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Like many other 'gripers' I am a BT customer. The problems began in ernest when I accepted an email offer for the total broadband package in September 2006. After numerous calls to BT customer service, where people could find no record of my order, eventually the package 'arrived' at Christmas.
For a year, after initial teething problems, the service was good; then from Christmas 2007 the Internet connection drop off became a daily occurrence. The engineers visited my property on three occasions and they did everything they could. (If only the rest of BT personnel were as thorough and helpful.) The engineers identified the problem as a 'long line issue'. Essentially this means BT have to replace / upgrade 800 yards of distribution cable to provide a continuous signal. Up to 8MB they offered when I signed up, however, the actual speed I received was 0.42MB at best.
Eventually, after hours of fraught discussions with BT, the technical department agreed to refund my line rental. Also agreeing that I would not be required to pay broadband line rental until the cable was replaced.
...long-winded calls with BT customer service
I thought this was very fair of BT. However, the next quarterly bill arrived with no credit against it for the line rental. More fraught long-winded calls with BT customer service. As others have described: transferred from to department to department. In the end the matter was sorted out. Regrettably I have to grapple with the same procedure every quarter to obtain the credit. I am now on the fifth quarterly session.
On one occasion a lady in customer service actually told me they are essentially paid to listen and can do precious little. The BT customer service advisers can remove certain items wrongly charged to a bill, but have little if any powers to authorise any compensation.
I have been a BT customer for many years. The service has deteriorated since call centres moved out of the UK and in essence the impression gained is this: BT unofficially or otherwise seem to operate a policy of making life extremely difficult for UK domestic users. I'm sure their customer complaints statistics look quite good. Probably because there is no clear route to a reasonable conclusion.
If I had 5 for every failed promise and meaningless apology received from BT I could retire very comfortably for the rest of my life.
By: Veo
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When that was finally sorted I was promised repair in 36 hours. Guess what! Another promise of repair within 36 hours, and another. Then of course it was Bank Holiday but it will be repaired asap. Like Hell! This morning I get a call to say that the engineers MIGHT start this week.
Head, meet brick wall. Brick wall, meet head. BT customer care ethos is "you're the customer, we don't care."
PS. There still taking money out of my bank account for the direct debit bill.
I think they do this on purpose so you give up and continue being charged the extortionate prices. Unfortunately there's little option but to stick with them...
Virgin is just as much of a nightmare, with Indian call centres. The thought occurs that these companies agree to use these centres, because they know we would desert to those with UK centres if we could.
Now on Sunday, in an unrelated incident, our power was cut and was out for nearly a day. I guess the tropical downpour on Saturday on/off affecting Hammersmith (yeah London SW13) had some bearing on the matter. Now we have a standby generator running to give us power, telephone and dsl. I can hear the engine running outside from a truck(Monday). We had to eat up all the melting ice cream, precook our chicken etc, what a day Sunday was. Yeah some power guys also dug up our approach and front garden looking for the problem...what a mess: a pit about 30 foot long, 5 feet wide and about 4 feet down - took 3 or 4 guys digging for about 5 hours. Still these guys who were contractors (Laing?) for our South Electric vendor were v. polite and didn't touch our ornamental tree and missed most of the flowers. Boy oh boy, this is becoming like a daily gripe. Is 2012 coming soon? Well ok, the good news is that at least half the neighbours of about 10 houses that were also down came by at some point and we all commiserated about the loss of power.
Last night Thurs 16/6/11 and the previous night Wednesday around midnight the internet went down and then I noticed the phone (landline) line was dead also ( a busy signal on the telephone). Last night it was still down at 1 am. the night before it cleared up by 00.30 am.
Its impossible to say for sure if its the internet down or the telephone is down. However it is likely that BT can disrupt the phone and then the internet which is DSL is by definition also disrupted..
My BT exchange happens to be at Hammersmith. Usually my internet can go down maybe once in a blue moon if they are doing maintenance at the Hammersmith exchange for example - this can occur around 4pm and can last no more than a half hour. When it was Tiscali, you could call a certain number using a cell phone and it would tell you that BT had reported problems at certain locations. However these are recordings,
Practically no point in calling anyone, because even if BT has the exchange, you can't complain to Tiscali or TalkTalk for that matter, because they will blame BT. and no point in calling BT, because your service provider is in my case TalkTalk.
So last night (ie Thursday night), I didn't bothering resetting my router, because this morning (Friday) around 5am on 17/6/11,the phone was up again, and the internet was also up. So life is beautiful again!
Funny though, I have Windows 7 on my pc which I use wirelessly for broadband (when its up) .Last night when internet was down, I right clicked the little icon indicating internet wireless connection, and it showed huge activity both on receive and on send data blocks coming and going, Even though there was no internet, and even though the landline was indicating a busy signal. so all v. strange indeed.
BT are appaling at customer service - where I live there is no other choice sadly
Look the company I use are polite,very very successful,value for money and a no nonsense kind of business.Just go here have a brows you will be pleasantly surprised too.www.bestbillsaver.co.uk
If you know anyone,anyone at all that is having problems with BT,Sky,TalkTalk just send them there too.
These kind of companies need to know that they do not own you and they can't monopolise the situation that many of us face! It makes my blood boil when I hear of such stories who do they think they are!
bestbillsaver
David Byrom
Not only get value for money but also save on your household bills......Now that's what I call service!!!!
Don't take my word have a look for yourself at www.utilitywarehouse.org.uk/F87143/jointheclub