I know that Owen will sympathise with this post.  I feel the need to express my utter disgust at the telecoms company that boasts that “every day hundreds of people come back to BT”.  What a joke!!  DO NOT, under any circumstance, use this good for nothing company, that does not even deserve to have its bills lining the cat’s litter tray.  You will have to forgive me, as I am particularly cross anyway this week, but BT have made my misery complete.

I moved into my office on 1st July 2009.  I had a telephone line installed but it nearly wasn’t installed because the engineer turned up at the wrong address.  He couldn’t just go a few doors down the road because apparently that would require some admin, which is something that BT are clearly abysmal at.

I finally got the line installed.  Not through choice, but out of necessity, since this money grabbing bunch of turnips-for-brains hold the monopoly on telephone lines.  When they privatised, they could have invested all that money into actually making their service good, but instead, they employed the monkeys who I will shortly describe and proceeded to make most of Britain miserable.

I do not use the BT line for phonecalls, I have VOIP phones and 02 broadband.  However, the broadband requires a phone line.  Since the line was installed, I have received no correspondence from them whatsoever.  No bill, no acknowledgement of the line being installed, nothing.  By December I was wondering where the bill was and assumed I was being billed quarterly.  I had thought that maybe I should check.

One snowy day in January (last week), my internet and phones go dead.  For a company that operates largely online, this is somewhat crippling.  I called BT with the intention of resolving the issue, paying what I owe (the only reason I hadn’t paid is because I didn’t know what I owed or who to pay!) and getting back online.

I kid you not.  I spoke to 13 representatives of BT for 1.5 hours.

Number 1: Couldn’t help, needed another department
Number 2: Couldn’t help, needed another department
Number 3: I said “I really don’t want to be cut short as I don’t seem to be getting anywhere, I wonder if you could help me?” She replied “I don’t have to put up with this” and hung up on me.
NUmber 4: (Fuming now) told me I’d been treated appallingly and that they’d put me through to someone who could help
Number 5: “Hello!??! Oh sorry hello madam” – obviously picked up the call which had been thrown into cyber space.  No idea what was going on.  This lad turned out to be as thick as pig poo and got really stroppy saying “Well it isn’t my fault if you don’t pay your bill is it???  What do you want ME to do about it?!”  I said that if he had a corporate responsibility as a representative of his company and that without a bill, it was absolutely his fault that I had not paid it.  In fact, if he could tell me who to pay and how much, I would very much like to pay my bill.
Number 6: I had asked to be put through to a manger.  Ended up with yet another member of the customer sales team who didn’t know the situation.  She put me through to my account manager, a Mr Ian Medley.
Number 7: Not Ian Medley at all, but some other idiot.  I am seriously seething now, but trying to remain calm. I end up saying to this person “Can I just ask what I should do??  I am in a hopeless situation.  I owe you money, but you won’t let me pay.  What do you want to do about that?”
Number 8: Can’t find my address
Number 9: Can’t deal with me without a landline number despite finding my address
Number 10: Can find my address but not my account
NUmber 11: Very rude, so I ask to speak to a manager.
NUmber 12: Not a manager, yet again.  Doesn’t know why I have been put through to him
NUmber 13: Goes through the whole scenario, tells me my account details, says reassuringly “Oh yeah you’ve been cut off”.  When I ask why, he says “Oh the engineers don’t have to give a reason”.  I explode at this point and tell him that he’d better get me back online and send out an engineer, as this would not take 7 working days.  He says that he can only put in a request.  I rant some more and he assures me that (after apparently speaking to his manager), he will get me a call back within 8 working hours and the line will be active within one to two working days.

When the call did not arrive with one working hour to spare, I let my grace and mercy leave my side.  I set the Rayfield on them.  Mark phoned them up and finally got through to someone helpful.  Helpful man actually confessed that number 13 had simply promised the call and the re-connection to pacify me, because I was annoyed.  CAN YOU BELIEVE IT???  So there was no chance of being reconnected within 1-2 working days and now in fact we had wasted another day.  Mark got his direct line and demanded compensation for loss of earnings, which they have promised to file for.

However, my confidence is low, because we have not sorted the bill issue and until that bill has been paid, I am certain they will not reconnect us.  There has been no communication since and we are still not online.  OUr 02 account has been suspended and we have 30 days to resolve it.

I am livid.  How on earth can managers sleep at night knowing that their employees treat people like this??