Leaving BT-Openworld is Unpleasant!

Big.Wayne · 7 Feb 2008 at 12:32

Hello,

I have been getting people I know to switch their ISP service from BT-Openworld to BE Value, reasons are the BE service works out twice as fast and £12 less each month, anyway. . .

During this process I lumped the task of phoning BT to obtain a MAC code up to the individuals who were upgrading. On two seperate occasions now I have had two clients phone me up afterwards, one was blooming mad and the other was in tears from the experience.

It seems BT are not keen to let customers leave and try all kinds of tactics to stop this happening, starting with the obvious "What if we can do you an improved deal" kinda thing but after this is rejected they begin to turn on the scare tactics. . .

Example one was a friend who runs a busy property developement business, he had a business broadband service and two business phone lines from BT, one for calls and the other for Fax and Internet. BT informed him that if he cancells his BT Openworld account then he will no longer be able to send or recieve faxs on his second line? My friend called me up after this call and was pretty mad at the prospect of losing his Fax. I explained to him that he wouldn't lose his fax as he was just cancelling his ISP service, the phone lines would be unaffected and that BT were just being *****. He got his MAC code in the end, signed himself up to BE and everything went perfectly, his ISP bill was cut in half, his broadband speed doubled and the fax line didn't stop working.

Example two was a friend who runs an Artistic co-operative, theres always someone on the computer surfing or sending emails etc and any downtime to the ISP is always a big drama. This client isn't very technical so I just gave her instruction to tell BT she wanted a MAC code and to except nothing else. Anyway the person from BT really gave her a hard time and started asking all sorts of questions like "Who are you going to" and "How much does it cost" etc to which my friend said "I don't know but I would just like my MAC code please". The BT person told her it was stupid of her to leave BT-Openworld when she didn't know where she was going and started reeling of some analogy about buying a car without seeing it? She informed them that she had been advised by her technician (me) to obtain a MAC code so that she could start an account elsewhere, so they asked for me to be put on the line! of course I wasn't there but this was a strange suggestion as during an earlier call they had refused to speak with me as I wasn't the account holder. After much time on the phone with BT my friend started to become irrate because as hard as she tried she couldn't get the MAC code from them, as soon as she started to lose it they put her on hold for 20mins! When they came back it started all over again, they first informed her that she didn't need the MAC code, they then informed her she would be charge something like £150 by her new ISP to switch over from BT, they then informed her she wouldn't be able to send/recieve emails within a day or two of her getting the MAC code, it just went on and on until my friend was in tears

The end result was she finally got her MAC code, I signed her up to BE, her new serice was twice as fast and she made a £144 pound annual saving on her bill, not to mention we used the BE-BOX to network a second PC and a laptop via wireless, all with about 2 hours downtime total. We invested part of the savings into getting the artistic co-operative a domain name and a full business web package including 1000 pop3 email accounts hosted on a nice mailserver, 4GB of webspace with 40GB monthly traffic, very nice indeed and still £50 left in the pot!.

If anyone else feels like they have been treated badly when leaving BT-Openworld then please share your experiences here.

Because I am slowly but surely switching people from BT to BE I am starting to see a pattern in how BT are handling the calls and its not pleasant. If it continues I will do something to highlight the fact they aren't playing nice.

As I believe most situations can be resolved I have a few suggestions that BT should act upon. . .

Get Competitive with your rivals that are poaching customers from you left right and centre, your service is not up to standard and you charge to much.
Treat your existing customers better, offer them discounts when you introduce a new package, offer them a free BT home hub etc, don't wait for them to call you before you slash their bill.
Have the good grace to know when a customer wants to leave your service and don't make the process any harder than it needs to be.

marc2003 · 7 Feb 2008 at 13:03

there's some nasty ******* who work in the MAC code department at BT.

my experience - http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17754290

long story short, i was bullied. first of all i was refused my mac code. then i was told my connection would be ceased within 48 hours if she gave it to me. she then hung up. i complained to the CEO's office and at least got my mac sorted and 50 quids of M&S vouchers as compensation.

i'm sure many people who don't know the ins and outs just give up and stay.

box · 7 Feb 2008 at 14:43

Looking at these posts, it makes me very glad I chose to switch to Virgin and not BE from BT Openworld. None of this MAC code nonsense and all the negotiation with BT is handled by the cable company. A couple of things annoyed me though, the first being that BT were very reluctant to release my phone number from their line so Virgin could assign it to my cable. This meant the VM engineer had to spend 30min on the phone to BT. The second is that I received a bill about a week after terminating my service with BT for the tidy sum of £360, under the description of 'contract cancellation fee'. This was clearly in error and after I presented the evidence over the phone the charge was dropped. But still, it's not nice seeing a demand for that much money on your doorstep!

