Account not activated

galactus

I signed up with EsatBT for the starter package nearly three weeks ago but their "Customer Service" Department can't tell me when my account will be activated.

Is this in any way normal?

Sponge Bob

its abnormal that they told you anything , they are impossible to get through to nowadays

did you or do you have another telephone company other than eircom providing any service to you ,

dial 198000 from your line , does it say eircom ????

galactus

Thanks Sponge Bob.

I've been with Esat for a year (inc. the line rental), was with Eircom before that though.

I'm starting to understand why we're bottom of the league when it comes to broadband.

Sponge Bob

OOOOOOh dear . I am not sure if they can order broadband for you so , they certainly could not at the beginning of the year unless the line rental was with eircom and Comreg did not seem to care either.

you should email complaints@btireland.ie with all your details and please tell us here how it goes with the complaints escalation team and how competent and quick you find them .

uRbaN

have to say that my experiences with BT have been pretty good. Having said that, I have never had to ring them for anything, and they forgot to bill me for my first year which was nice.

galactus

Below emailed to complaints@btireland.ie:

I have to say my experience of BT has been very bad.

The saga so far:
1. Early November. Tried to ring Sales Dept 5-10 times . On hold for 30+ mins at a time. Gave up.

2. Nov 16th: Went online to order basic package. Got automated reply.

3. Nov 27th: Got router. (despite not ordering it) "DSL connection successful". After one hour to get thru to Tech support, I'm told its an "Activation Issue".

4. End Nov / Early Dec: repeated phone calls and emails to BT. Tech Support say ...contact Customer Service. Customer Service say...contact Tech Support. Begin to wonder what circle of HELL I am in.

5. Dec 6th: eventually someone has got back to from Customer Service...blaming Eircom.

The worst of it is that at no stage was I given any adequate explanation as to what the holdup is.

TBH, I feel like saying **** getting BB at home if its this much hassle.


Actually above makes a nice sig...

galactus

Still no feedback from Customer Service.

I see in another thread I might need a "a Bitstream Transfer Form".Is this needed? I never had BB before.

Why the hold-up? Is it this famous unbundling? Or just ineptitude by BT?

Sponge Bob

did complaints@btireland.ie answer you at all ??

galactus

Sponge Bob wrote:

did complaints@btireland.ie answer you at all ??

Yeah, in my dreams! :mad:

Seriously thanks for replying, this fiasco is a downer. At least one other person shares my pain.

flamegrill

Slightly off-topic:

Ordered dsl last friday for the auld pair so I can do a bit of work over the holiday period without resorting to dial-up and going insane. It went live Monday.

The main point of note is its a WLR line with UTV (whole sale line rental, i.e. calls/line rental etc is with utvtalk) and there were no problems ordering DSL from Magnet on the line ..

Paul

galactus

Dec 20th UPDATE: Not a sausage.

ardmacha

The main point of note is its a WLR line with UTV (whole sale line rental, i.e. calls/line rental etc is with utvtalk) and there were no problems ordering DSL from Magnet on the line

Sorry to butt in on galactus' thread.

Can I clarify this from flamegrill. Does this mean that you got DSL from Magnet and kept UTVtalk. Is this Magnet LLU or Magnet reselling Eircom bitstream. If it was the latter was this better than just getting UTV broadband?

Stargal

galactus wrote:

I signed up with EsatBT for the starter package nearly three weeks ago but their "Customer Service" Department can't tell me when my account will be activated.

Is this in any way normal?

Yeah you arent the only one. My parents signed up for it in mid-November, the router arrived at the end of the November but the connection didnt work for over a week.

I rang BT tech support four times about it (each time waiting at least 40 minutes on hold before anyone answered) and emailed them once (no response). Each time I rang, the person said something along the lines of they could see what the problem was, had spoken to the sales department about it and the connection would be working within a day. Didnt happen.

Eventually after a week I rang again and told the guy I wasnt hanging up until my internet connection worked. Not in a scary-angry-evil way, just in a matter-of-fact way. It took a while but by the end of that conversation I had my broadband...

The problem seems to be that that theres some big gulf between the sales end of things and the technical end of things; so the sales people are sending out all the stuff that you need to set it up before the technical people have had a chance to sort out your connection.

Keep at them - ring technical support again and use the callback facility, so youre not put on hold for hours. Get them to give you a straight answer about what the hold up is and then post it up here. I know that some tech support people from BT read these forums so maybe one of them could help.

Oh and make sure that youre not being charged for any of this!

