I had a few things to get done today, but this afternoon decided to give creating a new
account another go. Same problem as ever: the email address I was using was already set up somewhere else.
So, as I’ve had no response whatsoever to my email to customer services I thought I’d best get on the phone again. After five minutes on hold (so fast!) I spoke to a “guide” who actually decide he really couldn’t help me and passed me on to a more technical person. Over the next three quarters of an hour we established that associating my BT account with my new BT id “didn’t work” (well blow me down) and he couldn’t help. So he’s raised an issue with their even more technical people so they can have a look at it. Apparently that may take three working days, but at least I got passed through to someone who could talk me through some of the bill (which I’m actually fairly certain is wrong) and allow me to pay so the in-laws in the granny annexe won’t get cut off. If I’ve overpaid then it will just have to count towards my final bill when I move the numbers away from them as I’m not even going to consider starting that until the outstanding problems are fixed, just in case. They couldn’t actually email me a copy of the bill however. They could email me all sorts of other stuff, but not a copy of the bill.
And I’ve also been given a way to contact them without fighting my way through the IVR and the hold system — I go to a web page and they call me back. Asking customers to hang around on hold about a problem with their systems is just insulting really. I must have spent at least three hours on the phone to them this week and I’d estimate that half of that was probably on hold.