BT Complaints - Please post here

m8

Blindpew wrote: »

No one ever got anything refunded from BT, the word is not in their vocabulary. Take them to court if I were you, they need sueing.

Oh yes they did, took m 2 years but I managed it.

Read all about it here:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=56378777#post56378777

StRiKeR

Kenmare wrote: »

according to BT ive downloaded 81gb of stuff this month

My speed is now 20kb/s downstream, 40kb/s upstream.

You wouldnt believe how long its taken for this page to load..........

As for me downloading 81gb its the biggest load of bull**** in the world. My bloody line cant download that much. Got a call from them yesterday. It was from some indian fella who could barely speak a sodding word of english. He basically told me I was lying and that I had downloaded it

I have the exact same problem, but I didnt go over much

Logins 15
Offpeak Traffic 13052 minutes
Peak Traffic 5197 minutes
Data uploaded 6.17 GB [6622707142 bytes]
Data downloaded 34.00 GB [36512472370 bytes]

I have 20k sometimes 10k, I dont think its right for them to throttle that much of our bandwidth, I think I'm leaving BT, they want 150yoyos of me if I leave the contract, I don't think 133euro every 2 months for a 20k connection is worthy and I'm not willing to pay them nothing at all.

kleefarr

In over six years of a happy partnership with BT this happens..

Billing error

And to cap it off, after spending a while on the phone to customer services and thinking they had it all sorted out, this happens a couple of weeks later...

Bill still wrong

Since then I have sent them the amount that I have worked out as being correct and we'll see what happens next. :rolleyes:

Things could get messy.

dub45

StRiKeR wrote: »

I have the exact same problem, but I didnt go over much

Logins 15
Offpeak Traffic 13052 minutes
Peak Traffic 5197 minutes
Data uploaded 6.17 GB [6622707142 bytes]
Data downloaded 34.00 GB [36512472370 bytes]

I have 20k sometimes 10k, I dont think its right for them to throttle that much of our bandwidth, I think I'm leaving BT, they want 150yoyos of me if I leave the contract, I don't think 133euro every 2 months for a 20k connection is worthy and I'm not willing to pay them nothing at all.

You cannot break a contract without reason. If you intend walking away then make sure you have a paper record of all correspondence with them. Remember if you had exceeded your download quotas then they are the ones in the right. The Debt collectors will be set upon you so be careful and dont to anything you may regret later.

Elessar

dub45 wrote: »

You cannot break a contract without reason. If you intend walking away then make sure you have a paper record of all correspondence with them. Remember if you had exceeded your download quotas then they are the ones in the right. The Debt collectors will be set upon you so be careful and dont to anything you may regret later.

It is my understanding that debt "collectors" can't do squat. I'm open to correction, but the only people who can collect debts here are Sherrifs who are public servants, and that is only with a district court judgement. Anyone else acting as a Sheriff is doing so illegally. Also, BT export their debt collection to a UK/Scottish agency who have absolutely no juristiction here whatsoever. I know because my uncle got a nasty call from them after a BT mix-up. They just try to scare you.

I think also its fair to say that BT are not going to go to the trouble of district court hearings and sheriffs over a few hundred euro.

stakey

AFAIK (feel free to correct me if i'm wrong here) they can make probes into your credit history which is available to all financial lending institutions in the country. If a lending institution see a debt collection agency probing your records this could affect your credit rating when going for a loan/mortgage (pah!).

minikin

BT have ballsed up my first bill (supposedly on 24mb skinnyband & phone package) I had to make a €125 prepayment to get the order moving, they reckon i still owe them €70.

This is despite the fact I've made 30c worth of phone calls and the €125 would more than cover the €56x2months... I should be €12 in credit... they've charged me for the modem etc despite the fact it's supposed to be free.

They demanded immediate payment despite the fact they had my cc details on file. I haven't responded yet, god help them if they cause me trouble after the disaster that was the initial installation (took 7 weeks) & the fact I never get more than one quarter of the 24mb service I'm supposed to be getting (getting max 6,000 kilobits/sec. due to lousy noise margin)

This is a crazy way to run a business.

