BT - Why are they so bad?

[lockyer]

BT are having a commonsense failure and its costing me a small fortune.

last month we agreed to move to BT from our incumbent supplier, was informed it would take a few weeks.

A week last monday I arrived at the office to find BT Changing a telgraph pole. When they left it became apparent they had only reconnected 2 of our 6 ISDN lines.

We reported it to our old supplier, and they arrange for BT openreach to come and fix the fault.

since a week last monday they have missed 4 appointments to come and fix it. But today I have rung our old provider and they are unable to assist anymore as the transfer to BT went through today.

I've just got off the phone to bt, and they have deleted the job as it was on the old providers system, and they can't log a new fault as the transfer won't be complete for another 24 hrs!!!!!

Does anyone have a contact at BT????

 

[Davek0974]

Sorry, no help but we have just ditched our infinity broadband and the phone contract with BT due to total incompetence to provide a working service.

BT are a waste of space at present.

 

[BoxLimited]

Hi,

It is probably not Openreach's fault, but BT Retail..

Here at Box we have recently added wholesale airtime to our expanding portfolio and in our experience Openreach do tend to do exactly what they are told. (apart from not reconnecting 4 channels of your ISDN, which I agreed is pretty serious) but who knows, that's what they might have been told to do. Only your provider has access to Openreach, BUT, you could try this..

Check out the openreach website and go to the 'contact us' and then the 'tellussomething' page its more about network damage but there is a contact number and it might get you started.. 0800 0232023

You could always move over to us, and we will definitely look after you!

Regards
Box Limited - box.co.uk

 

[Paul180]

Sorry to hear that Lockyer,

This thread seems rather helpful to me, seeing as I was just about to sign up to a BT package. I`ve heard good and bad things about the company but for the life of me have no idea who to go with!

I guess you can`t have it all, a good service, affordable products and good customer support, can you?

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Drop an email to [email protected]

He is the BT Group Chief Exec. CC your local MP, chamber of commerce chief, local rags and any other respected business organisations that operate in your area.

Keep it polite.

 

[Rhyl Lightworks]

When I had trouble with BT, I emailed Ian Livingston. He has a specialist team of the best who sort out the problem straightaway. Pity the poor people that have to wait though.

Barrie

 

[cjd]

They have very big systems and big processes and they run an incredibly complicated business which makes it all pretty near impossible to manage at the local level. Generally things work until they need manual intervention then it all falls apart.

It's just old age I think.

 

[Fuzzy]

BT are having a commonsense failure and its costing me a small fortune.

last month we agreed to move to BT from our incumbent supplier, was informed it would take a few weeks.

A week last monday I arrived at the office to find BT Changing a telgraph pole. When they left it became apparent they had only reconnected 2 of our 6 ISDN lines.

We reported it to our old supplier, and they arrange for BT openreach to come and fix the fault.

since a week last monday they have missed 4 appointments to come and fix it. But today I have rung our old provider and they are unable to assist anymore as the transfer to BT went through today.

I've just got off the phone to bt, and they have deleted the job as it was on the old providers system, and they can't log a new fault as the transfer won't be complete for another 24 hrs!!!!!

Does anyone have a contact at BT????

I have, pm, livechat or msge me and I will give you an email address, she sorted my problems out that I'd had for months, within days

 

[wecandobiz]

You could do worse than tweet your complain out to @BTCare. They are pretty hot at getting stuff fixed. I've met the person who runs the team and know the tech they use. They've fixed me before quickly, which is something I could never hoped to have achieved calling them (ironically).

 

[lockyer]

Update - the ian livingston email appears to have worked. BT have been ringing my mobile since 8.30am and are being very pro active. Engineer is en route

Ill let you know if they fix it.

Thanks for the help peeps

 

[KateCB]

We changed our broadband to BT 4 months ago - its never worked properly since! We have 5 minute outages twice an hour.....they sent us a new 'splitter' to see if that helped - funny thing is that the splitter takes '5 - 7 working days to arrive' however they only keep the fault open for 3 working days! Helpful!

Anyway, the splitter didn't work, the broadband is terrible, had a new router, no change, and BT said....Oh dear.

 

[LicensedToTrade]

Update - the ian livingston email appears to have worked. BT have been ringing my mobile since 8.30am and are being very pro active. Engineer is en route

Ill let you know if they fix it.

Thanks for the help peeps

Glad to hear it. Well done.

 

[lockyer]

update 2 - engineer arrived 45 mins ahead of schedule!

 

[KateCB]

Wow! I emailed Ian Livingston 2 hours ago aksing for help with our broadband connection - he has just called my offices and is sorting it out.....this man needs a medal - I am going to email him again to thank him for his prompt attention right now!

 

[Experienced IT guy]

I have been unfailingly impressed by 02 and depressed by BT India. O2 have their support centre in the UK, understand our social and buisness needs and are not entrenched in third world service standards and approach to life and buisness.

 

[sean.browne]

I cant help wanting a BT problem so I can email Ian Livingston

 

[lockyer]

it gets better 1 manager and 2 engineers en route to my home address to sort out the intermittent fault on my infinty line!

 

[Geoff T]

You could do worse than tweet your complain out to @BTCare...

There's a case under trades descriptions right there!...

