BT
Anything else? Yesterday I had my office phone cut off by BT, due to non-payment of my first quarter's bill that was sent (along with the reminder and the red reminder) to the wrong address for my office because someone at BT took down my address wrong, and these letters were sent back. Thus, I have no broadband, nor phone. I am posting this from someone else's computer. Sorry about this, but apparently it will take seven days for my phone to be reconnected.
Bear with me, once again.
posted by Andrew Collins @ 11:57 AM
42 Comments
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42 Comments:
I've had murder with BT in the past, and absolutely cannot stand dealing with them.
The fact that they have a monopoly over the telephone lines is frankly criminal.
You really do have my sympathies Andrew, I hope things get sorted out as soon as possible.
Chris
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Same thing happened to me pretty much, they are not very helpful "rules is rules"
as for:
"I'm about to call the press office and actually ask them if they know who I am."
Steady on, you don't want to make matters worse
When all of your current problems with BT are resolved, track down Marcus Brigstocks rants about BT from the Now Show. I doubt you will disagree with anything in them. I am also 100% sure that any blogging you do with regards to the Customer Service side of BT may produce your longest list of added comments to date. They are, quite simply a fucking disgrace.
As before, you have my sympathies on this. Good luck.
G
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Almost everyone I know has similar issues with BT, it's just not good enough.
I work as an IT manager in a law firm, and once spent an hour and ten minutes on hold to them, before speaking to someone who listened to my query and then immediately cut me off.
A few months later they decided to remove seven of our fixed IP addresses, for no reason whatsoever. It took a month for them to give us new ones, much to the displeasure of my bosses.
BT are twats of the highest order.
Do you not live in an area where you could switch to Virgin. They do my connection and I have to say the service I get from them is very good. BT and British Gas know they have biug market share so that is why they shit all over their customers. Fuck em and move to a new supplier.
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When I worked at The Sun you could get anything done. If you were having problems, say deliveries from somewhere not materialising or people not turning up to fix something when they said they would, one mention of The Sun and they were practically there before you could put the phone down. The headed notepaper worked a treat too.
The trouble is, Ntl (Virgin) are clueless cunts as well.
I'm all for the 'don't you know who I am?' bit, but as you say, not wheeled out in anything other than the most dire of circumstances. I feel very sorry for people who don't have the clout of working for a media company or a position of vague influence when dealing with incompetents.
The only tricks I've learnt about complaining is letters are sometimes better than emails. You have to write twice the first reply is a palm off. And always state how much compo you want as they have budget for this, so " I think for loss of business I would compensation to the sum of x pounds" not I demand compensation with no amount. Getting a credit or cheque from the B**gers does cheer you up almost as much as rant. good luck if you move to virgin you'll still have to rent a line from BT(?)
I had some insane problems with BT which I did a blog post about some time ago, although I didn't say in so many words that it was BT. Their incompetency was farcical. Essentially they proved that for a communications company they have no internal communications whatsoever, don't care one bit about their customers and have the mental age of 3 year olds. You have my full sympathy.
otelo
In case the 'don't you know who I am' approach fails.
You're not alone - Robert Fripp's diary covered similar ground earlier this year. (http://www.dgmlive.com/diaries.htm)
Feb 07A letter has been written to our Bredonborough MP, complaining formally about BT’s inability to address its failure in service. Breakdowns are acceptable - hey! things go wrong! This is not a problem, only a difficulty. But appalling service & the utter failure to speedily address a problem – this a problem & is unacceptable.
Feb 08 A letter has been sent to the chairman of BT, copied to the BT PR department, and including yesterday’s letter to our MP.
and the whole of the entry for 12th Feb which begins The BT engineer’s appointment is for this afternoon, after 6 weeks without broadband connection. Worth looking at the rest.
I'd like to recommend Virgin, but since they became VirginMedia their level of service has been cack.
Oh and ref "And all because some cunt at BT took my address down wrong". Language Timothy! ;-)
Andrew I feel for you man but try living with the monopoly that is 'Eircom' in Ireland. That shower of wankers (like BT) control the last mile of cable between your house and the exchange... they also control the exchange. It seems that my ancient (7-year old !) cabling is the reason that my DSL regularly drops for no reason whatsofuckingever (see what I did there ?)
Oh. And hello - I'm in the south of France on Orange wireless broadband in my hotelroom at the end of a glorious family holiday. I just *had* to stop by and say hello.
