yes the title is ironic!
with BT briefly in the news this week, because they’re having to lay several thousand people off because of “lower than expected profit forecasts”, it seems an ideal time for me to post about my latest fun with ‘britain’s most loathesome corporation’:
about fifteen months ago, i had to sign up for phone and broadband for BT, because i needed to have a new phoneline put in and BT still have a monopoly on this, even tho’ in theory the telecoms market is supposed to be ‘free’.
anyway, needless to say it wasnae too long before BT - ‘britain’s most loathesome coporation’ started to fuck with my mind on a regular basis.
for the first three months, they sent me red bills and disconnection letters for both my phonebill and my broadband bill - even tho’ i’d set up a direct debit on both accounts. so six times in the first three months i had to ring their bangalore call centre and explain to some semi-intelligible, non-english speaker on the other end that i had a direct debit set up on the account and shouldnae be getting red bills. each time i was assured that the problem was sorted and would never happen again. you can guess the rest.
then there was the download speed: my broadband was supposed to be 8MB, but i rarely got above four. now i’m aware that you never get the maximum rate, but i know for a fact that my local exchange supports up to 12MB, so i’d have expected to at least hit 5 or 6MB fairly consistently.
next came the mysterious ‘additional charges’ which started appearing on my bill every month; a quid or two here and a quid or two there. after reading the small print on my contract, it transpired that BT will charge you if you go over your monthly download limit and this was what the ‘additional charges’ were.
‘fair enough’ you might say, apart from one small detail; BT’s terms & conditions say that they will email you to advise you when you’re getting near your download limit for the month and then email you again when you hit your download limit, thus warning you to cut back on the porn er… ‘educational material’ downloads, before you start getting charged extra. needless to say i never got any emails from them at all - just extra charges on every bill.
on 5th march, i emailed BT support about this:
on my latest broadband bill there is a one-off charge of £5,04 for ‘option 1 - 10GB excess usage’. i would like this charge removed please. the fair usage policy states that:
“If you exceed your monthly usage allowance your service won’t stop working; you will be sent advisory emails to your BT primary email address if you reach 80% of your usage allowance each month and further notification if you then exceed your allowance in a particular month….”
before excess charges will be applied.
i have never been sent any emails warning me that i am approaching my usage limit, nor have i received notice that i have exceeded my allowance, yet these excess usage charges are being applied. therefore, as stated above i would like these charges removed from my current bill and would ask you to abide by your fair usage policy in future, by informing me by email when i am approaching my usage limit and again if i exceed it.
on 10th march i received the following reply:
Thank you for your e-mail dated 5th March 2009. It has been logged under the reference number 090305-008907.
I understand from your e-mail that you have been billed for excess usage on your Option 1 Package, though you have not received any warning e-mail about this earlier. I deeply apologise for the inconvenience.
I would like to inform you that we have a dedicated desk for this issue, The Fair Usage Policy desk. You may contact this team at 0800 707 6044 open 08.00-17.00 Monday-Friday.
I would like to inform you that any technical query BT’s Technical Helpdesk has to be preceded with customers being validated. As I was unable to pull up any information related to your account from our records I am unable to proceed with your query in the mail. Therefore, for any future queries or issues related to your broadband connection I would request you to provide the following details to help us you assist you further.
1. Your BT landline number on which the BT Broadband service is active.
2. Your primary BT e-mail address.
3. Your Account number.
followed by several paragraphs referring me to their fischer price “how to plug in your modem and turn it on” pages. oh. and actually i had already included my BT landline number, my BT email address and my account number in my original email.
so i emailed back on 11th march:
thank you for your response to my complaint. however, it has not addressed the complaint i made.
for a start, i don’t know how the person who responded to my email was unable to access my details, since i supplied my phone no., account no. and email address when submitting the original complaint via your contact form.
secondly, i chose from the options to complain about my bill as it was showing extra charges. i have been informed that i should have contacted another department [fair usage] about this and been given a phone no. to telephone them. why did your operative not pass my email to the appropriate department? how is the customer supposed to know which internal department deals with which kind of complaint? also, if the complaint is to be referred to another department then give me an email address to contact them. if i wanted to conduct this correspondence by phone i would not have used email to initiate it in the first place.
