What a surprise. BT has f*cked up again. They really are the worst utility company I’ve ever had to deal with. I have no wish to deal with them, but I am forced to. When people go to work at BT, they must be lobotomised to have the words ‘customer’ and ‘service’ permanently removed from their brains.
I’ve moved house. A stressful experience at the best of times. We’ve finally sold our house in Macclesfield, and are now renting whilst looking to buy a new property. Being a web developer, one of my biggest concerns was getting my phone line and broadband up and running as soon as possible.
The rental property I’ve moved to didn’t have an active line, so I needed to pay for one to be installed. BT wanted £123 for this task. I was prepared for this expense (even though it is a fair whack). What I wasn’t prepared for was how BT wanted to shaft me for a 12 month line rental contract. We’ve been customer’s for a decade, and we could transfer our account to the new property, but we still needed to take out a new 12 month contract. Worse still, the contract is not transferable to the next property, nor the next tenant!
Absolutely outrageous. If we move in the next 3 months, I’ll have forked out in excess of £265 to get my phone line activated (without call or broadband costs). I’d then potentially need to fork out another £265 at my next property for the privilege. Maybe that lobotomy adds the words ‘daylight’ and ‘robbery’ into their brains.
After some research, I found a better alternative – the Post Office. The connection fee was cheaper at £107, and there is no minimum contract. On top of this, there’s some great free calls given as part of the bundle (mobile, international etc.).
So, having sorted out the phone line, I now needed to deal with my broadband. My provider told me that so long as there was 5 days notice, if I got hold of the Linked Order Reference from BT/Post Office then they should be able to get the broadband running the same day. Well, I’d been told it was 10 days to get the phone line installed, so I went back to the Post Office, got the Order Reference, and told my broadband provider.
Over the next few days, I got several emails confirming all was in order. Last night, I phoned to check. Everything was in order.
Today was the day it was all to come together. The engineer was booked between 8am and 1pm. He arrived at 8:30am and by 10am the phone line was active. Broadband however, was not active. The engineer informed me it could happen any time. The guy in the exchange would be working through 20 or so jobs, until around 4:30pm. So, I waited patiently.
At 12pm an email arrived from my broadband provider:
We would like to inform you that the simultaneous provide order for Linked Order Reference XXX has been cancelled by BT. The reason for this is that our order with the quoted reference could not be matched with the telephone order. Please call BT for more information and update us when your line will be activated.
WTF? Several expensive phone calls later, my broadband provider has provided no more insight as to why this has happened beyond ‘BT’s system doesn’t work’. And so, I must now put in a new order and wait 7 days for activation. I could speed this up to 48 hours if I pay an extra £100.
No explanation from BT
No redress from BT
No customer service from BT
Absolutely pathetic. Almost as incompetent as Macclesfield Borough/East Cheshire Council
Could be worse, imagine if parcel force moved into the telecoms industry…
Truly a bunch of absolute wasters!
We’re moving house ourselves at the moment too and it has to be said Sky/Orange haven’t been a great deal better either!
Still, at least NTL are no more!!
Shame on BT – as usual, customers are a low priority. On the positive side, thanks for flagging up the Post Office as a place with no minimum contract.