Don't talk to me about those cretins at BT Broadband - I spent 8 months calling and mailing BT asking them to carry out the apparently herculean task of changing the bill payer's name and bill-payer's address from my previous employer (who paid for the damn thing, and whose premises I had just vacated) to me. Repeatedly I would be told that they had been altered, and I would wait for the bill which never arrived, and then I'd call again. Rinse and repeat. For months.
8 months later and finally some corporate work drone sends me an order form, saying fill this in, its the only way to change you to the new owner. So, I lose all my old mail addresses and webspace, and have the massive inconvinience of telling all and sundry my new webpage address and new mail addresses, as I am not allowed to bring the old ones with me.
Furthermore, it takes BT a further two months to get my new mail addresses working as I am unable to create new secondary mail addresses (which they admit is a 'known fault', but months later is still not a 'fixed fault'); said new addresses were until last week also unable to receive mails either. Irony of ironies, I was a telcoms engineer for 10 years (for some random Nordic types who are very good as 'Disconnecting People'), and at every stage it was me going through the account datafill telling BT what was missing and what was incorrect! Beyond useless. Good luck chap with the Kafkaesque journey through their administrative nightmare!
BR
Mick S.
We've had the double whammy this week of being screwed around by Sky and BT. I won't go on as you clearly have your own phone problems but my wife was greeted with the following sentence when complaining about no broadband despite the engineer telling her we had it...
"Even the Queen has to wait a week for her broadband."
The BT-bashing clip at the end of this link might make you feel marginally better.
Don't let the bastards grind you down.
I switched to Talktalk last year. When the broadband was ready to come on some ass-clown muppet at the exchange "flicked the wrong switch" (the explanation I eventually got) and cut the whole thing dead.
When you've got problems with gas and electric - and believe me, I've had big problems with them as well - at least you can call them up and go mental. With no phone line...
The long queuing to wait to speak to one of their incompetent call centre twonks, cost me on average £10 a call on my mobile. The first fuck-nuts told me I had to speak to a different department but wouldn't transfer me.
Then when the phone was reconnected there wasn't broadband. Cock-knockers, the lot of them.
Cock-knockers, what a wonderful word :-)
Move to Hull. I've always had good service from Kingston Comms, though I daresay they're going the same way as everyone else. Bring a bucket.
Oh, God I am about to get slaughtered... My normal practice is to leave my name but I have to go Anon here...
I work for them, but a few comments (remember I am a customer too):
BT are an easy target and no-one gets it right all the time. The Chairman has a passion for good customer service and realises that there are problems, the recent re-design of the BT operating medel is to address the need to provide excellent customer service and there is a genuine drive to improve. I have had my problems too, but BT does actually care and is trying to fix things... Honest!
Andrew, if I were you I would e-mail the chairman direct. He reads all his e-mails and often answers them himself.
You lot are going to have a real go at me now aren't you...?
AnonoSomeone
I switched to Virgin, and although they're not perfect, they get the job done. When I had a problem with the broadband, an engineer returned my call within half an hour, and had it fixed shortly thereafter. Because its cable its pretty much rock solid.
'AnonoSomeone' you are very brave and sensible. Phoning people up and going mental is rarely productive.
Mostly, unless you happen to be a genius of complaining, it only makes the caller sound like a complete twat.
Having said that, I would become irrational myself if I was deprived of my human right to broadband for any length of time.
Andrew, I was surprised that my mobile account (with T-Mobile) allows me to pay an extra £12 a month and get broadband using my phone as a bluetooth modem - I haven't tried it yet but apparently it works quite well. At the end of the month I can switch back to my normal bill - check if you can do the same, then you would have the bonus of broadband at home for the duration as well.
Why are all communications companies so bad at communicating? It starts with their impenetrable web sites and gets worse from there.
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I'm not particularly a fan of BT from two months after I "upgraded" from their 50GB upload/download capped service to their "unlimited" service.
After two months I found that, while this form of unlimited service doesn't stop you downloading/uploading without coughing up more money (like my old service), once you've reached a certain limit, it instead slows your access to websites during evenings and weekends (which is fine if you don't work Mon-Fri, 9 to 5.30 but I unfortunately do). It went down from the 5Mb service that I had been accustomed to down to 0.5Mb.
This unspecified limit (they apparently make it up as the go along) that triggered this happening to me was much, much lower than my old 50GB cap.
To rub salt into the wounds, my "upgrade" tied me into another 12 month contract with them so I can't go elsewhere!
