BT
I could detail all the problems I had with BT over the years. maybe by reading such a long story you would get some sense of the tedium of dealing with BT. I could tell you about the 'bill that refused to die' where out of the blue they started charging me 500 pound a month for my internet, as if I had optical fibre straight to the internet backbone. That took several months to get them to admit they had made a mistake. Rather than being the end of it, they tried to charge me for the same account 3 times over the next few years, each time I had to go through the same process, hour on hold, etc. Or I could tell you about the time I moved offices and arranged to transfer my numbers. they fucked it up and our customers couldn't contact us for 2 months. suffice to say they are bunch of incompetent useless pricks and I hate them
*draws breath*
my one win over them was with a home internet connection. I say win, but in war does anyone truly win? Yes. Bad example.
I wanted a broadband connection but no phone. they told me this was possible and signed me up. fast forward two years later when I wanted to close my account. To give me this modified service, they'd assigned me a special account number. I was told after a merry go around of different departments that only one department dealt with these special account numbers, and the normal accounts department are unable to close it. They main problem turned out to be, that this special department didn't actually exist. they had a number, but it would ring and nobody would answer, no matter which time of day you called, it would ring out. Nobody would take responsibility for it, every phone call would eventually result in being transferred to a number that didn't answer. I raised formal complaints, which responded weeks later asking me to call the number the department that didn't exist. the thing about it, was that nobody in every department I called understood there own organisation. I can't really explaing how hard-won even finding out this information was, how many wasted hours on hold, how many promises of being called back that were broken. My saving grace was not anyone from accounts, sales, new accounts, broadband home etc, but one sympathetic guy from technical support for phones. I demanded to know the name of one person who worked for this phantom department to prove that it existed. He put me on hold for about an hour, but then told me they had been going through a lot of organisational changes and he'd found out the department that covers my account numbers no longer exists. I got his name and when he transferred me through to accounts and I went through the same pointless merry go around, i asked to be put back to him. He took it up himself to close my account but that wasn't the end of it. becuase I should never have been given my account number, he issued me a refund for the 2 years. it was around 150 pounds, and though I would have gladly paid someone triple that just to deal with them, it was nice to have a minor victory at long last.
The moral: never deal with BT. i don't know what the other providers are like, but they would have to be very dedicated to offer as fucked up a service as BT
( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 14:21, 8 replies)

I can wholeheartedly agree with this asessment
They are absolutely the WORST company I have ever dealt with. Almost unbelievable levels of incompetence. Everyone there is a tiny cog in a huge, badly organised, bloated machine.

Just get the hell out.

Once, they set up a direct debit on my account without permission (illegal). They used this to take (again, without permission) £150 out of my account. When I called then, livid, they told me it was to "help pay for my bills in advance".

The man was unsymapthetic - I told him in no uncertain terms that they would refund the money immediately - he complied thankfully.

I now pay another company for everything, even landline rental as I never wanted to deal with them again.
(Stiltzkin, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 14:50, closed)

By the way
I love your username.
(Stiltzkin, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 14:51, closed)

I will go to any lengths to avoid BT
They are a shower of absolute cunts
( emvee cruor deo cruoris, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 15:30, closed)

How about AOL.?
Years ago I started out with AOL... they were good, decent service, fast connection, rarely dropped etc etc. Then Crapphone Whorehouse took over and raped me in the bum.

They "transfered" me to the UK servers from the US and in doing so reduced my speed to 1GB for a month, which was fine because they had said I would have problems. But then it stayed at 1GB for months. I would call and they would say "it is the line not us". I replaced my router twice (luckily I could refund these due to my own position at work) and their tech support actually managed to prevent one connecting AT ALL on their net.

Then I found O2 were a third of the price for the same speed so I told Talktalk as they are now to stuff it. They said "stay with us and we can transfer you to the UK servers". I could have physically dragged the guy in their call centre down the telephone line and kicked him in the bollocks until he bled.

As a comparison O2 started dropping my connection a fair bit in the past month or so. I phoned them and spoke to a nice gent with English as his first language. He changed a few things, sent me a set of new filters and cables (which turned up within a day!) and sorted me out in minutes.
(elfinpunk Touching Cloth Since, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 18:33, closed)

I agree O2 are good
I changed to them from BT.

Get their "O2 home phone" service too, and you'll never have to speak to BT ever again!
(Stiltzkin, Fri 11 Feb 2011, 9:07, closed)

Bad service?
Man, clearly you've never had to deal with NTL.

Here's a little story to cheer all you BT haters: A few weeks ago you almost certainly didn't read in the press about the detailed changes to the rate of revaluation of public sector pensions. An unintended side-effect of this was to slash the pensions of every BT employee who'd ever worked for them (apart from the few who joined in the past few years) by between 10%-50%.

Perhaps this could have gone in last weeks QOTW: BT were a bit slow to sort my new phone line out...then a karmic stroke of a Whitehall pen took £2,900,000,000 from the pockets of their current and former employees.

/laughs last
( daikoku has been on a ragga tip since, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 18:58, closed)

this is why ofcom exist
you should of reported this to them and they would of corrected and of gotten you compensation
( Captain Pilchard The king of B-movies!, Thu 10 Feb 2011, 22:13, closed)

or, i could have reported it, and nothing happens apart from wasdting additional time with offcom

( cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Sun 13 Feb 2011, 13:55, closed)