The so and so's let me down twice with orders meaning the business couldn't operate properly for 3 months... I complained through a site suggested by a member from UKBF (one of my previous threads) in April, and not heard Jack since...

If BT are a benchmark of UK business - everyone's in deep s****...

 

[KateCB]

tell Ian - he seems to work wonders - so much so thatr I emailed him from my home email address, this evening I received a call on my ex-directory home phone from his assistant, who had got my number through my email address.....big brother huh?

Anyway, things are getting curious - apparently when BT said 'Oh dear' in April, they cancelled our broadband.....so according to them we dont have any at all! PLUS our online account access appear to have been hijacked and is now registered in a name we don't know, with a password we obviously don't know.....I am placing my trust in Ian and his team to sort it all out now! I'll keep you informed!

 

[cjd]

BT are going to get themselves into enormous trouble treating every email to Livingstone as an emergency and treading all over their local processes. Great for individuals but a fast route to a huge PR problem when the world finds out his email address.

 

[KateCB]

ahhh, never thought of that.........poor man, he can't do right for doing wrong......

 

[MASSEY]

ahhh, never thought of that.........poor man, he can't do right for doing wrong......

The guys been doing it for a long time already.

It's a dodgy way to do thing regardless.

As far as im concerned BT are too big a company and mess your stuff up all the time. I was even dumb enough to use BT for web hosting once BIG MISTAKE...

 

[Paul180]

Glad all is well Lockyer, This Ian fella sounds like a fallen angel, lol.

 

[Rhyl Lightworks]

I have thought for some time that it seems the bigger company gets the worse becomes their customer service. Things are usually just ok if there is no problem but they cannot deal with anything out of the ordinary. the same seems true of other telecommunications companies, such as Carephone Warehouse (which own Talk/Talk) and in my experience in the retail trade such as Comet, Currys/PC World/Dixons, B&Q et al, energy companies, etc. Are there any exceptions to this?

Barrie

 

[lockyer]

Well they fixed the office lines very quick, then sent 3 guys to my house who had been told "not to leave till the broadband was fixed" and they replace everything they could........but 3 hrs later the signal dropping started again!!!!!!

 

[cjd]

You have to feel a bit sorry for BT, they're doing things with technology that was utterly unthinkable when the wires were put in the ground to do it. The pair of copper wires that carry both your telephony and your ultrafast broadband signals are probably upwards of 50 years old, a couple of miles long, have a dozen ancients joints in them and are running through a clay duct that doubles as a storm drain every time it rains.

The equipment monitoring the wires is saying to itself, "those imbeciles that Livingstone sent out are trying to get me to pump 20mb of data per second down this nasty piece of grandma's old knitting but the dilithium crystals can't stand it cap'n. I'm throttling this back as soon as they leave otherwise it'll all go pear shaped and I'll have a nervous breakdown"

 

[td2011]

I had a nightmare experience with a big company in the past, so many problems that they are just so trivial I suppose. The issue I had just seemed to be bounced around the same office for around 6 months with no-body taking responsibility for it. Was ridiculous and in the end I put in an enormous complaint. To top it all off they sent out the wrong apology letter to me! and at that point I gave up.

 

[Matt1959]

I'll never go with Bt again after past experiences. When we changed to SKY for BB and TV and I found out I had to use Tiscali via BT, I cancelled it and kept the BB and phone part at Virgin and the TV with Sky.

 

[crphillips]

We had a nightmare with BT last year when we moved house and business premises. A week after our business and home move we were going abroad to get married so it was essential that the moving of the phone lines went smoothly.

We arranged a date for the engineer to come and switch lines. They never turned up. Called BT and they said that the date they gave us was given by the sales team who don't have realtime access to the booking schedule for the engineers. The date they'd given us wasn't possible and they were coming a week later. We were going to be in Greece for a fortnight a week later! We couldn't get anyone out before we went abroad. We had no phone, no broadband and the place we had moved to didn't have mobile reception so we were screwed. We were around 3-4 weeks without any communications whatsoever. It pissed a number of customers off who cancelled jobs and I had a lot of stress and grovelling to do when I got back from getting married. I reckon it cost us in the region of 20-30k. Also due to the mess i had to cancel a week at Le Mans which cost me £1500. Nightmare!

Why do the sales team not have realtime access to the booking schedule for their engineers? Ridiculous!

I don't feel sorry for BT having to supply a service through miles of crappy copper cables. They are BT's crappy copper cables and they should have spent the last 20 years rolling out fibre optics like the rest of the world has. They've invested bugger all into the infrastructure of communications for decades and we're supposed to feel sorry for them? Our data transfer speeds in the Uk are shameful and it's all because of the monopoly we call BT!

 

[TelesMedia]

i lost approx 11k-12k because of BT a few years back. Our telephone lines were cut by decorators in another office in the building and the BT engineer said it on the day. Despite numberous letters and calls to BT they said they do not send out reports for damage to businesses. Charged me £2500 to fix lines, lost a week's business, took the company who's office was to court and never got the BT report so case closed. So so bad.

 

[Fuzzy]

Mr Livingstone has had his email displayed for over 3 years. That's when I had the problems I did.

 

[KJL126]

BT have let me down several times and their lack of customer service drives me nuts, quick tip from me when you 'phone them always agree to accept the customer service survey at the end, it's my impression you get answered more quickly.

however I've made a note of the bosses email for future-Thanks