My favourite BT experience is when they didn't turn up to install my line, they sent me a letter explaining that they had tried to reach me by phone to tell me they weren't coming...
My top tip for getting what's right/what you want out of front line "customer service operatives" is to never accept that you are happy unless you are. The one thing they are afraid of is a direct complaint against them, and who can blame them given their poor working terms and consequent precarious and easy-to-replace position. So when they try to tell you they've done all they can but, crucially, haven't actually solved your problem, refuse to accept that and, politely and calmly suggest alternatives etc. Don't get angry (difficult, I know), and whatever you do, don't hang up. It takes a bit of perseverance but it's always worked for me.
Sorry to hear about this chap.
But the one thing an event like this does show is the richness of the English langage and the dedication and imagination of it's users.
If you happen to find - as I do -bad language, used well, highly amusing there are some rich pickings here.
My particular favourite so far is "ass-clown muppet", which I am finding even more amusing than your Alan Titchmarsh impression of the other day.
Being situated in the badlands of the North of the County, I have intermittent access to water, electric and telecommunications at the best of times.
My current combo of Tiscali broadband, Post Office for telephone via of course BT (facilitated by OpenWork) for the twisted pair lines is a daily trip into a surrealist unknown; what will I get? A connection - or instead a giant cockroach knocking at my door, trying to sell me fruit? Who knows. Camus or Sartre couldn't have written it any better some days.
Quite why I've decided to go on this particular track I'm not sure, but putting all my eggs in BT's basket just seemed to go against the grain.
Anyway, chin up, keep at 'em.
AnotherAnon
One more thing about Talktalk, even though folk seem to be more engaged by the colourful descriptions more than anything...
When the phone was back but the broadband was off, I ended up speaking to one of the second-tier advisors, which meant I had to pay for this call. Having been all around the houses with the other rhubarbs - who obviously had a script of sorts to work to and got hideously lost if you went off the page - I mentioned to this guy that the other people I had spoken to were "a bit rubbish" and he readily agreed.
The problem was, with these deals that everyone is signing up for the companies have to get lots more call operators in, most of whom fail the chew gum/walk in a straight line test. So most of the time you're talking to complete cracksnackers who haven't got a bloody clue.
Could be worse. When I moved into this flat a couple years back getting the gas sorted out was a nightmare. Even after telling them I was moving they went around to my old address to sort out the problem. This was in early December and it was freezing cold. So without central heating or even hot water, I was getting a bit narky.
When I said to one of the women in whichever damn department it was that I hadn't washed for a week and frankly it was a bit unpleasant, she suggest I go around to a friend's house for a wash. That was the point I snapped.
I think her supervisor said sorry about forty times during the conversation and everything was sorted out quickly.
And I should point out that I was working from home at the time. So that stinky guy on the Northern Line wasn't me.
I've taken a couple of my comments down until this is sorted out. Just so you know. I want to make this easier on myself, not more difficult!
Inciidentally, I am posting from someone else's computer. I have spent a lot of the last two weeks sat at someone else's computer. It's a bit like being homeless, except nothing like it. Homepageless?
Ah, the old seven day reconnection trick. Enjoy India.
Homepageless?
Hopefully we're not going to see you loitering outside cyber cafes asking people if they can spare a byte.
...sorry, that's tasteless. But....
I've had BT Broadband for about 5 years and it's never gone wrong. Not one minutes downtime. They've never tried to charge additional for often excessive usage. They've reduced the price and increased my bandwidth several times. I'd think long and hard before I changed supplier.
(I've also just come back from meetings at one of their Midland showcases, where they were very nice to me and fed me)
Marcus Brigstocke was going on about his hatred of BT on The Now Show today. You should talk..
BTW, loved the NME rant on TDTMD. Its breathless delivery brought Ronnie Barker to mind. BT next time?
I heard the Now Show BT thing (first time I've heard the show in years)- I did wonder if the 'they know where you live' joke was Andrew's, possibly arriving via Jon Holmes?
Off Topic I know but with the untimely death of Mike Reid Iwondered if Andrew ever wrote for him during his Eastenders spell ?
Just some thoughts about BT, appreciate that they may not be the most popular of companies..but
BT pays a massive sum of tax pa, no offshore tax dodges
BT is driving reduction in carbon emmissions and impact on climate
When the floods hit, BT had emergency comms there so that people could get in touch - did anyone else mobilise to get this kind of help.
'Fucking hate BT' is a bit harsh, especially when they employ 80,000 people in the UK. Hope you will update us on their response to your problems..
Anon
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