I’m sure every one here has a bad experience with BT or one of the other telephone providers, I mean there all much the same, about the same price, offer the same service and unless you one of the unlucky ones there available all over the UK, I’m not saying monopolies are bad for consumers but there isn’t much good with them.
Lets start with the back story:
I moved house on the 9th, and moving is one of the most stressful things you can do, for the life of me I still don’t know why I thought I would do the move my self (with some help from my friend Phil and Dad). My understanding of why it’s so stress full is the requirement of dealing with all the companies one avoids contact with unless needed, the Gas company, the bank, the telephone company with all of them your sure to get one jobs worth monkey that will turn the simplest thing into a nightmare.
Lucky for me, and respect where respect is due EDF, The bank and others where all very helpful and made moving address easy and I’m like…
Alas that’s where my luck ran out, I tried BT’s web site two weeks before my move as per their recommendation, and after logging in and selecting moving address I completed all the required details and I was thinking “grate this is easy” – famous last words. The site was thinking about my move for what seemed like ages to tell me that my service was the best it could be… What, I wasn’t asking about improving my service, I was happy with my service – WTF
So I gave up with their website and made forth to my phone and called customer service, the very friendly chap informed me to tell BT after the move and they would get me set up in no time.
Any hows, I get delayed what with moving box’s, dealing with the new and old letting agents and unpacking, it’s not until 12th comes that I call BT customer services, again a very friendly chap answered the phone and after answering all the normal questions, you know how many sons does you first uncle have from your mother’s side and whats your inside lower leg measurement, between the computer thinking about my answers I had a great chat with the chap about football and the weather, as we’re both English what else would we chat about and again both being English it turned out to be a depressing conversion (maybe that’s where it went wrong).
Now when (I’m going to call him Jack, not sure what his name was but its Jack now) Jack came back on the phone I could tell something had gone wrong it was the tone in his voice, something between OMG not again and this guy is going to lose it when he heres this – you have to respect his approach however, taken a deep in take of air Jack went on to tell me BT can get the line set up on 21st Jan 2013…
OMFG, yep that’s right I added a F… I tried to reason with Jack claiming, if I had to go 3 months with out broad band not only would I lose all contact with the outside world, that the first new-born baby of every family would be still-born and the resulting chaos would make the seven horsemen of the apocalypse look like a feature length version of my little pony:
But alas it was outside Jacks control, it was in the control of Openreach, a sub contractor… I know just what you need a traditionally very inefficient company to use is a contractor sounds great.
So I went on the hunt for a new provided, one that had more control on Openreach (it turns out that all the companies need Openreach – great fix to a monopoly, sell one part of it off and give them all the business… great just great… In fact:
Virgin to the Rescue:
Virgin where able to get me up and running in a week, which was great, their staff where no more helpful, in fact they where if any thing a little less friendly, but they clearly have the one line to control all lines made in the flames of mount, ok you get the idea. Alas the engineer was late, but he was able to get the internet and phone line working (but not the TV… There is always something isn’t there).
Naturally once I had confirmation that BT where not able to help me, and Virgin where I contacted BT and told them to cancel my service as put frankly they need to get there act sorted and offer reasonable installation dates or lose more customers like me.
Thats not the end to it:
Now you would have though that once I had a service with Virgin and informed BT to cancel their service that would be it, and you’ve most likely worked it out by now but nope, BT thought not only would they have a rubbish website, pain in the ass telephone system (not the people, just the menu system) that they would then send me a bill for line rental past the 12th Nov… OMG again, I emailed them to confirm I had cancelled my service on the 12th to only get a very short and rather snotty email back saying “you have to call us to cancel”.
I know, I know I to was like “come on, I already tried that and it didn’t work” so I was back on their website and though lets try their chat with a member of the staff instant message service – which worked a treat – if you ever need to contact BT then I recommend you use this method, its quick and easy and seems to get results as well.
End result, the Lady that ended up calling me was able to check the complete history and confirmed that BT would cancel my service from the 12th Nov and confirm the last bill shortly.
Is there a moral to the story:
Well yes and no…
Yes Telephone Companies work in a monopoly in terms of pricing, service and support
Yes Telephone companies are the worst companies when it comes to communicating with Customers
Yes Moving is a pain in the arse
and No my world would not have ended with out Internet but its better with it in my life.
Oh and I have internet, TV and a working telephone line – I hope that I wont have to contact my new telephone provider any time soon.
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and a happy new year to you all, here is a Christmas quiz you can play if you find your self sick of TV or stuffed with all the Christmas trimmings:
