3G Modem

When BT tried to ruin my life again, I started looking up all the possible ways to get online quickly and cheaply, without a long contract.

Traditional dial-up was one option, but I'd still have needed to wait for BT to re-activate the line there, and I'm not sure I could have coped with the speed. The price is also extortionate, and it's not the easiest service to get hold of.

There were a few other choices too, but I eventually settled on the seemingly 'too-good-to-be-true' offer of one of these new-fangled 3G modems.


_{Looks pretty sexy too}

The device is a USB Modem, as well as being a phone of sorts (you can send text messages to and from it, and it has a standard mobile number), and is capable of around 7MB connections - faster than my wired broadband at home.

The offer of £10 for 1 gigabyte of data on a 'pay as you go' scheme looked great - until you notice that the 'pay as you go' part is actually at £1/MB. If you want the £10/GB then you enter a 30-day contract - and lose any of the data you don't use within those 30 days.

We've got it shared across our home network now, and although there's a fairly alarming upload coming from the corporate stuff installed on my machine, it's all going along quite nicely. I even got the modem for just £50 on a special offer.

It's a good deal, but I'm not sure I'll ever use it enough to justify keeping the modem for myself. The freedom to connect anywhere would be nice, but £1/MB is extortionate and I'll never want to use it often enough to make the £10/1GB deal worthwhile.

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.

Spacedust

A chap by the name of John recently left yet another comment on my timeless anti-BT post, and, interested to see if he'd blogged in more detail about his experience, I had a click on his profile.

Well, I can't find a blog, but I did find his brilliant website, Spacedust, which does something I've always vaguely wanted to but never had the time for.

You know all those signs you see dotted around that are just hilarious? Well, he's gathered a bunch of photographs of them together - go take a look, there's some corkers :)

You guys are all sick

So, whilst playing with my favourite tool, StatCounter, to move some of my paid-for allowances over to Tie-Dye Heart (hey guys, guess what, I have a comic! *wink*), I came across some quite disturbing stuff. Here is a selection of search terms people used to find my blog today:

• Team ina - Clearly an educated soul


• MS paint guitars - Perfectly normal so far


• BT line reactivate - Wonder if I changed their mind?


• I hate BT - Me too..


• I Hate BT - Pattern here anyone?


• I hate BT - ...


• Fuck off BT


• Fuck BT


• BT Fuck - I really hope this person just got their words mixed up


• I hate working for BT - And I'm so retarded I think typing that into a search engine will help

Enough of that, there's more though, I promise. Here's a couple of really disturbing ones:

• Peep show olive oil - What?


• Terry Wogan naked picture on the web - What's worse? That they Googled that, or that that phrase somehow links to my blog?

Enough of that scary insight for now...

BT - Sorted

September 14th - 18:34
I email the CEO of BT again, explaining that nothing has yet been resolved and asking that he get someone to contact me.

September 14th - 21:01
CEO of BT replies, apologising and asking his team to get in touch.

September 14th - 22:00
Head of the Chairman's Office mails me from a Blackberry, promising to ensure I'm contacted in the morning.

September 15th - 09:04
Carmel Alexander (what a name!) calls, I'm really nice to her and she apologises a lot, finds out exactly what needs to be done, and promises to go away and do it

September 15th - 11:13
Carmel calls again, to inform me that the line is back up, a Direct Debit form has just been put in the post and that the previous two bills have been cancelled.

--

Not bad eh? Seems the last guy from the Chairman's Office who was supposed to sort this out went on holiday instead, I sense he's going to be in some trouble when he gets back. Guess I can get on with blogging about random rubbish I find on the internet and various places I go now, instead of a utility company, which probably hasn't made for thrilling reading.

For now though, I'm off to make some phone calls! :)

BT admit fault

Well, Alcoholics Anonymous always say that the first step to resolution is admitting to yourself, at the highest possible level, that you have a problem. I've slightly paraphrased that to include the dubiously sensical phrase 'highest possible level', so that it fits in with the next bit. The next bit, as you've probably guessed from previous posts and the title of this, is that BT have admitted that the service they provide is 'awful'.

It wasn't just some random phone operative in Delhi telling me this either, the word came straight from the top - from CEO Ben Verwaayen. Here's what he said in relation to my latest email:

Ian
This is awful, sorry about that
Team: can we contact Ian asap please?

