BT Are A Bunch Of Cretins

[Vern1961]

About a month ago had to go through the rigmarole with BT to get our Broadband package down from the staggering £58.99 they were going to put it up to, down to a slightly more reasonable £39.99. All agreed on the phone and told it would go through. Today get the email to check my latest bill and see that the forthcoming monthly charges for Broadband are listed as £58.99 and no sign of the discounted rate, with our direct debit jumping from £41 to £75 (which is more than £58.99 anyway).

Cue irate call just now from me to 150 and felt like I got nowhere. They have a record of my previous call but no one there with the authority to listen to the call... It has had to be logged as an "offline" complaint, i.e. presumably 9 to 5 people. Told them in no uncertain terms if it's not sorted we will be terminating and going elsewhere and put up with having to change the email addresses. Still didn't cut much ice nor did asking to speak with a supervisor.

Has anyone else encountered this with BT and if so was the matter (eventually) resolved satisfactorily? It is bad enough they even contemplate charging such an outrageous amount in the first place without having to go through the rigmarole of haggling each time the contract ends to a more reasonable price.

 

[Diddums]

All ISPs suck massive donkey balls. Their CS is embarrassing.

 

[apg]

Not BT but recently renewed my internet contract with virgin and they kept my payment at the old rate instead of the new. So these issues are not just a BT thing. However, The process of complaining and rectifying the issue was simple and easy.

 

[PiKe]

Never paid more than £25 a month for my phone and internet, I will jump ship to someone else and take advantage of new customer deals if needs be.

 

[firstborn]

Took me 12 months to convince BT that my line was directly connected to a fibre enabled cabinet... good luck.

 

[Blue160]

When my parents moved to BT broadband BT connected the wrong house. That took weeks to sort out without much in the way of apology. I think Cretins is pretty accurate.

 

[Rroff]

Every time, bar one, I've had an actual issue with BT I've had to escalate to executive level complaint just to get fairly simple things resolved! most of the time I've found BT just works and works well but when something goes wrong you are often left head butting a brick wall

On the other hand was impressed the last time I had to deal with them though - engineer came out, came to the same conclusion and plan of action as I had unprompted and then got on with it, hard working, helpful, did a great job and even cleaned up after himself and left with everything fixed and working properly.

 

[DragonQ]

The real problem with the industry IMO is that your ISP are essentially a middle-man between you and your line and that means problems are always dealt with slowly. Both because there'll be several layers ("sir you need to try resetting your router before we get an engineer out") and just because of the extra hop in communication. If customers could deal with Openreach directly to rectify line faults it'd be a lot easier.

Choosing an ISP with UK based customer support helps though, and I doubt I'd ever go back to BT again (unless they were the only one offering FTTP or something).

 

[Meatball]

My BT contract is up soon, currently paying £29.99 for 80/20Mb FTTC. Apparently I had amazing deals waiting when I logged into my account. I was offered this:

Sign me up?

 

[Avalon]

I had two deadlock letters from members of the CEO/Executive level complaints team before I eventually told them who specifically to contact within OR and BT to resolve a very simple issue. Painful isn't the word. HOWEVER what you've done is go off half cocked, 150 were never going to be able to resolve your complaint at initial point of contact and take what you say at face value, obviously they would need to listen to the call and obviously that will take some time, be realistic, this is a business with millions of customers handling tens of thousands of calls per day across multiple centres, it's not unreasonable that they need a few days to pull a call and listen to it.

 

[lltfdaniel]

Well i am not surprised many people have complained about bt one way or another.

Reason why i am not surprised is because i did research on what people think about bt, sky, plusnet etc on trust pilot for one,

I am not 100% expert on the service as that can be a mixed bag, where it can be good or bad.

But thanks to people who complain i can avoid such circumstances.

For me with zen no problems first hand here,

I appreciate any body's opinion on the service they get as i learn from that

Dan.

 

[flea.rider]

just change when your time is up .. do it every 12 months plusnet then back to ee .. £25-28 quid for 64meg ..

 

[Vern1961]

Thanks for the feedback. I accept it could take time to investigate but it seems whoever I spoke to in December can't have updated the account properly.

This is the first time BT has made a mess of the account - previous times when I've gone through he haggle process there's never been an issue.

The problem with swapping is having to keep changing your email address (and they know it), last time I came close BT wanted £7.99 a month to keep it going. Would be cheaper to buy a basic web hosting package and use the domain email!

Anyhow hopefully it will resolve, guess just need to be patient and prepare to escalate if necessary.

 

[PiKe]

Never use isp provided email, problem solved.

 

[MassiveJim]

My experience with bt billing is similar.
Always have an issue following anything that causes a change, ie end of contract, service calls etc.
Very annoying that they promise you things on the phone, then don't do them. Different people on the same team tell you completely different things. Etc etc.

 

[Ali195]

Thanks for the feedback. I accept it could take time to investigate but it seems whoever I spoke to in December can't have updated the account properly.

This is the first time BT has made a mess of the account - previous times when I've gone through he haggle process there's never been an issue.

The problem with swapping is having to keep changing your email address (and they know it), last time I came close BT wanted £7.99 a month to keep it going. Would be cheaper to buy a basic web hosting package and use the domain email!

Anyhow hopefully it will resolve, guess just need to be patient and prepare to escalate if necessary.

£7.99! I had the same BT email for what must have been 15 years (@btyahoo.com to then internet.com) but stopped using their ISP products years back. At first they charged £1.50pcm to keep the address, fine whatever, then £3, then £5.50 until it started getting awfully close to Spotify & Netflix prices but for....an email address. I rang & told them it was getting silly now, they offered a deal/disconnect for 6 months but in the end realised just how ridiculous it was & completely cancelled. For equivalent £2 a month got my own domain .com address & email with it. Was scary at first but glad I did it.

 

[NZXT30]

£39.99 is still really high unless you're on their ultra fast above 100Mb package.

 

[ttaskmaster]

£39.99 is still really high unless you're on their ultra fast above 100Mb package.

We're paying the same for 0.7Mbps, because it's the only (affordable) service we can get out here.

Are GigaClear any better?

 

[ANDARIAL]

Never use isp provided email, problem solved.

Definitely this

 

[Avalon]

Pretty sure relying on ISP email was a thing in the 90’s, we’re a good 20+ years since that should have ever been something people used as a reason not to switch ISP, let alone paid actual money for.