Something slightly amusing was that a BT sales rep phoned to presuade me to renew my contract at the last moment. Coincidentally, this was midway through my VM installation

The rep didn't seem to take in the fact that I didn't want the renew, so I put the engineer on the phone...seemed to shut him up nicely

DavidQ · 7 Feb 2008 at 15:51

I had a similar experience with my BT Business; I had canceled and received my mac code after much aggravation and phone calls. After the direct debit was canceled and I moved to UKFSN I was happy as larry until 3 months later I received a bill for 214.00. I phoned BT and they said an email to our complaints department, which I did and only received the automated response. Thought nothing of it and another 3 months went by, another letter so I called them again and they said the exact same thing. This happened another two times and I finally got a response saying they couldn't deal with it and would pass the issue on to another team. One month before Christmas I received a letter from a debt collection agency, however due to time constraints with work I was unable to make any phone calls, the following week I received another letter however it was threatening court action and item repossession from my house. I called the agency who said they would cut the bill in half if I settled it over the phone. By the way this bill was because they had lied to me in the T&C and tied me into a two year contract based on blatant lies which I won't go into in too much detail. I explained the situation to the debt collectors who gave me a number for BT, I phoned them up and spoke to someone from senior management in their office in Scotland somewhere, he had the bill taken care of and I received a credit note shortly after and 3 months free line rental due to the fact they had involved a debt collection agency without even responding to my e-mails, I hate BT with an absolute passion and despise their bully tactics they use on their customers.

kmufc77 · 7 Feb 2008 at 19:36

DQN said:
I had a similar experience with my BT Business; I had canceled and received my mac code after much aggravation and phone calls. After the direct debit was canceled and I moved to UKFSN I was happy as larry until 3 months later I received a bill for 214.00. I phoned BT and they said an email to our complaints department, which I did and only received the automated response. Thought nothing of it and another 3 months went by, another letter so I called them again and they said the exact same thing. This happened another two times and I finally got a response saying they couldn't deal with it and would pass the issue on to another team. One month before Christmas I received a letter from a debt collection agency, however due to time constraints with work I was unable to make any phone calls, the following week I received another letter however it was threatening court action and item repossession from my house. I called the agency who said they would cut the bill in half if I settled it over the phone. By the way this bill was because they had lied to me in the T&C and tied me into a two year contract based on blatant lies which I won't go into in too much detail. I explained the situation to the debt collectors who gave me a number for BT, I phoned them up and spoke to someone from senior management in their office in Scotland somewhere, he had the bill taken care of and I received a credit note shortly after and 3 months free line rental due to the fact they had involved a debt collection agency without even responding to my e-mails, I hate BT with an absolute passion and despise their bully tactics they use on their customers.

ive had very simiar problems last part of last year with BT business they are the worst company i have ever dealt with they lie on the phone twist things trick you into contracts that arent explained to you probably i wont bore you in too much detail but it took me months to sort out my mac code after completing a 12 month contract with them and eventually my compaint was dealt with by BT chairmans assocastion who were brilliant and had my account cancelled eventually. has nothing to do with me complaining to ISPA no im sure. i will never ever use BT again for landline and broadband.

marscay · 7 Feb 2008 at 20:38

everytime you ring BT the person you speak to will never give the same advice, unless you know exactly what you want to do it's a nightmare.

then again they aren't the only cowboys in town - i received a bill recently for my broadband from Bulldog who i left 3 years ago, CS in this country is just shocking.

FatRakoon · 8 Feb 2008 at 03:06

A few years ago, BT told me that my bandwitdth had exceeded the maximum and they told me that I had to pay £1 to every 1MB over... The thing was, taht this was from SEPT and they told me this in March the following year and guess what? - my useage was kind of like 2 to 3GB each of those months so it wasnt too far off a grand.

I told them that there is no way I can or will pay this and they cockily said that if I dont pay it, I would have to look elsewhere... The guy on the phone was definitely being very smarmy and oyu could tell in the tone of his voice.

I said can I put you on hold and I phoned up XLN with my mobile and asked abotu moving from BT to them and they said that they could have it done within the hour, and when I went back to the guy in BT, he was still on the phone fair play and I told him that I have just been on the phone and that I will be leaving them within the hour and going to XLN..

Kind of shut him up.

And guess what? in about 50 minutes, I had a phone call thanking me for moving to XLN and that my phone line was now on XLN as of ( the time about 10 minutes ago ).

Even more funny is that I never once was kicked off the internet and it was only during a system checkup that it failed to log back onto the internet about 3 weeks later... I realised that I still had the BT info and I changed it to XLNs login info and I was back on!

Never bothered wasting my time with BT ever since, and oh, Im on 16MB Broadband, and I have never had a single serious issue with XLN in the 4 or so years I have been with them.

I did have a time when I was unable to send emails out, but this was because the ychanged the SMPT from XLN to MANAGEDBROADBAND but again, I had a phone call from them explaining this a few days prior and an Email a few days after, but it was also on their website, so I was never without.

Brilliant.

And its only £9.99 a month too!