Ben

Ah, email, I love you so.

Naturally, I'll tell you how well or not his team follow up on this.

--

Update:

Ian

Sorry for the problems you have had and the lack of contact. I will arrange for you to be contacted tomorrow and get this resolved.

Jim Brown
Chairmans Office
--------------------------
Sent from my BlackBerry Wireless Handheld

Or, as Danny interprets that one...

Ian,

We're really sorry for the problems you've been facing and our lack of communication throughout. In order to resolve this we're going to pass you from pillar to post until you eventually end up back with our customer service team in Mumbai.

Some made up person
Some made up BT Head Office

Fuck BT

I've dealt with bad customer service departments before, but it's normally simply a case of being unlucky enough to find one of the few bad apples, employed on minimum wage with no real knowledge of procedures that proves frustrating. In previous experience, once you move up the chain of command to those who are in a position of some authority over others, you can begin to get a decent level of service and your problems rectified.

Then I met BT.

April 26th 1986
Nuclear explosion at Chernobyl, Ukraine. Hundreds of thousands of people are affected, hundreds die. Those left most twisted, torn and mutilated are hired into the upper echelons of the BT customer service department. With radioactive matter seeping into their brains, they draw up the guidelines which all future BT service will be based on.

July 13th 2007
Move into new house. Plug a phone into the line and find that it's dead. Call BT from a mobile phone to get line activated. Go online and order Sky Talk as our call provider - BT are only to be utilised for the line rental as they have a massive monopoly on the hardware infrastructure. This costs an extortionate £11/month, but there appears to be little choice, unless we want Virgin.

July 20th 2007
After 7 days, I ring BT again asking for the line to be activated. It appears a request was sent the very minute I rang after moving in, but that someone had forgotten to press the 'confirm' button. Seconds after this is done so, the line is activate. Hurrah! All the bad press was for nothing - BT seem mostly competent.

January 17th 2005
Two thousand, three hundred and twenty seven cases of acute, spontaneous brain death are traced back to BT's automated phone system. Directors of the company fail to turn up to court for so long that the charges are eventually dropped in frustration.

July 24th 2007
Letter arrives from BT telling us that the sum of £12.50 is overdue on our account. I'm not entirely sure when we were meant to previously have paid it (this is the first communication that's arrived), or where the extra £1.50 on the bill has come from. Regardless, I'm busy, so I pop onto their website to pay my bill.

The website is broken, and gives me back an error that's roughly as useful as the old classic:

Error: There is an error

or

Error: There was a failure. Use the following error code to resolve the problem#ERROR: ERROR CODE NOT FOUND

That's ok, I'll try the phone service. Ah, much better - I enter in my account number, and then tell it how much I want to pay. I enter in my debit card details, one at a time, until I get through to the end.

"Sorry, that's not a valid issue number. Please enter a valid issue number, or press # if you do not have a valid issue number"

Whoops! Made a typo there didn't I. I re-enter my issue number...and get the same message. Clearly the typing error was elsewhere - but I don't seem to be able to re-enter anything else, whatever I press (including #) merely gets her to repeat that message. Upon furiously mashing the keys and swearing at the phone for a minute, I get a slightly different, but identical in content message. This loop appears infinite. I hang up.

I try again, being very sure to enter my details, the same happens - I give up.

October 5th 1994
48 British people commit mass suicide in Switzerland following encounters with BT customer service. BT bribe the media to make the event look related to a cult founded by their board of directors, the Order Of The Solar Temple.

July 25th 2007
I try the website again, still broken. I try the online 'contact us' form to report that the webpage is broken - the online 'contact us' form is broken and just returns 'null' after I press submit.

I try the automated phone system to pay my bill again, entering two new cards into the system, every time I'm still asked to re-enter my issue number again and again, this is getting silly.

I ring the BT Helpline to attempt to be put through to a person. Everyone who answers asks me to give them my account number. I do so, and they're shocked when they find it starts with 'GB', each panicking and passing me along. I have no idea what's going on. Eventually I'm told I'll be forwarded to someone in 'Services' who can help me. They sure can, they hang up after 'hello', saving me valuable time spent listening to them talk crap.

I ring again, and again, and again. Every time I keep getting passed around until someone simply decides to hang up on me. I am not happy.

July 27th 2007
I send a letter to BT, as chronicled in my first Blog post, I Hate BT, asking that they please send out the Direct Debit form I was promised when I first signed up for a line, and fix the various errors.

