I’m not sure I’ve really got that title right. It doesn’t really convey the full enormity of their sheer sickening awfulness.
I received an email from them a couple of days ago saying that I was overdue paying my bill. Which I was, because the last time they actually sent me a notification that a bill was due was in March 2023. I’ve no idea why. So I went to their website to sort it all out and that was where the “fun” began.
I logged in using the same username I’ve been using since 2007 and was redirected here:
Well, that’s odd. Perhaps it’s a browser issue. I’ll try in another browser.
Hmmm. How about I copy the redirection URL and paste that in directly?
Or, trying another
At this point I had to phone them and run the gauntlet of their IVR system, eventually managing to talk to a human “guide”, largely by ignoring all the IVR options. He told me that the first problem was that they had no email address on record for me. Hard to understand when they’ve been sending me emails to the same address for seventeen years. How did they find out what it was? Perhaps they have it on record, but don’t have it on record that they have it on record?
After that he suggested that the problem might be that I was logging in with a username rather than an email address and that they hadn’t used usernames for ages. “Ages since January when I last logged in to pay my bill?” I asked, also pointing out that the login page invites the visitor to log in with either their email address or username. Regardless, he said I’d need to sign up with a new account using my email address and emailed me a link. We got as far as the security questions…
At this point I had to ask for help from “normal” people, one of whom suggested that perhaps I should try without any spaces. Pretty odd and wouldn’t have occurred to me (clearly it hadn’t), but amazing! It worked! That’s utterly batshit crazy UI design. Why would you not say “without spaces” if that’s what you meant to be understood by “using only words”? And how am I supposed to remember in five years time when I need it for the first time that the answer to the security question should have no spaces between the words? At this stage they emailed me a link to enable my account and told me to click on the link in the email. So I did. To which I got the response “Please wait ten minutes before clicking on the link”. What?!
Ten minutes later I clicked on the link and I’m in! Err, well, no. It bounces me to the login page, but that wasn’t entirely a surprise. Enter my new details and off we go!
Oh bloody hellfire. Another phone call. A “guide” who tried to be helpful using the old “delete the account and recreate it” workaround. A bit like rebooting Windows when it starts behaving oddly, I guess. She deleted the account and I received an email saying “We’ve now deleted your BT ID, so you won’t be able to use it to log in anymore”. On with recreating the account. Only I can’t, because my email address is apparently still in use. In desperation, the “guide” suggested that I give it a couple of hours and try again. (What craziness is this?) I did. It didn’t work.
Out of idle curiosity I tried logging in with my deleted account details. They work! But I don’t have any phone lines associated with the account. Never mind, I have the account number and there’s a button to link the two. Enter the details and everything looks good, although I have to wait ten minutes (again) for the two to be linked, so I returned to the “my account” page to be greeted with
A few more hours later, I’ve just tried logging in again. The account still exists, but there are again no services associated with it.
At this point I’ve given up until tomorrow. If I phoned them again I’d probably just end up reaching down the phone line and slamming the “guide’s” head into the desk repeatedly until I felt better.
We have FTTP now, so it’s time to go organising a move to VoIP. Then I’ll be free of BT forever. Oh, wait! My mobile phone is on EE. They’re merging with BT now. Looks like I’ll have to move my phone contract too. I can barely wait.