After 50 minutes on hold, I eventually managed to speak to another “guide” at BT this morning who insisted that I absolutely would have to wait the full twenty-four hours before recreating my account, despite previously being told it would probably be ok in a couple of hours. I also asked how I could get in touch with someone helpful if it didn’t work and was told that other than using the usual mechanism the only other possibility was to use the “self-serve” system on the website. He was of course completely unable to actually direct my to any obvious “self-serve” system on the website and I couldn’t find it anywhere, but many peoples’ experience seems to be that the website just sends you round in circles unless you want to give BT money, so perhaps that should be no surprise. He was absolutely adamant that it was the only other option however. If I’m honest, it sounded as though he was totally unfamiliar with the actual website.
So having waited 24 hours after my BT login was deleted, once again I tried to create a new account. Surprise surprise, it didn’t work, claiming that my email address was still in use for another account. And I could still log in using that allegedly deleted account, though there were no services associated with it. And when I tried to add them and waited for the required interval, they still weren’t there.
I feel utterly shat on. BT are utterly inept when it comes to providing clueful customer service. If you don’t fit the one of their scripts then you’re absolutely screwed and they just don’t care.
I’ve documented the entire thing and emailed it off to the address on the CEOmail site together with a list of what I want them to do to help resolve the mess. I might call them tomorrow. I might not. At the moment I’m not sure I can face it. As far as I can tell I’d just be wasting a load of my time, talking to clowns who actually have no idea how to improve the situation.