August 1st 2007
No reply, I try the email and phone automated systems, still broken.

August 8th 2007
Another letter from BT demanding payment. I use it to start a small fire at an orphanage.

May 24th 1979
BT's customer complaints department is shut down for a week as George Romero hires the entire staff to play as extras in his latest film

August 27th 2007
I send a second letter to BT, after there has been no response to my first, as transcribed in my blog post I really, really hate BT.

August 30th 2007
The blogosphere again comes to my rescue, with a fellow student by the name of Anthony giving me the email address of BT's CEO with a recommendation I email them.

August 31st 2007
I email the CEO of BT to inform him of my situation, and ask that something be done. He passes the message on to a secretary, personally assuring me that she will take care of it.

September 3rd 2007
The ceo's secretary emails me to ask for my account details, and a contact number. I supply these the same day.

December 2nd 1992
Robert Black brought in as a consultant to fix BT's falling customer service standards. He is eventually hired as head of customer relations, with a golden handshake of $14 million.

September 5th 2007
Our phone line is cut off, for non-payment, despite the fact that in every correspondance I have asked for urgency in order to avoid exactly this. Every call is now redirected to a BT system. After toying with the automated payment system (still broken) I wait on hold for 2 1/2 hours until the battery in the cordless phone I am using dies.

September 10th 2007
Still no response to my two letters, still no sign of the direct debit form promised two months ago, and still no call from the 'high level customer complaints team' I gave my contact details to.

September 14th 2007 (Today)
Still nothing. I kill 18 small children, leaving the bodies in a ditch on the border of Suffolk. Probably best if you don't mention this to the police. I'm off to email my good friend Ben, the CEO of BT again, to see if that helps at all.

--

Just now, I found a man named Jim, aka TheRantMan has yet another...'interesting', story about BT, in case you think I'm just exaggerating or being unlucky. I am a bit miffed he feels the need to compare BT to Microsoft in terms of customer service though, I always found MS's to be great.

BT - Bringing people together

I'm delighted to see that a vast (ok, under a hundred) number of people typing in 'I hate BT', 'Hate BT' and my new favourites 'OH MY GOD I HATE BT' (yes, even the caps are copied verbatim) into search engines and subsequently flocking here, though I must say I'm unsure as to exactly what they're gaining from reading my rants...maybe just some tips on angry letter writing.

Regardless, if anyone, like Anthony here, is interested in a 'bloggingly-incited revolution against this most terrible and disastrous of companies' then get in touch - I know a guy who does great deals on pitchforks and torches.

I even sketched a logo for us...


_{BT - Just say no...if you can get through to them that is}

Seems I'm not the only one...

So I just got myself a nifty little stats counter called, in a fit of creativity and innovation...StatCounter.

It's a great tool, and is invisible (the one you see at the bottom of my page is the outdated and rubbish one I used to use) too, if you so choose, though I think I'll switch to the icon soon to show them some support for such a great service.

Onto the point though, one of StatCounter's many advantages over my old counter is that it tells me where people came from. Since installing it an hour or so ago, it's tracked 19 unique hits (getting popular) to my blog, and guess what - six of them came from Googling something to do with BT.

My personal favourite is that I'm now the 9th Google result for 'BT Reconnections', but it's also pretty amusing that three people, within the last hour, have googled 'I hate BT' and then clicked on my blog. :D

I really, really hate BT

So, remember that post I made about the joke of a company that go by the name of BT? Well, that letter has gone unanswered, the problems have gone unfixed and they're still sending us bills - now with late payment charges tacked on the end!

Very, very unhappy, as the below might hopefully manage to communicate to them...

--

[My address, reference numbers etc]

Dear Sir/Madam,

I wrote to yourselves on the 27th of July (attached) and am still yet to receive a reply. I am absolutely appalled by the lack of customer service that runs rampant through every part of your organisation.

I am receiving many bills from yourself, and have absolutely no way of paying them. I do not mean that I have not the means or money to do so, merely that every part of your system is laughable at best.

The phone automation asks me to enter in my phone number, and then some debit card details. Upon doing so, I am told that ‘The issue number was not recognized, please enter your issue number, or press hash if you do not have one’. Anything I press from then on results in the message being repeated with no possible way out of the infinite loop. I have tried this with multiple valid credit and debits cards to no avail.