thirdly, i note that [at the end of the email you sent] the matter is marked as ‘resolved’. it most certainly is not resolved. being fobbed off with a cut’n'paste “it’s not my department. ask someone else” reply, is not resolving an issue. it is buck passing.
please address my complaint, pass this email to someone who can address it, or give me a contact email for someone who can.
the next day i received another reply:
Thank you for your e-mail dated 10/03/09 about charges on your bill for BT Broadband Usage, I am sorry for the delay in my reply and the poor level of service you have received.
I tried to contact you today on the telephone number you have provided sorry, I was unable to speak with you.
I understand that you have requested for your email to be passed to the relevant team I am sorry that I have no available alternative email address for the fair usage department.
You can call the number you have been provided in previous email or for further support and advice on BT Total Broadband Fair Usage Policy you can view details at the following link below,
http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cfg/php/enduser/cci/bt_adp.php?p_sid=&p_faqid=10495&cat_lvl1=346&cat_lvl2=401&p_cv=2.401&p_cats=346,401
You will shortly receive a survey via email asking you how I dealt with your enquiry/complaint today. I would love to hear your feedback to help me improve my customer service skills further
and would appreciate if you could take a few minutes to complete the survey.
If you have any other questions please reply to my email and I will be happy to assist you.
on the face of it this seems reasonable but for fuck’s sake! - “I am sorry that I have no available alternative email address for the fair usage department” - this is something i’ve had from BT in the past and it makes me want to headbut the wall; you ring them up to complain about something and they fob you off onto some other ‘department’. then when you ask for a contact number or email for that department, they tell you they don’t know it.
so the biggest telecoms company in the UK disnae have an internal phonebook? - are these people for real?!
OK. by this stage i was fed up to my back teeth [or should that be buck-teeth?] of pissing around with BT and their interminable incompetence backed up by their couldnae-care-less customer service. so i decided to look around for another broadband supplier. unfortunately most of them seem as bad as each other. the telecoms/broadband industry seems to attract more than its fair share of shyster corporations. however, in amongst the reams of bad reviews i read on various customer forum websites, O2 seemed to get a slightly less bad press than the rest and [coincidentally enough] my sis works for them, so - a couple of weeks later - i got in touch with her and asked her to give me the unbiased verdict on their broadband.
she then tells me that she can get me a ‘friends & family’ discount, which will allow me to get O2’s top package for the price of their cheapest one. [thanks sis! - you couldnae have told me that six or seven years ago, could you? - and saved me paying through the nose for crappy broadband all this time].
oh well, better late than never!
so i was faced with a tough choice; continue paying BT - ‘britain’s most loathesome corporation’ £18 a month [plus miscellaneous random additional charges] for 8MB broadband, which in reality is little better than 4MB… or move to O2 and pay £7,50 a month for 20MB [theoretically] broadband, with unlimited downloads and 500 free web-based text messages thrown in. hmmm… a tricky decision…?
i told my sis to put the wheels in motion and, at the beginning of april, i emailed BT again, asking for my MAC code. by law they have to send you your MAC code within 5 days, but needless to say i got no reply. so i emailed again on 6 april, reminding them of their legal obligations and asking for my MAC code again. this time, i did get a reply. sent 14th april. it included my MAC code and also the following:
Thank you for your e-mail.
I am sorry to hear that you wish to leave BT broadband however we must advise you that your broadband package is still under contract until the 09/11/09 and as such if you were to leave at this stage you would be charged for the remainder of this contract period plus a £45 early cancellation charge.
You may also be charged for your vision subscription as this is also in contract.
“weird?” - i thought handsomely. “i’m sure my 12 months contract with BT ran out ages ago.”
so i checked through my old emails. i find it always pays to keep written evidence when dealing with the less-scrupulous organisations which seem to cross my path with annoying frequency these days!
sure enough, i find the following, dated 11th february 2008. ie. 14 months ago:
Thank you for your BT Total Broadband order.
