To think BT have reached a new low in customer service, or the complete absence of service

[RunningOutOfIdeas]

I have had a BT phone line for 20 years with no problems. I moved house this week so, 3 weeks ago, I requested that my number be moved to my new address (only about 1 mile away).

On the day of the move, I received a message from BT telling me that the engineer that was booked for the following day (for internet installation) was now cancelled. The message gave no other information.

So I phoned BT and was passed around various people for 30 minutes and finally some one was able to tell me that the engineer was cancelled because BT had not sorted out the phone line in time. The person I spoke to said they would place a new order, mark it as a priority, and I would be called within 24 hours to arrange a new engineer visit.

24 hours comes and goes with no phone call, instead I received an email telling me the new order had been cancelled!

Another 1 hour phone call later, and 3 more attempts at placing orders, I am again told that I will definitely be contacted within 24 hours and this time the order will work.

No prizes for guessing what happened. I received an email saying "sorry you are leaving BT"! So I phone again. I get told that this time order will definitely work and a new date is booked for an engineer. I was also told that i would have a working phone line within 24 hours. 5 hours later I get another email cancelling the order!

So I have phoned them again. I have been told that there is still an order in place but that I will not get a functioning phone line before the engineer visits (on 5th August).

The last person I spoke to has also told me that he has no way if finding out why each order has failed, no way of escalating my problem to some one who can investigate this and he actually advised me to get a Virgin line installed instead!

So BT do not actually care whether they get any business.

At my last house we did have Virgin for internet and it was so unreliable, so I thought we would try BT instead. But since BT don't seem able to provide even a basic phone line, what options do I have?

My husband had a terrible experience with them for business purposes, they cost him hundreds of pounds. He made a complaint with the regulator, they found half in his favour and half in theirs and they paid almost nothing in compensation. It was just a catalogue of errors. You cannot mention the words 'BT' in this house now without much foaming at the mouth and champing at the bit.

I wouldn't use them for anything, and we don't need a home phone anyway, use mobiles instead. We use Virgin for internet, our service is pretty stable but I think this very much depends where you are- might be worth asking a few neighbours which providers work best in your area.

www.saynoto0870.com/

I also never dial 0800 or 0870 or any non-free numbers, I use this. If they don't have a landline number for the specific department, I just use the generic one and ask to be put through to the correct department. This is then free!

Try the saynoto0870 website, they list alternative local phone numbers for big companies.

As for BT - no idea sorry, I'm still bitter from issues we had with them 7 years ago. They could promise me free phone, broadband and TV for the rest of my life and I would still tell them where to stick it. I didn't get anywhere until I wrote to the CEO. What about going via Sky? They'll put pressure on BT on your behalf because they'll be losing money for every day you aren't connected.

Good luck, I'm afraid you'll need it

OneLittle I may have ended saying in my head every time I heard 'your call is important to us' WELL EMPLOY SOME BLOODY STAFF THEN. Over and over again.

FlipFlop great minds think alike. I always use this website now.

I literally spent hours trying to sort out a problem with BT. I eventually posted on the BT community forum where a BT Moderator got the problem dealt with really efficiently. I have heard of other people who have had success with doing this.

You actually end up with an actual identifiable person dealing with the problem rather than having to speak to lots of different people in lots of different departments.

Maybe find their CE's twitter account and rant on that, that seems to be the only way of getting through to these incompetents.

Honestly in my experience, Sky are no better, because they still rely on Openreach, but in my view, have less ability to influence Openreach than BT do. I had an awful time with Sky when I moved house and then an awful time again when I moved to Fibre. Only stuck with them becaue they offered me signficiant compensation both times. Unless you can get cable, you are stuck with Openreach as the wholesaler, and they are a law unto themselves and a complete disgrace. I would mail the ceo but in terms of getting it sorted, you are probably best to stick with BT rather than go to the back of someone else's queue with Openreach. In my view.
I hate Openreach and still get the rage when I see their vans.

We had huge problems with BT recently - wrote a letter of complaint and got a phone call about it from someone in India 'Hi, can I speak to Mr The Vicarage please?' (not real address - basically they thought (in a standard written address layout - that the first line of the address was out surname. I understand a lot of businesses outsource to other countries now but ffs if you can't get that right you've got no hope.)

They then got an engineer to come out, who, fair play, did set up the broadband. However he managed to cut off the phone line at the same time, which we didn't notice until he'd left. Took a week to get another engineer out to fix it - he was here about 5 mins before shouting it was fixed. He was so desperate to leave I had to check myself and point out that we still couldn't dial out and he hadn't actually fixed anything, (and he might have to stay and actually do his job). If I hadn't actually locked him in the house (pretended I'd put the keys down!) while I checked to confirm no he hadn't fixed it at all, he would have been down the road and we would have had to wait another week.

Finally got it fixed by complaining loudly via FB and twitter and I think we got a bit of money off but by god they were shit. but before that I was with virgin who were equally useless, so what can you do?

Even though you will have to have an open reach engineer out regardless I'd say go with another provider. I found O2 and then Sky to be excellent.

When I moved house I was in an area with ancient Broadband that was due to be upgraded. BT wanted nearly £30 a month for 2mb speed and if my exchange was updated I would need to wait until my contract was finished before they would move me to the new cheaper tariff. 02 charged me £12.50 a month and I moved onto the cheaper tariff the second the exchange was upgraded.

I did have a problem at one point that resulted in us being without internet for about 3 weeks, it wasn't due to incompetence just a series of really unfortunate events that had everyone stumped. 02 ended up giving us nearly 6 months free internet in compensation and then the lovely guy I spoke to in the last call gave me another months credit as I had been so nice and not shouted at him .

