I loathe having to deal with BT...

Jelster

Jelster

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In January we had issues with our broadband, which we eventually got fixed in early Feb. However, we had to return the "Hub", which I did, as they requested, and I have tracked it to show that it was delivered. Last month they charged me £50 for "not returning equipment".

Have you ever tried contacting them about your bill? First of all they make it difficult, as you phone the support number and it skips past the "Talk to somebody about your bill" option until you listen to all the options a 2nd time. Then I wait 25 minutes listening to the same 3 or 4 tracks on a loop until it sounds like it's actually ringing at the other end, only for it to disconnect. It's done that twice. That's an hour of my day I won't get back...

Absolutely s*** customer service. What's worst of all, is that very few of the options to go elsewhere are any better.
 
I agree - they are dreadful. For a communications company, they most certainly can't. :mad:

They mis-sold me a phone six months ago and I phoned to tell them so on the day I received it. It took them two weeks to send me a return bag and label, but then said they hadn't received it three weeks later. I phoned again, was passed from one person/department to another several times before they said they would refund me (even though they maintained that they hadn't received it). It was almost six weeks before I got the money back.

I had a similar experience with them ten years ago and swore I'd never use them again. Serves me right for doing so I suppose. :facepalm:
 
Hmmmm!

Does not sound good at all :(

In 2020 our phone was with BT and the BB with PlusNet. PlusNet gave me a good deal for switching the phone over to them but the deal ends this June.

Apart from me needing to try to get a another equally good deal (or as close as I can get to it???) with PN the OH suggested I/we ask what BT can do for us......your experience does not give me any confidence in even looking at BT :thinking:
 
I've been with BT for years, yes there have been a few problems along the way,
(it tends to be aging copper wire ( FTTC only) failing.
but usually sorted quickly by their live chat function.
Failing that I go straight to the top and email the CEO's office..
philip.jansen@bt.com.
 
Cobra said:
I've been with BT for years, yes there have been a few problems along the way,
(it tends to be aging copper wire ( FTTC only) failing.
but usually sorted quickly by their live chat function.
Failing that I go straight to the top and email the CEO's office..
philip.jansen@bt.com.
Click to expand...

Thanks Chris, I have found this working well once before a number of years ago when they kept telling me "we can't find a fault". Me, being in the same line of business told what the fault was and where it most likely happening, sending an email to the then CEO. It got sorted within a week.
 
We have been with BT for years for the phone and since the early(ie dial up) days of the internet, then copper wire broadband(which gave us, a mere eight miles from Trafalgar Square, 7Meg down and 0.8Meg up, if the wind was in the right direction! Now fibre is much better. The best thing about BT is the reliability; in all the years it VERY, VERY rarely failed.

However, the very few times I have talked to help line it was very difficult getting any sense out of them - once it took ages to convince the bloke on the other end of the line that if all the internet capable devices in the house could not connect, then there was little point checking the setup of each device individually, .and the BT website is so labyrinthine that a certain figure from Greek mythology would have been proud to have designed it.

Dave
 
I'm delighted to say that since March 26th I am entirely free of any branch of BT Group plc (broadband is with a local full fibre, voice service with SIPgate, mobile with an MVNO who don't use EE)

Hated them from the first time I had to deal with them back in the late 80s

I'd rather spend £11 with a competitor (except Beardie Branson) than £10 with BT
 
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hunnymonster said:
I'm delighted to say that since March 26th I am entirely free of any branch of BT Group plc (broadband is with a local full fibre, voice service with SIPgate, mobile with an MVNO who don't use EE)

Hated them from the first time I had to deal with them back in the late 80s

I'd rather spend £11 with a competitor (except Beardie Branson) than £10 with BT
Click to expand...

Branson doesn’t own a competitor to BT does he?
 
Branson "owns" very little - he licenses his Virgin brand widely... eg VirginMediaO2 https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...-million-uk-premises-with-fttp-broadband.html

My past experience with his various partners (trains, planes, communications, etc) indicates that his "legendary customer services" would far be better described as "mythical" but d really prefer that the company in question simply delivered the service they were contracted to supply.
 
Tringa said:
However, the very few times I have talked to help line it was very difficult getting any sense out of them - once it took ages to convince the bloke on the other end of the line that if all the internet capable devices in the house could not connect, then there was little point checking the setup of each device individually.
Click to expand...
Probably because the customer service people have little, if any, knowledge of how things actually work. They do faultfinding by script and can’t deviate. Classic example: I used to work for BT and although I worked for most of the time on electrical maintenance, I got seconded to the phone side for a couple of years. We used to do our own fault finding with the help of the staff of another exchange but were told to liaise with an office in India at one point. Everything was scripted on their end. They’d go through umpteen steps to sort out the fault (that anyone with an ounce of sense would’ve already tried) and then finally tell you to pull out the exchange circuit board and reseat it. I used to point out the problem this would cause, but it was like banging your head against a wall. The issue was there were hundreds of other customer lines sharing the same circuit board, who all also lost their service until the card rebooted, but it was always “No, no, please pull out and reseat the card”.

Oh, and even though I worked for BT for 25 years…..I’ve got Plusnet for broadband. ;)
 
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boogie man said:
Probably because the customer service people have little, if any, knowledge of how things actually work. They do faultfinding by script and can’t deviate. Classic example: I used to work for BT and although I worked for most of the time on electrical maintenance, I got seconded to the phone side for a couple of years. We used to do our own fault finding with the help of the staff of another exchange but were told to liaise with an office in India at one point. Everything was scripted on their end. They’d go through umpteen steps to sort out the fault (that anyone with an ounce of sense would’ve already tried) and then finally tell you to pull out the exchange circuit board and reseat it. I used to point out the problem this would cause, but it was like banging your head against a wall. The issue was there were hundreds of other customer lines sharing the same circuit board, who all also lost their service until the card rebooted, but it was always “No, no, please pull out and reseat the card”.

Oh, and even though I worked for BT for 25 years…..I’ve got Plusnet for broadband. ;)
Click to expand...

I have to say, after selling professional IT and Internet solutions for 25 years, it really made my blood boil when they asked me to "switch the hub off and then back on" when I told them I had done this twice already. They can't seem to get past that point, I even said to them "there is noise on the telephone line so it's probably a physical fault". When the engineer turned up about 3 days later, I told him the same thing, he picked the phone up and said, "yeah, that's probably a fault on the line somewhere". Turns out it was the drop wire on the telegraph pole across the road, which was at full capacity, so I had to wait another week for them to organise a cherry picker and run a new set of copper cables up the pole.
 
Good news,

After my post yesterday I went onto their FB page and left them a very sharp (but not rude) message. Then this morning, I get a text message saying "Thanks for returning your equipment and we will refund you the £50."
 
It's the scam calls from distant call centres claiming to be BT that annoy me....... although I had one claiming to be from Virgin Media the other day.......
 
hunnymonster said:
Branson "owns" very little - he licenses his Virgin brand widely... eg VirginMediaO2 https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.p...-million-uk-premises-with-fttp-broadband.html

My past experience with his various partners (trains, planes, communications, etc) indicates that his "legendary customer services" would far be better described as "mythical" but d really prefer that the company in question simply delivered the service they were contracted to supply.
Click to expand...

As I thought. He doesn’t own a competitor to BT.
VMO2 is a 50/50 joint venture owned by Liberty Global and Telefónica.
 
But they pay a licensing fee to Branson to use the Virgin name... Might be a risibly small amount that goes to him but it is a fraction of a red cent more than I wish to send his way.
 
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