Upon trying your online service I receive the following error, which flies in the face of all computer application design laws by giving a ridiculously vague and unhelpful error message:


_{It reads 'We're sorry, an error has occurred. We don't have any more information at this time. Please try again later or call us.'}

When trying to ring your helpdesk I merely get passed around from department to department, never to the right destination, until someone decides to hang up on me instead of (or sometimes, after) picking up the phone. This has happened to me over ten times now, and I am extremely displeased by the behaviour of your phone operators.

I ask that someone British born and more senior than the average operative I have been dealing with (or, trying to) look into this immediately. I shall not be amused if my line is cut off due to non-payment.

Yours,



Ian MacGillivray

I hate BT

So I was going to blog about all the trouble I've had from these guys, but I spent this afternoon's free time writing a letter to them, as I simply couldn't get through to their complaints department on the phone. As such, I need to get back to work now, so here's the letter verbatim instead :(

--

[My address, reference numbers etc]

Dear Sir/Madam,

May I first apologise if the tone of this letter seems unfriendly to the reader. The writing of it recalls many annoyances I have experienced, and I do understand that the person reading it is likely not to have had any part in the many troubles I have experienced. That being said...

I wish to complain about the standard of customer service I have recently received from BT, in my first weeks of service from yourselves. I hold an account (number above) with you merely for the purposes of line rental, yet this has taken more trouble and time than any other part of moving into my new home.

I received a bill from you on July 24th stating that an amount of £12.50 was overdue. This was the first I’d heard of any such amount, as I had been awaiting a direct debit mandate I had been told was being posted out – which I have yet to see. Furthermore, I had also been told that line rental was £11.00 per month, and not £12.50, so am still unsure as to where this figure came from.

Regardless, the figure seemed about right, and I was busy at the time, so decided to write the £1.50 off and pay my bill – using the handy online service. I kept on receiving unspecified errors whilst trying to sign up, so concluded that the website must be under service and tried phoning instead a day or two later, when I had some free time to do so. (I later managed to sign up to the website, but was unable to tie my bill account into my online account, receiving the following error “There was a problem processing your request. Please try again later”)

The automated phone service proceeded, albeit a bit lengthily, nicely enough, until I had finished entering in my debit card details. Once I had done this, I was repeatedly asked to type in my card’s issue number, and repeatedly told this was not recognized. Assuming I had made a mistake, and as there was no way to navigate backwards, I spent another 5 minutes going through the process, and encountered exactly the same error. I then assumed that there must be a problem with my card, and spent another 5 minutes until I could enter the details for another card...and received the same error.

At this point I rang up the enquiries line, which unfortunately seemed to direct me to the automated service regardless of which series of options I selected, until I clued into the fact that if I simply pretended I didn’t have a touchtone phone, I would eventually (the time, for the record, is three minutes of automation before the system works out I can’t press any buttons) be transferred to an operator - or, more precisely, to a long queue for an operator.

The first three operators (separate calls each time) all seemed shocked when I read out my account number to them, telling me that I’d have to be transferred as my account number started with ‘GB’, apparently I was through to the call centre for another country. They then told me they were transferring me and promptly hung up the phone, leaving my line dead. The fourth time I rang through and asked to be transferred to the complaints department, and was instead put through to ‘reconnections’, where a helpful young man apologised (the first time from any BT employee) and said he’d put me straight through to the complaints department. Unfortunately, he didn’t realise that he was actually transferring me to a queue, which I had to leave after 47 minutes as I was running late for a meeting at work.

As such I have simply (and grudgingly, given how much time I have lost for such a small bill that has mysteriously appeared) sent the money online through my internet banking facility, where I believe it will take a short delay to reach you.

I would appreciate the following outcomes from this letter:
• That your online service be investigated and fixed
• That your online service implements industry ‘best practise’ and only provides users with helpful, informative error messages
• That your automated phone service for payments be fixed
• That your call centre staff receive sufficient training to transfer people without hanging up
• That I am sent a direct debit mandate for future payments
• That I receive an explanation for the increased cost of my bill
• And finally, preferably, that I receive some compensation as a goodwill gesture and ‘corporate apology’ (because, no matter how heartfelt, the apology of one individual who has to date had no interaction with me, would obviously not be appropriate).

Thanks very much in advance.
Yours,




Ian MacGillivray.