Broadband service Horror Stories

G-Money

Hey,

We had BT Broadband here in the north but it turned into a complete nightmare and I was just wonder if anyone else had any similar horror stories.

We were with another provider for our phone service but to make things simple we decided to move our phone service back to BT and to get broadband as well. Things started out ok but it was slightly frustrating as we had to wait 3 weeks or so for them to put our details because of a backlog with "the new system". We got our switchover date, the equipment arrived on the date promised and sure enough, later that day as they had said, the broadband was working.

Everything was grand for about 3 months then one night the broadband stopped working. I assumed this was some sort of general service fault that was affecting numerous people and because it was 9.30pm at night, I simply switched it off and went to bed expecting it to be working again the next morning.

I got up the next morning, switched it on and found it was still not working. I called the service number and there were no reports of broadband service problems in our area. I then called Tech Support to find out what was happening and as the guy was checking it he said "There's a cancellation order on your line". I asked him what that was and why it was there. He didn't know and he asked me if we were moving house or anything, which we were not. He tried to cancel the cancellation but wasn't sure it was going to work so I left it for a day or so.

I called up a day or two later to find out what was going on and they still didn't seem to know. I can't remember if at this point they had tried to re-activate it or not. I called up again and was told it had been cancelled because of non-payment. I couldn't understand this as we hadn't received any bills from them for the broadband. Maybe this should have started to ring alarm bells, but with their billing period being every 2 or 3 months and the fact we only had it that length of time, it made me think it might still arrive.

After several phone calls it turned out that somehow they had put some completely different unknown postal address onto our account and were sending the bills to that address, instead of the address we had given them. I couldn't understand this as we only have one postal address and this is the only one we gave them, and it's also the same as the address the phone bill got sent to.

We had to wait a week for them to send a bill for the outstanding amount to the correct address which arrived on a Saturday as usual. The bill was paid straight away and Monday I called up to get the broadband activated again and was told it would take a week to activate. This puzzled me again as the cancellation order had been placed the day before it was cancelled so it literally took less than 24 hours for it to be cancelled.

I waited a week and it was still not working. I called up and was told there was some sort of a problem and the order to activate it wouldn't be placed until the following Monday and from then it would take a week to activate. So I waited and just before the time was up I called them to get a status on how things were going. Apparently our request had still not been placed because of some issue at the exchange.

By now I was completely fed up with BT. I called up Virgin Media and placed an order with them. I figured it was going to take the same amount of time anyway and BT no longer deserved our money. This went rather smoothly until our activation date which was set for a Monday. Sure enough it wasn't activated and I managed to check the email on my phone to find out that it had been delayed by, you guessed it, BT. However this time the delay was only 2 days and the broadband was up and working by the Wednesday.

At this point, we had been without internet access for a full 6 weeks. For someone living in a rural area, who is unemployed and who is an IT Professional, it certainly made job hunting almost impossible. Especially as there's no such thing as internet cafe's nearby.

What annoyed me more was I contacted them and said "I think we should be given a months free internet or something to make up for the inconvience". When they replied I hated the way they quoted back to me "you have asked for a months free internet or something". That just made my blood boil. I don't know why, but it was like they were being smart asses and I hated it.

It has put me off BT for a long time I will tell you.

scottdconnolly

I had bt a while ago 2meg speed, everything went well for about 4 months then it just stopped one day.I thought everyone had gone down too so i left it 4 a few days.I then rang them, i was on the fone 4 about 2 hours trying 2 get tru 2 them,they said they'd check the line bla bla bla week later no broadband,each time i rang i was on the fone 4 about 2 hours and all they kept saying was my b/b was working fine????? This went on and on and on then after about 2 months i had enough and went back to eircom.I had broadband back after a couple of days.It took another 3 months 2 get the money back they owed me.Bt's customer care is the worst ive ever come accross and i will never ever go back to them.