I (Still) Hate BT

My first series of 'I Hate BT' posts generated a bunch of comments, and still continues to drive a lot of the traffic that I get to my blog through the search engines. Clearly the customer service hasn't improved, as I recently found out to my detriment.

As I'm moving out of this house soon, I dared to actually ring BT 'customer services' once I could find a number that worked on SayNoTo0870 (awful website, great service). I rang them up and was put through nearly immediately to a friendly, English-speaking girl - despite the fact that all I wanted to do was cancel my contract.

We quickly established that no, I didn't need to transfer it, and definitely couldn't be convinced to keep it, and agreed on the date of July 9th (my birthday, and day my tenancy ends) to cancel the service. The girl was even so kind as to confirm this all over again at the end before wishing me a nice day and hanging up.

Perfect.


_{Perfect? Yeah, right}

A few days later (June 13th), my phone line had been cut off, and my contract with BT cancelled. I rang up to enquire as to why this was, and no-one seemed quite sure. So I asked to have my contract re-instated...but that wasn't possible. I could, however, have my line reactivated - after two working days (ie: June 17th).

This would seem a reasonable solution until you realise that, because BT have a monopoly on the landline network, my Sky Broadband needs to go through my BT line. And, because BT are horrifically inefficient at provisioning lines to broadband providers, it would take 15 days for my Broadband to be back online, after the 4 day wait for my BT line to come back. By this time I'd have moved out..

When I rang BT again to point out the inconvenience of not having the internet at home for 22 days because they screwed up, they didn't seem particularly bothered - even after I explained I worked in IT, and often did so from home. After thirty minutes, they did eventually acquiesce to my requests for compensation though...by offering to credit my account with £1.93.

£1.93, for 22 days without internet at home. It's even more of a slap in the face when you do the maths and work out that's how much I've paid them in advance for the service they cancelled - it's just what they legally owe me, not even compensation.

I'll be going with Virgin's cable offerings next year - it's crazy that I'm having to choose my TV and Broadband provider based on the fact that BT have all of the hardware for landlines, and other companies are forced to go through them to provide a service.