To ask MN to help me solve my problem?

[BTatemyhamster]

BT/TalkTalk/Plusnet (depending on who you believe) switched off our landline and broadband in error (theirs not ours) on 6th March. The earliest reconnection date was 20th March - tomorrow.

DH rang BT today to check all was well for tomorrow only to be told the reconnection has been cancelled. His call to them was then cut off, he rang back, several times and was variously kept on hold, cut off, assured someone would ring back blah blah blah.

So here we are at 1900 on 19th and the line remains cancelled. We have no idea why and aren't in a position to drop work, childcare, life in order to dedicate ourselves to making successful contact with BT.
So no hope for tomorrow and no confidence in BT.

DH works from home so needs broadband for business reasons, it's not just netfix and amazon!

Please MN hive wisdom, tell us what works in these situations. How can we get BT to take a smidgin of interest in us? WHAT DO WE HAVE TO DO TO GET OUR BROADBAND BACK?!

Tweet them and keep tweeting

I'd be on twitter (although without broadband that could be a problem) and/or escalating.

I second tweeting, publicly calling companies out gets noticed

I fourth (or fifth or sixth) tweeting. They'll do anything to avoid the bad publicity.

DH did tweet when it first happened. They appear not to care.

I suppose they're used to it now. No point me doing it, I have no followers!

I had this - even with a fairly significant amount of followers and access to their "influencer help team"; they just apologised a lot and said it couldn't be done any faster, and then that we shouldn't be relying on domestic internet connections for business work - I work from home too. If you're getting a business line installed; you might have more sway.

Not much use with no internet but I've always found the live online chat to produce results.

I think we're over the initial dismay at how long reconnection took. It's the reconnection being cancelled that has us at our wits end. I mean, what do we have to do to avoid getting lost in an endless cycle of waiting and cancellations? I assume we now have to wait another 14 days (at least) to get reconnected. Personal or business use, that is shit service and we didn't even do anything wrong.

Sorry you had same thing Anchor. I wonder how often this happens?

yes, maybe we'll try that tomorrow Clevs, less chance of being randomly cut off. We do have some service via a mifi unit. Enough to email and MN but not stream.

BT are shit and don’t care at all. We were trying to switch to them a couple of years ago (DH wanted BT sport) the year “lost” our order 3 times, it would get to the stage of transferring and then somehow get into a stuck position in the queue which they had no way of rectifying so would have to start all over again. I think it took over 2 months to actually transfer and then the speed was rubbish. We also had issues when we left them. I would never go back to them.

Apart from tweeting/FB the only other thing I can think of is contacting on of those consumer champions that some of the newspapers have or just choose someone else.

Hmm DH getting defensive now. We have a complaint. I am not sure he's been forceful enough in the escalation of it.
I'm not going to say that as it's a criticism and to criticise a man who's been on hold to BT all day could be seen as unwise, especially as he's cooking dinner (hot water) and doing maths homework with DD2 while I vent on MN, scowl and shout at DD1 for taking the mifi to her room (obvs her needs are more important than anyone else's). Seriously the entire family unit could break down under the pressure of no youtube and netflix internet (for work) . . .

BT are bloody disgraceful. Plusnet are on the whole fine. As BT have broken your contract by not providing the service change providers?

Hear hear TwoBlueFish. I think we should ditch BT altogether. They're beyond shit.
I don't know what is beyond shit. But BT is there too.

I'm going to ring them at 0800 tomorrow and press the escalation button.
And ring them every hour tomorrow and press it again and again and again. and on live chat.

This is bringing back so many bad memories.

In the end, we had to walk away. Switched to Talk Talk and I refuse to deal with BT ever again.

Not helpful I realise but not sure you can achieve anything resembling proper customer service. Every time you phone up you have to start from the beginning, it's painful.

To be clear, we're not having hot water for dinner; hot water is involved in cooking dinner (pasta). Things aren't that bad.

That's what DH says, Awrite, that's a huge part of the frustration.

Thank you GardenGeek.

If I knew where BT lived, I'd go round there and chain myself to the front door. Or, more satisfyingly, cut their phone lines.

I used to work for BT and yes they're shit.

The customers who ended up getting things sorted the quickest were the ones who made a polite but persistent nuisance of themselves. So always be calm but just keep contacting them every hour, asking to speak to a manager. The same manager if possible. Once the manager has been disturbed a few times they will pull their finger out and get it sorted to make you go away.

Good luck.

Make a complaint and tell them you're considering referring them to the ombudsmen for such shitty service.

I had a similar dispute with npower which, through their absolute incompetence, spiralled into us getting letters threatening bailiffs 1 day before xmas. The issue was literally nothing to do with us and no amount of calls could get them to listen. Got ombudsmen involved and npower were suddenly all over it like a rash. I didn't drop it with ombudsmen though and they ordered npower to pay compo 😁