I’ve had the sky/BT buck passing exercise when the engineer turned up earlier than his allotted time, and BT tried to charge sky 130 notes, who tried and failed to charge me. This happened twice. After the second incident, and being told I’d have to wait another two weeks for the installation, I decided to take matters into my own hands. BT refused to talk to me, I wasn’t their customer. Sky could only deal with openreach, and BT wouldn’t give me a number for them to complain. So, I went to the BT tower in Belfast, and demanded to speak to someone, and wasn’t going to leave their reception, or stop loudly discussing their abysmal performance until it was sorted. Someone phoned down to reception, apologised and asked me how quickly I could return to the house, as he assured me an engineer would be there before I was. He was right too…

I wouldn’t get too excited about the “Fault Escalation Team”. BT employees randomly invent team names to try and make out there is some progress on your call and somebody very important sounding is dealing with the issue.

They also start asking you daft questions about the hardware at your house if you start sounding stroppy, I think it’s cheap psychological warfare to calm you down, and again to make out that somebody is working on the problem.

It’s sad that I know this – but your mind wanders when you spend 60 mins on hold a couple of times a week.

I feel your pain! This thread inspired me to take further action against a large high street chemist who won’t stop sending me e-mails. This has been going on since December 2012!!!

I can’t unsubscribe as it doesn’t recognise my account, I’ve sent loads of e-mails and they refer to their IT Dept. The final straw was when they wanted to telephone me to discuss this. WTF?

Anyway, I fired off an e-mail to their CEO informing him of his company’s incompetence. Guess what? It was returned to the bimbo who was dealing with it originally. 🙄

I despair, I really do. 👿

Round 47:

On 18/03/13 14:58, eileen wrote:
Hello Paul
I will be looking through our records for all faults raised in the last year.
I will check with you on Thursday if this is acceptable to ensure your broadband is still stable?

Kind Regards
Eileen

And my reply:

Hi Eileen,
ah so that would be the last 12 months and would not include the 4 weeks outage at the start of our contract with BT and the early problems we encountered?
Unfortunately, I am off site on Thursday but by all means contact me by email or mobile phone and I will check with the team here in the office that all is as it should be.
Regards, Paul.

I wouldn’t get too excited about the “Fault Escalation Team”. BT employees randomly invent team names to try and make out there is some progress on your call and somebody very important sounding is dealing with the issue.

Actually that’s a load of old cobblers and I am in a far better position than you to make that statement.

As one or two people on here know I have helped in the past with their BT problems which probably gives you a clue.

There are dedicated escalation/complaints teams within both BT and Openreach who on the whole have some very helpful and knowledgeable people working within them.

Good manners cost nothing and behave how you expect to be treated.

@TT Problem is, people run out of good will and the result is the sentiment exressed here. There’s only so much shite people can put up with before they smell incompetence/conspiracy.

You’re right, out of ~150k employees, they can’t all be crap but that’s certainly the impression the poor old punter is left with when their contact(s) make a national sport of being just rubbish.

No offence intended and I’m sure you’re one of the good eggs.

Ex BT customer (personal and professional).

I certainly won’t defend some of what I see and hear going on and believe me it ain’t pretty

Not an easy company to work for thse days and old timers like myself (38 years service)are being driven out by a ruthless management hell bent on “managing” people out

I’m not bothered by people slagging off BT, but there are still some of us that do try our best for the customer and actually know what we are doing

Our current pay talks are going nowhere, how can you deal with people who say “inflation is interesting, but not really relevant to pay discussions”

So try and at least be civil please because the policy makers are certainly not those you are dealing with

@TT – quite understand but the problems we have had are with people at the workface not caring or doing their jobs correctly – I cite the Openreach engineer who first came to our offices – surly, rude and arrogant, which was a great start to our journey with BT, it has gone down from there with the exception of the engineer we have had out to us the last few times (note few – the problems keep coming and none are any fault of ours even though I have been threatened that we will be charged £149 per visit because they were our fault).
It takes a ridiculous amount of time to be heard by anyone who give a fig about the damage that is being done to our business and this is only because I launched a public attack on Twitter, FB, a couple of portals and emails to the CEO I hate to think how bad it must be for people who may not be as bloody minded as me. This is why people become rude and intolerant and why, sometimes, the good people do get an earful. Not an excuse for being rude but it certainly is a reason.

Who can you use from business broadband and phones if not BT?

Was a BT home customer, have now escaped their clutches but in the process of setting up shop and very keen to avoid their business omnishambles.

Are you sure the rude engineer was actually an Openreach employee, awful lot out there lately who are contractors
Not having much joy with some of them, should say so on the van or their passcard

Yes I do understand the frustration and can only imagine how hard it is when nobody deals with your problems in a professional way.

Plenty of people do contact the CEO’s along with their MP’s and media of all description. Glad your problems seem to be on the mend and Eileen is obviously one of the caring staff I mentioned earlier

Are you sure the rude engineer was actually an Openreach employee.

Well, I asked him if he was on site to set up the simultaneous install he said “no, just to do a survey.” I asked him if he could explain the email sent to me by BT Retail saying it would all happen on the date on which his visit to our office was happening. He tugged at the Openreach logo on his polo shirt and said “Openreach me pal, nothing to do with me.” then he got in his van and drove off.

That was after arriving on site and not knowing the name of the company he had come to see and he had forgotten his paperwork which he freely admitted whilst shrugging his shoulders and laughing.

As you can see it made such an impression on me I can remember it clearly to this day.

The problem with BT, IME and ably demonstrated by your engineer there, is that they don’t seem to be a ‘big company’ so much as they’re a conglomerate of little silos of teams all doing different things, and the communication between them all is … let’s say “inconsistent.” Within that you’ve got departments who are absolutely stellar, and ones which are an embarrassment.

The engineer doesn’t surprise me remotely, it’s the same as going into a department store and asking about your iPhone in the gardening department. The chap’s correct in that it’s bugger all to do with him; however, the better CS thing to do would be to try and hook you up with someone who could help, or even just point you in the right direction. Assuming he even knew ofc, which is unlikely. Openreach are, for all practical purposes, a different company.

Unfortunately, at a corporate level they still have the whiff of “we’re BT and everyone else can toe the line”, which is ultimately going to be their undoing.

IME / IMHO.

Can’t talk about the business side of things but I had loads of trouble and odd extra charges with bt a few years ago on a residential account, I refuse to deal with them or any company that’s part of them! Awful company to deal with imo

And we have their final offer:

Hello Paul.

Thank you for your e-mail.

We normally look for credits to be applied as soon as possible after service issues have been rectified. However, on this occasion I will take this in to consideration.

If I may explain, broadband is not a guaranteed service and as such is not covered under BT’s Customer Service Guarantee where compensation is paid.

This said, I do not wish to appear unsympathetic to the difficulties you have experienced and therefore, as a gesture of goodwill I would like to offer you a credit of £336 which is equivalent to 12 months Broadband rental credit. This offer is made in full and final settlement of all matters.

Should you wish to accept this offer please call me on 0800 4561014 or by responding to my e-mail.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Kind Regards

Doesn’t seem too bad an offer?

In comparison to the direct and indirect costs to the business it’s at least an order of magnitude to low but, without the funds to begin a legal war to recover ny damages and the assumption that T&Cs will be a tight as a gnat’s chuff, i think we will accept graciously.

We now have a log book next to the router in which to log any future outages and these will be broadcast wide and far on websites, forums and social media. A private monopoly is a bad thing, this is just one shining example of that being true.

My response:

Hi Eileen,
As this is you final offer I will accept on behalf of the company. I would also like to point out that with a monthly bill of c£50 from BT for the combined service it is in fact somewhat short of the annual charges your company has made to Vividink during the period of disruption since April 2011. Bear in mind that if we have to abandon the office for the lack of broadband the telephone line provided by BT is somewhat redundant.
We have taken steps to ensure that we can report any future outages in detail and accurately in the future and I will be in touch should the problems recur.
Will the payment be in the form of a direct payment or, as you mention, free broadband for 12 months.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Regards, Paul.

In comparison to the direct and indirect costs to the business it’s at least an order of magnitude to low

No service provider will offer a contract with cover for indirect costs!

I don’t think It was necessarily her final offer. It was offered in “full & final settlement” ie once accepted, you agree that there’s no further claim

You seem to have accepted it but also still haggling for more. Make clear which it is, though I suspect she’s going to take “accept” as the message as it’s easy for them (and cheap, as you said)

broadband is not a guaranteed service and as such is not covered under BT’s Customer Service Guarantee where compensation is paid.

What?? That’s shocking, that really is. I wonder what actually are “guaranteed services” then?

I think you’ll find all broad band providers and mobile phone companies are the same….

I wonder what actually are “guaranteed services” then?

Bugger all really, other than providing a nominal service.

The small print of any ISP will reveal just how much they won’t want to actually bother providing you with a decent service; the bits like ‘broadband speed may not reach the speed advertised, especially at peak times’ or words to similar effect. Meaning that they can perfectly legally lure you in with ‘gazillion megathings’ speed boasts, yet you’ll only ever get 0.3kbps. It’s downright immoral. I got out of a BT contract after months of nonsense by picking out the bit in their advertising spiel that claimed I’d be able to watch online streamed video (the speed was not even sufficient to sustain an audio stream), and told them that the service was ‘not as advertised’ for that reason. They tried claiming I owed them for the remainder of the contract, but they soon gave up when I told them they’d have to take me to court.

Openreach are, for all practical purposes, a different company.

It’s handy that, isn’t it? Allows BT to circumvent the monopoly laws. About time that was changed. Bring the physical infrastructure back into state ownership I say, and make the ISPs pay to use it. And impose minimum standards of service. Force them to actually give a shit about their customers.

@scaredypants – there comes a time at which I have to decide whether the emotional energy required to keep battling them is better deployed to win more customers. If it is a cash payment it will fund a small marketing campaign and if tbat results in 2 new customers then I will draw a line under this episode and be far better prepared for the next one.

If there is one thing I will take from this, and would encourage others to do likewise, is to shout from the rooftops when things like this happen. Social media is your friend.

Seems BT actually want/expect you to use social media to contact them/complain;

Second Story Down

rogerthecat – with the advent of 4G networks I’d be looking at whether a failover 4G connection could be installed for you. It’s clearly a major issue for your business when the phone/broadband fail and an alternative comms mechanism might be a good insurance.

What?? That’s shocking, that really is. I wonder what actually are “guaranteed services” then?

Thing is, that’s right. ADSL is very cheap in comparison to, say, leased line services. Part of the reason for this is, it’s not a guaranteed service; if you want a high availability service with proper SLAs, you pay considerably more for it.

Even with a leased line the SLA usually allows 1 or 4 hour outages. If you’re really serious, you need leased lines from multiple providers over different physical infrastructure. Which is great until you find that one of the providers sub contracts the work out to another of your providers, removing the diverse routing.

I agree with the comments about BT even though my wife’s ex BT.