Early Dec we did a sort of house swap with PILs
MIL rang BT to inform them that she was moving from house A to house B and wished to take her account with her. Somehow BT decided that this meant that they needed to cut off the line at house A. MIL said no, the line needs to remain. BT said the new occupiers need to ring us by X date to stop the line being disconnected.
The new occupiers (me, at that point 8 months pregnant) rang BT well before the cut off date and said please don't disconnect the line, I'm 8 months pregnant and get no mobile signal at house A, we need the phone and the line needs to stay connected. The lovely lady at the end of the line said 'don't worry, it's all sorted you DEFINITELY won't be disconnected on X date.
X date rolls around and guess what, we get disconnected. I have to drive to an area we get mobile signal to call BT. Lovely man says it appears that the original lovely lady just set up a new account and didn't actually cancel the disconnection request on the old account. The only way to sort it, says lovely man, is to pay the reconnection fee and wait three weeks until Y date for openreach to reconnect. BT apparently have no control over open reach despite owning them. Me at 8 months pregnant agrees to pay just to make it all start working again.
THE VERY NEXT DAY the line appears to be reconnected again. marvellous we think, fabulous, BT and Openreach have far surpassed our expectations.
A week later we get a message saying that Openreach will be coming to investigate our fault on Y date, we will be charged if it is a wasted call or if the fault is Internal. Call BT to advise reconnection no longer required. Assured by BT that we no longer need someone on Y date, phone is now working. BT dispute this and say the line is disconnected, I point out this cannot be the case as I am currently talking to them on said line..... they agree Openreach Engineer is no longer required on Y date and assure me it will be cancelled.
Y date rolls round and a lovely young man from Kelly communications arrives - he is subcontracted by BT. He's not sure why he is there. He states the phoneline has never been disconnected. He does lots of stuff and tells us there appears to be a fault on the line. He disappears off to investigate. A BT Openreach van then arrives in our yard. They don't knock but carry on down the yard and start fiddling with a mast. Kelly communications man then lands back and after fiddling some more asks us what BT Openreach are doing here. Puzzled looks from us 'we assumed they were with you!?' No no, says Kelly communications, 'I knows nuffink' what's more he informs us that as a Kelly Communications engineer working on behalf of BT he is NOT ALLOWED TO TALK TO BT OPENREACH
Kelly communications and BT Openreach proceed to dance around each other all day refusing to tell each other what they are doing.
After Y date all appears to work fine. Not sure if it's KC or BT who fused it.
40+ phone calls, 11 emails and 6 online help chats is all it took to resolve it. We still ended up paying a reconnection fee for a line that as never disconnected.
I had the baby, all BT matters resolved. Or so I thought
3 weeks I got a bill for the original account held by MIL, the one that changing to a her new property triggered the whole fake disconnection debacle in the first place. The bill is not itemised. MIL confirms she is receving and paying regular bills on that account at house B.
More phone calls to BT promised that the bill would be wiped out as clearly that account no longer exists on that line given everything we have been through. 'You will get a letter' says lovely lady on the line 'confirming that the balance is 0.00 and that the account is closed' letter arrives a week later asking for half the original amount I. The first letter.
I have not yet summoned the strength to call them again.
Fucking hate BT