems, give advice and all with good humour.

I suppose as long as the money rolls in and they can keep on dividing and sub-dividing the service to garner more fees, they don't care.

All these greedy companies will feel the draught eventually, when they reap what they sew and they have to start coping with the demands of the countries they are trusting with our infrastructure . They are changing the economies of these countries, sooner or later they will realise, flex their muscles and bite companies like BT in the backside.

Digging themselves out of that could be painful for us all.

 

 

Good luck JRK, your breath of fresh air with Pipex may be just the whif of 'new victim' euphoria before the real world sets in. I was with Pipex for five years, cancelling took me six months after which I ended up taking them to court to get my money which they had illegally debited from my account. They ignored the solicitors letters, court letters and judgements right up to the point where I sent the bailiffs in and only then did they sort out the mess after three visits.

There is no 'excellent' service in the cesspit of Internet Service Providers, just varying degrees of 'lack' of service, of whom BT seems to have the lowest 'lack' of service yet, but they are by no means guilt free. They are just a shining beacon of efficiency when compared with the crock of effluent that sums up Pipex, AOL, Bulldog, Tiscali and some others I could mention.

One final word of advice. NEVER pay for an ISP service with a Debit Card - always use a credit card. ISPs LOVE Debit Cards because even when they expire, there is a little known agreement between banks and suppliers that expired credit cards can still be debited by the likes of Pipex even though they are no longer viable. Cancelling debit card agreements are almost impossible whereas you can simply tell the fraud department of a credit card company that xx is acting fraudulently and you will get your money back.

You've made your choice, I hope you don't live to regret it, but I have my doubts.

SHARK!

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For every positive action, there's an equal and opposite government plan.