Supercell

An eircom guy called to my door the other day...
He made a sale, suffice it to say.
I am 100% certain my billing wars with BT are not done yet though....

jor el

stakey wrote: »

AFAIK (feel free to correct me if i'm wrong here) they can make probes into your credit history which is available to all financial lending institutions in the country.

Only financial institutes can effect your credit history. I'm not aware of any debt collection agencies that are also registered financial institutes though. They would have to be regulated by the financial regulator too.

Some of them make threats regarding your credit report, in order to scare you into paying something you don't owe. It's just part of the extortion that some of these companies get up to.

Never pay a debt collector. If you do owe money, pay it directly to the company that you owe. If you don't, then don't feel like you even have to talk to them. Most of them aren't interested in talking anyway, they just want your credit card details, and won't listen to anything else.

minikin wrote:

BT have ballsed up my first bill (supposedly on 24mb skinnyband & phone package) I had to make a €125 prepayment to get the order moving, they reckon i still owe them €70.

I'd take this opportunity to be rid of BT if I were you. Unfortunately, the competition are not all up to much either, and BT are cheap, which is why a lot of people put up with it. Don't stand for any of their BS anyway, and don't pay incorrect bills. Insist that they send you a correct bill. If you have any direct debit with them, cancel it till it's sorted out.

Ludo

FINALLY...after 4 months I have got my refund from BT. What a pain.

Thanks to the people who sent me on addresses to email about it all...worked a treat.

Probably have to go through it all again now though as I switched service providers from BT again today over all this. They will probably overcharge me again. This time though I will go straight to comreg and threaten small claims court...seems to be the only way to get them moving as they started phoning me instead of me chasing them once I did this.

minikin

Got a 'pay the €70 you owe us or we cut your service' letter from BT yesterday, sent them an 'firm but expressive' email yesterday... just got a call from their 'care improvement' centre... 11 minutes of wearing some young chap down to agreeing with me that they owe me €11.55... also agreeing that selling me a 24mb service when their tech say I won't get more than 4mb was just plain wrong. He brought up the "well it does say up to 24mb" so I said grand... from now on I'll pay up to €56 per month... see if that works out for ye...

Scoti

minikin wrote: »

also agreeing that selling me a 24mb service when their tech say I won't get more than 4mb was just plain wrong. He brought up the "well it does say up to 24mb" so I said grand... from now on I'll pay up to €56 per month... see if that works out for ye...

Dont really understand this... it clearly says up to 24 mb! Why would someone complain?

Anyway what it is true is that, as soon as they realized your line couldnt take the speed, they should have downgraded you to a different package at no extra cost...

dub45

Scoti wrote: »

Dont really understand this... it clearly says up to 24 mb! Why would someone complain?

Anyway what it is true is that, as soon as they realized your line couldnt take the speed, they should have downgraded you to a different package at no extra cost...

I think when a company says that the product is 'up to x' that customers should have a reasonably expectation of actually having the potential to get 'x' or near it. Contention etc etc may kick in but they should not be selling products to customers that do not have the potential to utilise the product.

I am not just criticising BT here the the dsl companies in general would save themselves and their customers a lot of hassle if they were more careful in their wording and explanation of the products they are selling.

Surely only a very very small percentage of dsl customers even with ok lines have the potentail to actually get anywhere near the 24?

minikin

Dont really understand this... it clearly says up to 24 mb! Why would someone complain?

If someone sold you a car with a top speed of up to 120 mph you'd be a bit miffed if it actually couldn't do more than 20 mph... if someone sold you a litre bottle of vodka and it only contained one sixth of a litre you wouldn't accept it... if someone leased out an office block to you where you have access to as many as 24 offices you'd be a bit annoyed if they'd locked you out of 20 of those offices but you still had to pay for the whole building...

anyone that accepts this sort of mis-selling is a mug, it's false advertising pure and simple.