Phoning BG on their freephone no - I had this waiting for 8 hrs in a house with no landline...(and no heating, one working electric socket in the depth of winter) for their engineer to not turn up twice ...it cost me £10 on my mobile ...then I found out that in theory as soon as you get through to them you can ask them to call you straight back and they should...
Don't expect them to call you back after they have 'looked into' something though - try and stay on the line ...
(They did give me a refund for my wasted time - £20 ...better than nothing but still...)

From what everyone says here I'm glad I didn't go with BT for my line then when I left virgin. Basically BT database dropped our address so none of the other ISP can find us on their online search. I thought well I should try going to BT direct first at least it's the same company. They can't give me both fibre internet and phone on the same order and that's why I went with plus net instead. Their help desk managed to put a manual order in for us despite our house not in BT database.

Except virgin all the other companies use the BT network. I work in telecom and we have to deal with openreach and they are horrid. You pay line rental and internet to these other telecoms and they pay openreach. It is true BT is basically a monopoly! But I guess you are right if you get someone like sky at least you bypass some of BT!

Thank you every one. Since I have only moved about 1 mile, I think Virgin will still be unreliable. People's experiences with Sky and Talktalk seem to vary wildly. So I think I will give BT one last chance, be emailing the CEO. Then I will see what various neighbours currently think are any good.

running experience with sky and talk talk depends a bit on openreach's network sadly.

I think the hate for BT retail and wholesale are universal though!

We have also had BT for over 20 years. All was fine until we moved to BT Infinity. Since then, we have not had a phone line more often than we have. At the moment, we have been unable to dial out for about a month and I don't have the strength to actually contact them. Prior to that we could neither dial out or receive calls - engineer came out, told me it was our sky box line (he removed it) and he left. Now we can't make calls.

I have lost the will to live - we have had more engineers out than I have worn different knickers in a month and our line often works for a week or so and then is down again.

Each engineer gives a convincing story about what the problem might be but, actually, it is because they are shit.

I have had it up to my back teeth now and don't know where to turn to sort things out.

About 10 days ago I did one of those self diagnostic things to see a fault on the line was registering. It told me it was but lo, it is still a pending repair.

We use Sky, but as we moved into a new build we needed a BT engineer to activate the line.

We weren't renewing our BT contract from our previous house because we had tons of problems with them, and BTthen spent 8 weeks blackmailing us.

They basically said that if we renewed with them the engineer could attend within 48h, if we went with sky it would be at least 8 weeks. Then called us every week to "update us on progress" and try and talk us into signing up with them again so we could get an engineer quicker.

We held firm and are really glad we did!

BT haven't reached a new low, their customer service when moving has always been utterly, utterly appalling, and I will never again be a customer of theirs while I have a choice in it.

Do you know who your neighbours use and how their experiences are? You're probably right that Virgin won't be much better if you've only moved a mile. I have Virgin, and they're great here, but with any telecomms, it does depend on where you are and where their exchanges are, and you're not the only person who finds them rubbish - but the same can be said for pretty much all the providers.

However, in my experience, they're all pretty rubbish when you're moving house and changing accounts. I think the level of customer service is too low all around as a general rule with telecomms companies, and I wouldn't expect a good experience from any of them (sometimes you will get good service, but it doesn't seem to happen regularly enough that I would expect it.)

I have just remembered when I was working (so about 12yrs ago) the company I worked for sent them a cheque for about £50/60K in payment. Which they then part allocated, while at the same time taking the company to court for non payment of invoices.

I had great fun in court proving them to be idiots and not knowing what they doing. Judge was not happy with them and their legal team for not checking all the facts before going to court.

ebearhug we complained about BT a lot at work. Sadly all the telecoms in the UK rely on BT openreach. There is no alternative for us.

OP. As well as emailing the CEO Why don't you post on The BT Community Forum. I can't stress enough how helpful they were tome.

i had a similar experience, and i didnt even move! all i wanted was to upgrade to a home hub. i had about 5 orders cancelled. at one point, i received a parcel with cables in it. When i phoned BT told me they had no record at all of my order. I asked the poor frazzelled man on customer services what the odds were of BT just spontaneously sending me half the equipment needed as a random act in the absence of an actual order. he then either laughed or cried, not sure which. As part of the process they put me in the phone book, when i had been ex-directory for 20 years.

they managed to convert me from a loyal customer to one that had the date, 12 months from the debacle ringed in my calendar so i could cancel and move. i then had the satisfaction of talking to a customer loyalty person who actually agreed with my reasons for leaving!

I have sent a long email to the CEO and within minutes I received the following reply

I am sorry we have let you down and I understand your frustration.
I have asked the service team to look into your situation and they will be in touch to explain how we will rectify matters.
Thank you for raising it with me.

So I will now wait and see if anything happens.

.

Phew, Mr CEO of BT is not too busy to send an email to the OP.

Ps, hope you get it sorted soon. I know how frustrating BT are

My DPils lost their phone line for weeks and BT lied and lied and lied.

They came out with a different excuse every time we rang. There is an engineer outside the house. There is an engineer in the road. There are roadworks in the road. There are roadworks on the main road. It went on and on. All completely untrue. Ffs they were the only house on that road, there was no one outside or in the road and there definitely weren't any roadworks for miles.

It was farcical. In the end we got our local MP to intervene and miraculously the phone line did get repaired.

I wouldn't go back to BT if you paid me. We're with Plusnet now and they're fab. You actually get to talk to someone and they're always helpful. I had an unrelated problem with Vodafone (as bad as BT) and they reckoned it was my router. The Plusnet man was lovely even though it wasn't really their problem.