I had a lovely lady from Plusnet phone me up today to say they were having problems activating my broadband and phone service because BT had de-activated the number. I gave her a give rundown of what had happened so far and she said that for a fee they could get BT to reactivate the number today – restoring my ability to make and receive calls by this evening and getting broadband within a week.

Being utterly digusted by BT’s inability to do anything, I took her up on the offer and submitted an official complaint to BT for being rubbish.  A few minutes after submitting the complaint I got a call from a lovely man at BT saying that the way the change in the account had been done was completely wrong: it should have taken about a minute to change the names on the account and get a final bill issued immediately. The service should never have been disconnected and was there anything else they could help me with. Funny, if they’d told me this when I had started complaining on the phone I may have stayed with them, but since I had several conversations with a number of different people, none of whom had an alternative for me, or an apology, that ship has sailed.

Moral of the story: always put your complaints in writing (even an online contact us form), it seems to get things to the people who know how to resolve problems.

You’d think it would be easy to change the name on a phone account, but not with BT. To change back to my name (which the account was originally in) requires the account to be completely closed and a new one set up, as if I had just moved in to the property.

Fine.

A request for the account to be closed was made, and I stopped being able to make or receive phone calls on June 30th (my broadband continued until that account ran its course on July 10th).

I obviously want to be able to make and receive phone calls and also arrange to get broadband again, so I put a call into BT last week. After about 15 minutes of being shunted around departments I am told that I cannot be reconnected until the final bill is issued and paid, and they put a rush on issuing the final bill.

Lovely.

The final bill was issued on 13th July. I spend 20 minutes on the phone today trying to pay this bill before the direct debit date of 28th July. Apparently I can only pay this bill early by paying by cheque. WTF?

I’ve decided to switch my phone calls to my desired broadband provider, but of course they can’t hook me up with telephone or broadband until BT releases the line, which they won’t do until their bill is paid. Meanwhile I remain unable to call in or out of my house, with no internet access, all because they couldn’t revert an account to its original holder.

Really, BT in this day and age is it OK for you to leave your “customers” without service because they want to change the name on their account? My mobile phone provider has to provide information within 2 working days when I switch companies, so why don’t you?