We are currently processing your order and within 48 hours will send a further email confirming your activation date.
You have ordered the following:
Option 1 - £12.99 for first 3 mths - 12 mth contract. £17.99 per mth thereafter.
the same day, i fired off another email to fuckwitt central, attaching a PDF copy of the contract email:
hi.
i think if you check again, you will find that my broadband package is no longer under contract. your minimum contract period now may be 18 months for new sign-ups. however, when i signed up for my broadband package, the minimum contract was 12 months. i still have the confirmation email from when i signed up in feb 2008, confirming that my contract is for 12 months. please see attachment.
thanks
silence. lack of reply. no answer. zilch. zero - in other words BT customer service performing as normal.
anyway, i’ve got my MAC code now, so i send it off to O2 and get set up wi them. no need to go into detail about that - the star of this story is BT, but the reader on tenterhooks can relax in the knowledge that i’m now cruising along at around 10MB on O2 broadband.
fast forward to 11th may and i receive my final broadband bill from BT. see if you can guess what it’s going to show before you click on the thumbnail to view the full-size image:
sigh! - back onto the oul’ computer again. i emailed BT on 12th may:
re bill: F017 90.
this bill includes a cancellation charge of £113,44, supposedly for “stopping a BT service within a minimum time period”.
i have already contacted BT before this bill was issued and sent a copy of my original contract which showed it expired on 11th feb 2009. therefore i will not be paying this spurious cancellation charge.
i have cancelled the direct debit on this account and will not be making any further payments, as i consider the account clear. in actual fact, with the cancellation charge removed, that leaves BT owing me 34 pence. however, having heard your latest dire profit forecast on the radio this morning, i have decided not to pursue this sum. keep the 34 pence and put it towards buying a dictionary wherein you can look up the meaning of the words “customer” and “service”.
two days later, on 14th may, i received BT’s reply:
I am sorry to know that you are unhappy with the cancelation charges. However, let me clarify this to you.
I can see that there is a one off charges of £113.44 on your bill. These are the cancellation charges to stop the Broadband services before the contract period end date.
You were under a contract for Broadband for 18 months and you had cancelled it on 29/04/09. Whenever you sign up with BT for any services, calling plan or for Broadband, there would be an automated verbal contract for 12 to 18 months and if you cancel the contract before the minimum term expired, you will be charged for the early termination charges.
I am sorry to say but these are the standard charges which needs to be maintained. I would kindly request you to make the payment of the final bill as soon as possible.
I hope I have been able to clarify and if I can help with anything else, please reply to me via e-mail and I will be happy to assist.
Thank you for contacting BT.
by now i’m beginning to think i’m a character in a kafka play, but i drag myself out of my padded cell for long enough to type another email to BT:
hello.
[for the second time - please read the attachment before sending
cut'n'paste reply this time!].
my contract for broadband was for 12 months - *not* 18 months.
attachment is the original email from BT, confirming my broadband
order details and is dated 11th feb 2008. therefore the contract
expired in feb 2009.
thanks
this morning [17th may] i receive the latest response from BT:
Thank you for your e-mail dated 15/05/09 regarding the cancellation charges.
I am sorry that you are unhappy about the cancellation charges in your bill.
I have checked your account and can confirm that I have sent a request to the offline department to refund the cancellation charges from your account. You will receive an amended bill once the refund is done.
Just to make you aware, if you want to learn about our latest offers and promotions please click:
http://www.productsandservices.bt.com/consumerProducts/displayPnSHub.do?common_selectedPrimaryNavIndex=2
Please let me know if I can help with anything else.
halle-fuckin-leujah! - mind you, i shouldnae celebrate too soon. what’s the betting that i still get a red bill and threats of court action for not paying the £113?
and did you notice the bit about clicking the link to learn about their ‘latest offers and promotions’? a couple of days ago they also sent me a glossy leaflet, offering me a discount of £1,50 a month on my broadband rental - after i’d already cancelled my account because they’d refused to remove miscellaneous extra charges of less than £1,50 that they’d been adding to my bill in the first place.
tell me. it’s not just me is it? - they really are fucking insane!
