to have a rant about BT?

[dulcefarniente]

My parents, in their mid 70s living in a small village with dodgy mobile signal, have been without broadband for 2 months. BT have supposedly been investigating and keep promising to get it back up and running but no joy. My dad finally snapped and told them he was going elsewhere for his broadband. This resulted in the landline being cut off as well as it was a bundled deal and they didn't warn my df that cancelling one would cancel the other too.

So df whose hearing isn't great has been spending ages on his mobile trying to sort it out with less than helpful or interested staff at BT. He's also trying to help organise the funeral of a close family member a couple of hundred miles away so stress levels are through the roof.

He's still very independent and won't let my dm or I get involved. I got through to him on the mobile eventually as I live a couple of hours away with equally dodgy mobile reception but not before he'd cancelled the broadband. I had exactly the same problem with BT when I moved house as they screwed up the broadband installation and cancelled the order. They had discovered that my broadband wasn't working because I was on an old fashioned party line. Their solution was to place a non BT customer on the party line and assign me to a modern line so that the other company would have to pay to upgrade the line. They cancelled the original order for a phone & broadband bundle and then started it again. They didn't warn me that the cancellation would kill the phone line too so I didn't have either for a couple of weeks either.

When I complained they gave me a credit against my phone bill but assigned it to the old phone number (fully paid up) and despite many attempts they couldn't seem to credit it to the new number. I gave up trying to get the credit in the end which I'm sure was their intention.

Rant over.

BT are shit.

Yes, I had something similar. They cut me off with no warning (phone and broadband) . After several hours on the phone I eventually found out that my contract had been cancelled due to error
and I would have to wait 3 weeks to get reconnected. I went back to my old supplier (virgin media) who have never once messed us around, for a fiver a month less.
My son has sky broadband, no problems with that either.

Comparing broadband deals a couple of weeks ago, I considered going back to BT as they were the only ones who could supply Fibre at our address. Then I remembered how shit their customer service was last time we took their services and decided to stick with Sky who have always been reliable and troublefree.

BT comes up all the time in talk about shit customer service. They have to be one of the worst companies in the country.

I think they would win the worst customer service award in perpetuity. They are endlessly promising to ring back and failing to do so and have zero empathy. Their staff seem to have no interest in whether or not your problem is resolved.

Recommendations for alternative suppliers for phone + broadband? They don't want a tv package.

They're a bloody nightmare. They've just direct debited me for a line that was cut off about a month ago, so I need to find out why. I'll have to phone them tomorrow and I'm dreading it, as their call centre system is an absolute fucking nightmare and most of the people you eventually get through to are totally fucking useless. Now and then you get a good one, but only after you have shouted at the automatic voice, got politely stroppy with a couple of call centre people and finally been put through to someone who speaks fluent, idiomatic English and knows that they're talking about.

I'll keep an eye on this thread as I'd like to change our phone and broadband. BT, I bloody hope you keep an eye on social media and read thread like this!

I'm not usually as sweary as that.

Plusnet isn't bad (counter-intuitively, since they're owned by BT). We've had our phone and broadband with them for about four years and had no problems getting both sorted out when we moved into this house. I think it's about 18 pounds a month.

Yep they're crap. We've had problems with our TV box for months. It took 3 attempts to get them to come look at it (the first two appointments no one turned up). They ignored every single complaint we e-mailed to them (4 or 5 in total) and we've had no compensation for having months of intermittent TV.

They are diabolical, even thinking about my last interactions with them makes my blood pressure rise.

Ahhh the sweet benefits that privatisation and the "free" market (still largely run by one supplier - BT) has brought us - how we recall the bad old days of not being able to get anything done for ages, staff that didn't care......oh wait.....

BT are awful - however trying to shift to the only real competition (Virgin - all others are mainly just using BT infrastructure so it's like being sub-pimped) made me realise that they don't care about customers either. Before you write me off as a serial complainer I'd like to point out that I do go out of my way to praise good service when it occurs.

Update: parents now have phone line back but weren't allowed to keep their old number so now all the joys of informing everyone who has the old number - just what you need at their age.

PM'd by someone saying that they work for BT customer care offering to look into it. DF is determined to get another supplier and in both our experiences raising an issue leads to more confusion at BT's end and subsequent further issues.

Get onto twitter and use the hashtag for the John Lewis Christmas ad #manonthemoon. You could tag in BT at the same time.

Because the JL ad this year is in conjunction with Age UK. So maybe its a good oppertunity to show how some treat older people

Yup, they're awful.
We had 8 weeks without a phone line or Internet. Their excuses were amazing; 'traffic calming' was needed to sort out the line- we live on a country lane with 4 houses, or it would be fixed 'by 5pm on 26th' then nothing.
We have no mobile signal and I do on call work & DH often works from home so the impact on us with significant.
I tweeted daily but I finally got a result when I contacted my MP. It was back on the next day.
I hate BT with a passion.

To give you an idea of my thoughts on BT - I used to work for them and thus was eligible for free phone line, broadband and TV package. I still chose to go with another provider!

Why on earth weren't they allowed to keep their number? What a massive inconvenience. BT are twats. We were without a landline and thus broadband for weeks because someone screwed something up at the exchange. Then our phone would ring but it wasn't our line it was that of an elderly housebound gentleman whose daughter used to speak to him every day. Some woman round the corner had our number. All got sorted after about a month but BT would only refund the landline rental not compensate me for a month of broadband from another provider I was unable to use. Bastards. If they fail to provide a service so another service can't be provided I should be compensated for the denial of service.