BT woes

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Piff

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A while back the in-laws started having problems with their landline. Started with intermittant faults then became permanent inability to receive incoming calls although they could make outgoing calls. Very occasionally an incoming call would get through.
Father in law is over 80 and is hard of hearing. Mother in law is in late 70’s and doesn’t always fully understand the ins & outs of how to deal with these companies.
They try phoning BT but are connected to a call centre where the staff don’t speak English as their first language. As a result they get no where.
The wife takes on their case and manages to report the fault. She is advised that if it is an internal wiring fault there will be a charge. Potential charge accepted.
Nothing happens so contact made again. Warned of possible charge again. Potential charge accepted.
Formal complaint logged for lack of action.
Eventually 2 separate engineers turn up on the same day. They check internal wiring and find no fault. They advise that a new line needs to be laid from road and advise 2 week timescale.
At the 2 week time we are away on holiday. On return from holiday we receive a call from BT asking if the fault is fixed. Wife says no idea as we have just walked in the door & she hasn’t yet spoken to her parents. The following day she speaks to them and there has been no work carried out and the line is still faulty. Phoned BT to find that the job has been closed as the fault has been cured.
So, new job has to be raised, engineers instructed to visit, agreed new line to be installed and a new 2 week timescale.
Gentleman with English as his first language calls the wife towards the end of that 2 week period. Wife explains the problem and that she is dealing with it on her fathers behalf as he is hard of hearing. Wife requests compensation for loss of line. Gentleman agrees & suggest her father phones the call centre when the fault is fixed the following week. Wife again points out that he cannot understand the call centre staff. So, gentleman agrees to phone her father himself the following Tuesday at 11:30. Father in law waits in all day, no call.
Line working now but was out of action for over a month, losing phone calls & broadband.

Best way to contact BT without dealing with call centre staff?
 
We deal with various parts of BT on regular basis at work for a number of years now..

I could fill several volumes.................... :(
 
As a company that supposedly majors on communications, BT really is spectacularly incompetent when it comes to communication with its customers.

I have had good results in the past by directly emailing Gavin Patterson the CEO and getting the "Chief Executive's Problem Resolution Team" ( :rolleyes: ) on the case. Not sure if he's actually departed yet, but it would be worth dropping him an email.
 
I left virgin media to join BT, almost 2 months later and a lot of chasing on my part I still hadn’t been connected so back to Virgin it was!
 
I find BT online chat is a useful way to discuss any queries with BT, and you have the opportunity to save the transcript. Ive only done this to avoid waiting but have never had a problem understanding staff.
 
Try an email to this team. They report to the Chairman and are usually helpful

[email protected]

I dealt with the old/other team in Enniskillen after writing a snotty letter of complaint to BT's CEO and they were very good. Up to then it was like pulling your own teeth out. The problem was resolved within a couple of months and my next BT deal was £1 per month for everything for 2 years.
 
BT do seem to be stuck in a time warp when it comes to customer experience sometimes.
 
BT do seem to be stuck in a time warp when it comes to customer experience sometimes.
Sometimes I think that they haven't changed their Soviet-Era-style mentality because they are holding their breath for rationalisation........
 
Well when you deal with BT you take a gamble,sometimes they seem to be right on the ball other times well it is complete hell,the last time I moved BT were my provider and so informed me that the phone and broadband was working,of course it was not,I got into a long and interesting phone call using my mobile with a irish guy at BT,it was like we were having a chat in The Bailey in Dublin over a pint,he said at his end it seemed fine so he than said is there any chance you could take the cover of the phone connection in the house and have a look while he tried different things,well after at least 30 mins he said he would ring me back,and then came the news that although I had a telephone line it was a party line,so Openreach would be attending to it the next day.
They turned up after looking at the exchange to tell me that the exchange was a complete mess,engineers have been changing things and not kept any note as to what they had been doing and so a special engineer who sorts these exchanges out will turn up the next day,he did turn up and left his young engineer mate with us who spent the best part of 5 hours going back and forwards to the exchange sorting things out,we had success and were online by 4pm,so my last brush with BT was not bad considering what could have happened.
 
