Why I hate British Telecom

Let's talk about British Telecom. now to be honest, the service provided by BT is good and the engineers are good, the adverts are in my opinion misleading as the price you pay after 6 months is in terms and conditions that need a magnifying glass to read and then there's the customer service, or lack of.

Let me tell you what happened, I got a new job and my pay day changed, to make life easier, I contacted the various people I pay bills to and changed the direct debit date, all went well until I called BT. The first thing I noticed was that it was almost impossible to pick an option that would let me speak to a human, I then found one that suggested it might help me change the date. Once I pressed the button on my phone an automated voice told me I couldn't change the date and should cancel the direct debit.

I did this and while I was in work, my wife received a message asking me to call BT back, they even gave me a number, a number that went to an automated system with no option to speak to a human.

After 2 days of trying, I got a person on the phone that said I would have to set up a payment plan, I agreed and they said there you go it's all setup, is there anything else they could do? I had to ask them how much they would be taking and when and that was all sorted and I went on my way, the first payment was due on the 28th of April.

5 minutes later, the phone rang and an automated message said that BT had called me and they couldn't speak to me right now, I swore a bit but then I remembered that I had got the BT payments sorted and would no longer have to speak to them, how wrong I was.

On the 1st of April, the phone rang, it was BT telling me there was an outstanding bill and if a payment hadn't cleared by the 1st of April I would be charged a late payment fee and services would be cut off on the 5th. Once more I attempted to call them, after half an hour of attempting to speak to a human I finally gave up and called the cancellation line. A helpful but unhappy sounding person told me that a payment plan had been setup and then cancelled, they could see no reason why.

They have once more setup my direct debit and I am now in exactly the same position I was in before this all started.

My advice, if you need a phone and broadband, don't use BT, they have a good service but are the most unfriendly and awkward company to deal with, unless you like automated systems.