Good luck...
PS: Sorry for the lack of apostrophes in this post! For some reason my laptop is refusing to let me put them in... v bizarre...

galactus

Hi stargal: did you ring Customer Support or Tech Support? Each is blaming the other (when I get onto them that is).

Actually I hadn't checked my email and what do i see in my Inbox, an email from BT "Customer Support", date stamped 1:09am. Automated no doubt.

Thank you for your email

Please be advised that we have escalated this order with the relevant department who will have this order pushed to complete asap

Kind Regards
Customer Care

Stargal

galactus versus BT wrote:

Thank you for your email

Please be advised that we have escalated this order with the relevant department who will have this order pushed to complete asap

Kind Regards
Customer Care

And the award for most useless email ever in the history of the world goes to... :rolleyes:

I rang technical support every time. The people that I spoke to said that they could email customer support and tell them what needed to be done at their end, so I never had to get in touch with them. Might be worth just sticking with one of them until you get the answers you need?

galactus

stargal wrote:

And the award for most useless email ever in the history of the world goes to... :rolleyes:

I rang technical support every time. The people that I spoke to said that they could email customer support and tell them what needed to be done at their end, so I never had to get in touch with them. Might be worth just sticking with one of them until you get the answers you need?

Thanks stargal, I'm awaiting a call-back. BTW, this is what I get on login. Any sane person would assume that I just ring BT and have my account activated...!

Stargal

galactus wrote:

Any sane person would assume that I just ring BT and have my account activated...!

That would be too easy - BT like to make you work for your connection

This might sound silly, but you're definitely using the right password and username aren't you? You've to add @btbb to your username, and then the password default is 1234.

I know you've probably checked this already, but just in case...!

kin9pin

flamegrill wrote:

Slightly off-topic:

Ordered dsl last friday for the auld pair so I can do a bit of work over the holiday period without resorting to dial-up and going insane. It went live Monday.

The main point of note is its a WLR line with UTV (whole sale line rental, i.e. calls/line rental etc is with utvtalk) and there were no problems ordering DSL from Magnet on the line ..

Paul

How did you do this? I was told by Magnet that I would have to leave UTV and go back to Eircom in order to use their 4Mb package.

galactus

stargal wrote:

That would be too easy - BT like to make you work for your connection

This might sound silly, but you're definitely using the right password and username aren't you? You've to add @btbb to your username, and then the password default is 1234.

I know you've probably checked this already, but just in case...!

I did indeed but worth mentioning.

Just off the phone there - was following your advice till Tech Support guy hung up on me...

Stargal

galactus wrote:

Just off the phone there - was following your advice till Tech Support guy hung up on me...

Seriously? On purpose? Had you gotten anywhere in trying to fix the connection?

galactus

stargal wrote:

Seriously? On purpose? Had you gotten anywhere in trying to fix the connection?

No but have been onto three Customer Support and one Technical Support person this morning. Two of the Customer Service people hung up on me (both making the its all Eircom's fault excuse...and no I didn't swear at them!) but one was very nice and seems to have sorted it out. She was quite vague as to what she sorted out though but said that the order had now "gone through to completion"

This is a phrase the BT staff use a lot: it seems the BT system show Tech Support and Customer Service the same info: whether the order is completed or not. Customer Service have the final say in activating the account but they don't seem to listen to their Technical Support people on this.

Later a Senior Tech Support person returned my call (I had asked for escalation from the Tech Support person from last night). He checked my account and said the order has "now gone through to completion". He pointed out the password had not been changed to what I had initially requested so he made it so.

Nobody from BT, Tech Support or Customer Service, has explained to me what the delay was (and only one or or two of the dozens of people I've talked to actually apologised on behalf of BT) yet they were all able to assure me that "the order had not gone through to completion".

Customer Service are of the opinion that its a Tech Support issue. Or that its all Eircom's fault. Tech Support (who I believed all along) said its an account activation issue and as such a Customer Service issue.

This series of phone calls seems to have enabled my account. We'll see when I get home later but I have just gotten an email telling me my account is now active so stargal's "not scary" approach seems to have worked.

galactus

Yup that worked, got my account activated.

Irishisptest tells me:
Download Speed: 784 kbps
Upload Speed: 83 kbps
QoS: 64 %
RTT: 33 ms
Maxpause: 613 ms

Moral of the story: keep nagging them. I tell you one thing though: the BT Tech Support guys know what's going on but the BT Customer Service Dept. don't have a clue.