www.tanstaafl.co.uk

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.

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.