Sometimes I think that they haven't changed their Soviet-Era-style mentality because they are holding their breath for rationalisation........
I cannot get my phone to type the right word either.
 
My wife works for BT/Openreach and her stories of work are like something out of a comic book.

In one year she had 5 different jobs her latest being maps by email for Openreach, previous to that she was planning cable routes for new builds.

Her managers have no idea how to do her job all they seem to require is for her to do the job as quickly as possible which of course makes sense for business but not necessarily good for customers.

When she was doing planning the jobs were supposed to be allocated by a computer system to make it fair, my wife is very customer orientated and would be the person we all want when phoning.

Anyway back to this computer allocated planning job my wife loved she always had managers on her back telling her to work quicker but if she asked said manager(s) to show her how they declined, I promise you these managers had no idea how to do the job as previously they were customer service people whereas my wife had quite a long training period in planning.

These managers were always praising a couple of people in the office for the speed of their work which confused my good lady as they always seemed to fly through their work.

After a while my wife decided to dig further it appears if the computer allocated a more technical job to some people all they had to do was look at the job make a comment and discard for now and select another until they got a straightforward task meanwhile my wife picked up the more technical jobs which she enjoyed but of course took longer.

Staff shortage in BT is chronic as they got rid of lots of planners/linemen etc but then found out they really needed them.

Most of the problems seem to be that BT used to own most of the infrastructure so had no competitors then through legislation it was made possible for new companies to come along and use the lines etc leaving BT having to manage the infrastructure via Openreach.

I’m not saying the competition is a bad thing just explaining the issues.

BT and Openreach are not yet fully separated hence my wife can be ping ponged back and forth between the two companies.

Plusnet are usually top or thereabouts with their service and have UK call centres, this is part of BT but more customer orientated.

Robin
 
Plusnet and service in the same sentence? I've held for an hour waiting to speak to someone. Every time you eventually get through, they then seem to start a period of three working days for them to take action. If they don't actually do anything, then you have to call them back after three days, when they will make a new promise and start a new three working day countdown. I tried reporting faults by email instead; they allow themselves three days to read an email.

I couldn't wait to get out of my contract.
 
Plusnet and service in the same sentence? I've held for an hour waiting to speak to someone. Every time you eventually get through, they then seem to start a period of three working days for them to take action. If they don't actually do anything, then you have to call them back after three days, when they will make a new promise and start a new three working day countdown. I tried reporting faults by email instead; they allow themselves three days to read an email.

I couldn't wait to get out of my contract.
Plusnet were poor for me as well, their broadband felt like Tesco economy against the BT Fortnum and Mason version.
I understand that it's the same cable so can only assume that the Plusnet router was crap, when I suggested using the old BT one they told me I would no longer receive support from them - I was tempted to state the abvious but held my tongue.
 
Plusnet is owned by BT is it not? I have it and been very good. Solid 40mb/s service that streams 4K fromNetflix and the like easily. Not had many problems but when I have have been dealt with quickly.
 
Eventually 2 separate engineers turn up on the same day.

One of the hallmarks of BT, sometimes we used to get 3. My dealings with them though work has often been an utter shambles and I wonder how they make a profit even when operating so inefficiently. It tells a story about their profit margins. We have recently ditched them altogether and our internal phone system is now all cloud based via broadband.
 
FTTC aka BT Infinity 2 with 80Mbps / 20Mbps bandwidth has been around for ten years now./

Over the years ehere was talk about BT trialling v3 (160Mbps /40Mbps) and v4 (320Mbps /80Mbps) but that never happened.

So I contacted BT today about their 'VDSL FTTC on Demand 330Mbps / 30Mbps', a technology which they say became available in early 2018.

Yes it does exist they said, but BT don't sell it directly to consumers, only to ISPs.

And how many 3rd-party ISPs have taken-up BT's offer?

None as yet, because apparently the wholesale price for FTTC on Demand from BT to the ISPs is too high.

Nice :(

So how is this country supposed to make any progress.....?
 

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