Just to point out the reality of the service I'm getting... I can't even stream a youtube video... skype is out of the question too... and all this on their Deluxe package, I'm in West Dublin not west connemara for god sake (only 1km from the nangor road exchange)

aktelmiele

minikin wrote: »

If someone sold you a car with a top speed of up to 120 mph you'd be a bit miffed if it actually couldn't do more than 20 mph... if someone sold you a litre bottle of vodka and it only contained one sixth of a litre you wouldn't accept it... if someone leased out an office block to you where you have access to as many as 24 offices you'd be a bit annoyed if they'd locked you out of 20 of those offices but you still had to pay for the whole building...

anyone that accepts this sort of mis-selling is a mug, it's false advertising pure and simple.

Just to point out the reality of the service I'm getting... I can't even stream a youtube video... skype is out of the question too... and all this on their Deluxe package, I'm in West Dublin not west connemara for god sake (only 1km from the nangor road exchange)

While I've had my own issues with BT and other providers, your examples make no sense.

Ok so the car one does make sense but if you buy a litre of vodka, it is advertised as having a litre in in it, not up to a litre of vodka.

Again, you have access to 24 offices, not up to 24 offices.

Basically the reason, most people complain about the service is that they see up to 24 meg and understand it as blah blah garanteeded 24 meg.

Its not really false advertising because up to means 0 - 24. So they are providing you with a service, all be it not a great one.

If you have contacted BT and asked them to look into you issue, then you will have a chance of getting it fixed.

Broadband is a sensitive technology and people forget that its not the same as dial up where you can connect 10 phones, sky and use a 30 ft cable.

Not so with ADSL.

What are your line stats??

minikin

I don't expect to get 24megabits... I'd be happy with 12... but four is taking the proverbial. All the examples I gave were valid because with all you have a reasonable expectation that you're getting what you pay for. Just so you know you don't actually get exactly one litre of milk or 1 kg of product... but it's an accurate estimation of what you will get.

If, after checking my line they told me that I could only get 4mb I wouldn't have chosen them... they didn't they said I could get the top product (and not the 'up to 7.6mb' version that is available in non adsl2 enabled exchanges, but the 'up to 24mb' service)

Therefore I expected to get a service somewhere between 7.6mbps and 24mbps.

I was sold a pup, end of... this is not about a lack of understanding about contention, line attenuation etc, this is about some kid eager to make a sale and I'm now locked into a six month contract.

Just compare what they offer in six of the 32 counties: http://www.bt.com:80/index.jsp?NI=yes
Bit of a difference there in terms of price & standard equipment supplied... think we'll ever see home hubs here??
8mb broadband for €25/month
same island... same company... same call centre... same old story

dub45

aktelmiele wrote: »

While I've had my own issues with BT and other providers, your examples make no sense.

Ok so the car one does make sense but if you buy a litre of vodka, it is advertised as having a litre in in it, not up to a litre of vodka.

Again, you have access to 24 offices, not up to 24 offices.

Basically the reason, most people complain about the service is that they see up to 24 meg and understand it as blah blah garanteeded 24 meg.

Its not really false advertising because up to means 0 - 24. So they are providing you with a service, all be it not a great one.

If you have contacted BT and asked them to look into you issue, then you will have a chance of getting it fixed.

Broadband is a sensitive technology and people forget that its not the same as dial up where you can connect 10 phones, sky and use a 30 ft cable.

Not so with ADSL.

What are your line stats??

I think it is quite hard to come up with a direct analogy. However what about an airline that sells someone a seat on a superfast jet but the jet cannot land at the persons local airport due to the runway being too small? A bit far fetched I know but...........or suppose a salesman sells an innocent person a blue ray disc player and heap of discs promising them all sorts of wonderful quality pictures and yet the salesman knows the person hasnt got a high definition televison and therefore cannot realise the potential of blue ray?

Due to the inherent limitations of dsl and the individual characteristics of each line it is simply not possible for many people to aspire to the maximum speed advertised. In fact is is impossible for them to get it.

So there are broadly two categories of customer who will not be able to get the maximum. Firstly those who live too far away and secondly those who live within a qualifying distance but whose lines are not capable of dealing with the high speeds. These categories of customer should be very easy for the the isp to distinguish in advance. If a customer falls into either of those categories then I believe they should not be sold a product that their line predictably will not be able to take.

Bear in mind too that not alone will their line not be able to take the maximum product but the customer will also generally experience a worse performance than if they were on a lower product to drop outs and so on.