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?

I had almost exactly the same issue as you Running, sent an email to the CEO and was instantly assigned a crack team who called me, got the engineer scheduled and it was done in 48 hours. Prior to that i did a LOT of shouting and got nowhere, it was an awful time, we are a home business and lost a lot of money by being down for three weeks.

Once the phone line was fixed, I left BT and moved to Sky and wrote a long email to the CEO telling him why.

Ilovemydog - we had the terrible lies too. They kept insisting that broadband was down in my area. They told me they would call me back. They said the engineer was in the box. All of it was untrue. They told me at one stage that BT broadband was down for the whole country. I went to Sky and they have been excellent and I talk to real live people if there is an issue

Another one here praising PlusNet.

We were moving only a short distance. The BT problems started as soon as the house went up for sale! We showed a couple round. The next day we had no phone, no internet, no nothing.
I called BT from work and went through all the security checks to be told that 'someone' had rung to say they were moving into our house and so BT had cut off our service. Eventually I got the name and it was the woman we had shown round.
I replied that this couple hadn't even made an offer yet and what was BT doing cutting off our service on the say so of a complete stranger who couldn't possibly have answered my security questions.
I was told it would be reconnected straight away but 'we just have to go through some security questions....'.

BT then made a total arse of the actual move and we had endless subsequent problems including the phone not working while my DH was very ill. We have no mobile coverage here so it was a complete nightmare. The ambulance service radios couldn't get a signal either which is not BTs fault but when your only means of communication is a landline then you expect it to work.

PlusNet relies on Openreach engineers but an engineer appears much faster when PlusNet calls them out than if BT does! It is much cheaper & the call centre people are really helpful. The PlusNet bill is about a quarter of the amount we used to pay BT for a crap service.

BT own PlusNet. So if you leave BT for PlusNet you are just signing up again with BT. Of course it begs the question why there is a difference in customer service between the two. If you can offer better service from one part of your company why can't you extend it across the board? It must be better for profit margins this way, must be the conclusion.

PlusNet's USP that it has UK call centres is BT's response to the unpopularity of its Indian call centres.

Well I didn't know that BT owned Plusnet. You'd never tell. Plusnet works.

*PowerPants^ (great name) they're useless aren't they? Never again.

Ha bold fail.

Maybe too late to help but have you tried tweeting @BTcare? I'm advised by an insider that this works.

After 6 months of hell 2 years ago I will never ever go with bt again. With plusnet at moment (guess who owns them) but totally different. I'd cancel the order and if you want to stay with bt restart it again or find someone else. Good luck x

Email [email protected] someone will see the email over weekend, the Gavin Patterson inbox might not get seen until monday.

Bt 4 weeks with no internet or phone line. We can't get Virgin where I am which is another issue

The point is, these are now classed as essential services, but they aren't treated as that. Imagine if you couldn't get water or leccy for a month? The power companies are a load of bastards too, but at least they manage to actually supply the stuff, unlike bastarding BT

I moved to plus net as they could get me a BT line quicker than BT could

Excellent customer service and their call centre people talk to you rather than read at you

Oh yes, the joys of BT. We were left for about four weeks with no broadband or telephone when we moved house, dispite having placed an order online weeks previously and everything being confirmed. Huge amounts of phone calls and promises and nothing happening.

Eventually the line was connected but it was a few years back so I can't remember what eventually caused their finger to get pulled out. Was an extremely frustrating time though and their name was mud in our household for a long long time.

I'd stay clear of TalkTalk, we had to get a line put in which should have been a simple job and ended up waiting around for months, booking time off for engineer visits then they wouldn't turn up, or they'd do the work externally and not notify us so we were sat around all day when in fact they'd been at 9am. That was through open reach for the line but TalkTalks customer service is appalling. I ended up shouting back at some woman in the end, they constantly talk over you, every single person I spoke to.

I went with plusnet, still through open reach and it was a simple easy process.

I took out a new line and internet via utility warehouse. Still an open reach engineer but they were efficient and turned up on date and time promised

We found out that PlusNet was owned by BT soon after we switched but have never regretted it.

See the BT strategy works. People reach the end of their tether with them and sign up with PlusNet, thinking they have escaped BT. Why can't BT just get their customer service right in the first place? They know what works because they deliver it elsewhere.

For anyone who doesn't know, unless you have cable provision or satellite broadband, then you are at the mercy of B T Openreach engineers regardless of whoever you pay rental to for phone and broadband services.
It's like Rail Track being responsible for the train lines and then other operators running the trains on them. If a problem develops with the tracks there's no point getting upset with the train company.

Over the years I've had the misfortune to become acquainted with BT and then Openreach engineers far more than I wish to. It's based on having an old and unmodernised exchange and old and neglected infrastructure. There's little or no incentive for them to spend money on updates and repairs because the customer volume in the area is so low and to add insult to injury they then charge the highest rates due to it being an area of no/low competition

This year there have been multiple faults in the area and the copper wiring needs to be replaced as it's come to the end of its life really and no longer has spare capacity for repairs. They've been robbing Peter to pay Paul over many years. Unfortunately Openreach haven't bundled all these faults together as one job and none of the attending engineers seem to know about any of the other problems, which just makes matters worse. We're months in to Openreach awaiting the instruction and go ahead for finance from BT to carry out the necessary work on the cabling.

We're with Plusnet ISP and have been since the early days as Mad as a Fish. It is true that they're BT owned now, but they still run as a separate company to their original principles with the call centre in Sheffield. Unfailingly their customer services and technical support have been people you can explain yourself to and who are very helpful. They keep you updated by email and text messages and are very approachable via Twitter too.
Contrast with BT call centre who even rang at 10.30 one Sunday night to tell me the fault was now fixed, needless to say it wasn't. They were unable to accept that the fault wasn't fixed or deviate from the script in front of them. They just wanted to close the ticket luckily a call to Plusnet made sure the fault didn't return to the end of the queue as a newly reported issue.

When I had an endless wait for Openreach it was a Plusnet support person who told me about the mobile network 3 doing a £23 per month, one month notice only contract that gave plenty of minutes and texts but importantly totally unlimited broadband and no additional fee for tethering.
It depends if your area gets decent coverage, but that's what got me through a time without a working phone line .
Maybe that's a back up for anyone else in a similar situation?

rennie but that doesn't make sense because plus net charges less. FWIW I was with plus net a long time ago before they were bought by BT. (I went to Virgin when they got cable in our area. And switched back when BT fibre arrived). I suspect plus net is just ran by different management structure. And that they bought it because it is profitable. I remember zen and be used to be independent too. I think they are owned by some big outfit now. But they are always pricier than plus net. Plus net is a budget ISP.

I had a response from the BT CEO within minutes of my email last night. Today I have received an email asking for details and a phone call from some one who says he is going to be responsible for getting me a result. I am supposed to be called again on Monday with an update.

That sounds better Running Good luck, let us know how they say they're going to resolve this for you.

I move from BT to Plusnet and its been fine, BT may own them but Plusnet are totally different, I didnt even lose service during change over.

How about looking to see if you can get Skype on your Phone.

I know it don't solve your internet and phone issue but it will be nice to be able to use Skype.

We left BT few years ago, there customer services is shocking.

We have had sky, TV, phone and internet since we left BT.

Sorry for not RTFT (most unlike me) but felt I had to interject with the tale that my BT connection issues had me on hold to various departments for AN ENTIRE DAY. A generally emotionally balanced, cheerful human, I ended up in a heap on the floor of my kitchen weeping down the phone, pounding a cupboard door wailing "Why? Why? Why?". This has never happened with anyone/anything else before or since.

They are a shower of C-words.