BT Issue Update

An update, just for interest's sake.

14/08/2010 - Receive a letter detailing the hundreds of pounds of cancellation charges I can expect. The letter explains that I will no longer receive: Unlimited Weekend Plan, Phone Line, BT Privacy at Home.

However, the letter also states that I will contnue to receive Broadband - Infinity Option 2.

Clearly, this is not what I want; and I am well out of my minimum contract term for my phone line so shouldn't incur any charges for cancellation anyway.

Ring BT. Speak to unhelpful person who tells me that actually the charges aren't for my phone line being cancelled but my Broadband. I try to explain to this BT drone that the letter says something completely different and that this is not A Good Thing.

Whilst trying to explain that I do not wish to pay charges due to BT's failure to uphold their end of the contract I've entered into, the drone decides to put me through to another department without letting me finish speaking. Very polite.

I speak to Sarah in Customer Options. She explains yet again that the charges in the letter are clearly just random numbers made up by some BT computer and don't in any way relate to the truth. She tells me that BT Infinity Technical support are 'awaiting a call from me' and have been since 3rd August. First I've heard of it. Sarah assures me that they are the only people who will be able to determine whether or not I pay cancellation charges. Sounds a bit fishy for me, bearing in mind that they're the 'Technical support' team, but eventually I agree to her putting me through.

I end up in the queue for Broadband faults. Not having been told which option to press in the idiotic list of choices, none of which are 'If you are a dissatisfied customer who just wants nothing more to do with BT press x', I settle for option 1.

After waiting in the queue for a while, I finally get through to a foreign call centre. Up to this point, the only thing I would have said was positive about my experience was that all the call centres I'd dealt with seemed to be UK based. Not any more.

So, I try to explain the situation to Xavier, and try to get across that this is way above the level of first line telephone support. He can't see any notes suggesting they're expecting a call. Eventually, Xavier puts me through to the Infinity technical team, to a very nice guy called Geoff (or Jeff, I guess).

First off, Geoff or Jeff rings me back as I told him the line was very quiet. He rings back on my mobile and I can hear a reassuringly British voice very clearly.

Geoff or Jeff also can't see the note about waiting for a call from me. He sounds very sympathetic, and seems genuinely surprised that this problem has been ongoing for so long. Geoff is surprised that Customer Options think that his team are able to decide on cancellation charges being applied or not. This is not the case, he tells me; Customer Options would make that decision. Clearly, I'm being given the runaround now. It feels to me that BT are interested only in frustrating me so much that I either get bored and stop ringing, or die on hold. Geoff or Jeff sounds quite sensible, and offers to speak to the engineering team while I hold. I accept.

After a while Geoff or Jeff comes back and tells me that the best way to deal with things is to raise a fault, which the engineers will then have 48 hours to resolve. I'm concerned that this is yet another delay, when all I really want is just to get out of BT's evil clutches and back into the relative safety of slow broadband from Sky. However, Geoff or Jeff assures me that this is the best way to get the problem resolved, and that the engineers will only have 48 hours so things should be sorted by Monday. He also advises me that if things aren't sorted by Monday, I can ring them back directly.

All in all, another hour and a half of my life wasted on this. I'm now waiting to see if anything happens, which I'm sure it won't.

As of right now, 21hrs after raising the fault, nothing has changed: