Customer bashing at BT

L

Lingua

Registered User
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I wrote on this before. Now i'm taking it further and asking opinions :
A few days ago I got a bill from BT for a phone I havent used since 4 years ago. The address was my old one ( having left 4 years ago). When I rang the number it was answered by the new tenants (lucky things, getting their phonecalls free!) Despite numerous messages to customer care at bt, none have been answered.
The really puzzling thing is that I was only a subscriber of bt for about 8 months and I closed my account with them in March 2006. I paid all my dues and more.
Are they really so bored at bt or is this an attempt to punish their former customers?
 
I without a doubt would say to you that BT have the worst customer service available on the current market - eircom lackeys come a close second. And I have experience of 2 other companies on the irish telecoms market also which were passable.

You need to get an account execs name and send a letter in there stating your case. Just get a managers name or someones fullname and tell them they are now responsible for your issue

Or alternatively ignore it all - that works too - it does
 
If you write to BT, send it registered post. I had months of trouble with them, inlcuding writing to them on seperate occassion, all of which they claimed they never got.
 
As long as BT don't have access to your credit card details and/or have a DD mandate, I'd say you can safely ignore their invoices. Their technical support is fine, but their billing ops are without doubt the most spectacularly inept I have ever come across. I'm with them nearly three years now and I pay them by cheque. They've even managed subsequently to lose track of those payments, on occasion!
 
agree with above. actually got a good bit of free credit after a lot of hassle when I first changed over. pay by credit card so easy to check the payments.
 
Last time my bill came through, I noticed that the online billing discount wasn't being applied to my bill, so I withheld €5 from the payment I sent them and queried it (same had happened on the two previous bills). They just wrote back today to 'adviuse' me that I had to register for for online billing, so that I would receive the discount automatically from my next bill onwards... :rolleyes:
Dear V***,

Many thanks for your response. I've been registered for online billing ever since I've been a customer of BT Ireland, and I never 'deregistered' from it.

I also used to pay my bills by DD, but one day your billing department somehow 'lost' my DD details, so that my bill remained unpaid for over 6 months and I then suddenly had to come up with a single payment of €720-odd to avoid being cut off.

I subsequently sent you my payments by cheque and, after cashing them, your billing department again 'lost' trace of these and misbilled me for months afterwards. And, as I recall, once cut me off for a few days even though the bill had been paid.

In fact, over the past three years, I reckon I must have written literally 20 or 30 pages of (invariably fruitless) correspondence to BT, just trying to get an accurate bill, or indeed any bill at all.

So I shall conclude that this latest turn is just another bizarre chapter in the surreal, Kafkaesque labyrinth that is BT billing misservices.

I have now 're-updated' my delivery method to online billing as you suggest. It felt great! And the new colours are so pretty...

However, I should advise you that I shall be withholding €10 from my next payment — €5 for each of the online billing discounts that should have been applied to my bills of 24/02 and 24/04, as detailed below. Could I ask you to please make sure that this email is noted on my account profile, so that I don't have to explain it all again, and again, and again, and again...?

Actually, all my past experiences with BT suggest that even if you do this, I will probably have to explain it all again at some stage, and probably several times over, to different people each time, so on reflection just don't bother. You're nice people to deal with on the 'phone, and I'm sure that none of this is anyone's fault personally. Have a nice weekend.

All the best, etc.
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I got so much crap from BT too. I'm renting a eircon landline and BT have told me 4 times that I am on the online discounted billing but nobody in their department can tell me how to go online to activate it or access it .
 
Im not going to outline my opinions on BT's customer support personnel as I will probably get banned ;) What I will say is that I use them for the calls and line rental and for the broadband and since last December I am not being billed for the broadband.

In fact I have rang them twice this year in relation to another matter and on both occasions I was asked who I had my broadband with. Even though I told them it was with them they didn't do anything about it. According to their own records they are not my broadband provider and they dont bill me for it. Happy days......................... but will there be a sting in the tail
 
nutty nut said:
Im not going to outline my opinions on BT's customer support personnel as I will probably get banned ;) What I will say is that I use them for the calls and line rental and for the broadband and since last December I am not being billed for the broadband.

In fact I have rang them twice this year in relation to another matter and on both occasions I was asked who I had my broadband with. Even though I told them it was with them they didn't do anything about it. According to their own records they are not my broadband provider and they dont bill me for it. Happy days......................... but will there be a sting in the tail
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make sure you pay by cheque/draft and they dont have your credit card or bank account details and youll be ok as they wont be able to bill you then using any direct debit agreement you may have signed. when they do catch up with you for god knows what reason , then they might try to hit you with years of bills at which point you hold all the aces.
 
Actually BT have already got hold of my bank details even though i switched bank after terminating the contract. Also, they set up a dd mandate (which I duly cancelled). Surely this must be illegal. How can anybody have the right to withdraw money from an account where no contract has been drawn up? In my opinion this constitutes theft.
 
I know a friend who is bringing BT to through the Small Claims Court as they kept deducting from her bank- 18 months after she left her house and cancelled phone etc. They refused to refund. Now they're in the Small Claims and so far they haven't responded to her Court claim, so the Registrar at the Courts Office is scheduling it for court. Only cost her 12 euro i think and will cost them loads in wasted time! Well worth it...
 
They have a discount for online billing that doesn't work. When I go to vies online billing in excell, it gives me a bill from months ago. So I cant access an itemised bill.
When I asked their customer services to fix it I was told "We cant rewrite software because one or two customers are having problems". Needless to say I complained about this muppet and his attitude giving his name and full details. A well spoken english lady named Rachel apologised, said she would sort it out and call me back. That was 6 months ago. She never called back and my billing is still wrong.

Didn't BT top a poll as one of the best places to work. Clearly their managment care more about some of their inept employees then, than they do their customers.

I am currently switching provider
 
barryo said:
I am currently switching provider
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Good luck switching the BT account off! I suggest going to your bank and demanding that they stop the DD (if you have one) otherwise BT are going to charge you for months. This happened to me despite moving house! To a house that had no phone line in it for six months because BT promised they could put one in. And then couldn't. And didn't tell me. Until I phoned them the week after they were supposed to turn up and put it in. And then they told me to feck off to Eircom. And then they kept billing me at my old address. And it cost me a small fortune in Vodafone mobile. Did you get me started? I could go on about Eircom, if someone wants to start a new thread! :mad:
 
BT will switch off your direct debit if your persuasive enough with them on the phone. After 4 wrong bills in a row, all overcharged, I told them to stop direct debit. was told it wouldnt happen even though they were taking out the wrong amount. I told the guy they were debiting from the same account my mortage payments were taken from and if there wasnt enough money in my account for my mortgage because theyed taken out the wrong account then would they buy me a new house if I lost mine due to defaulting on payment. (bit OTT, but what the heck...), guy took off the DD on the spot. I also threatened them with the garda as it was theft, which it was IMO.

Despite the billing issues, the service is top notch, never had problem in 2 years with them and they are the cheapest in my area.
 
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