BT Billing - Thought you might like a laugh!

[Milo19]

Following a number of problems with BT since a change of address, I thought I would write a letter!!! It goes a little something like this...........


Dear Sir or Madam

I write to you inform you of the abysmal customer service BT offer their customers.
I am sure you are already aware of this, as I cannot believe I am the only one to suffer at the hands of yourself.

I arrange to have my services moved from ***** in Kent, to ******* in Gloucestershire. You would think this to be a relatively simple thing in this technological age.

However, below you will find a catalogue of errors by BT staff that leads me to believe incompetence runs through the veins of the company.

Wednesday 10th September 2008 – Telephoned “Customer Services” to arrange relocation of services to new address. I was told that my new address has not got a BT line present. Wrong – a BT line has been present and was active for 29 of the 35 years the property has been standing.

Friday 19th September 2008 – Technician arrives to “install” line.
This is the only member of staff that I have dealt with that should be commended in all of this. He was very polite, arrived early and got to work.

Monday 29th September 2008 – Called BT to enquire why broadband had not been activated. After speaking to five different people and spending 26minutes on the phone, I was informed it would be the 2nd October before it was working. When I queried why so long, the gentleman I was discussing my case with informed me, it was only inputted for activation on the 26th September and can require up 5days.

Spot the mistake! Installed Friday 19th and not inputted until the 26th September????
I then asked why it took a week to be inputted and I was informed that BT had suffered technical problems!
For a company the size of BT, I’m sure a technical problem lasting a week must have been cataclysmic. So forgive me if I think I’m being lied to at this point.

Thursday the 2nd October came and bingo, my broadband worked. On this very day, I receive a letter from yourselves informing me of the activation date. Its comical as I sit here and type it all out, and I appreciate you may be thinking this is unbelievable, how can a company get it so wrong? But, unfortunately for BT, it’s true and there’s more to come!

Friday 17th October 2008
I receive my bill from BT, for £146.35. The charge for installing this phone line of £124.99 is present and all seems correct. If technicians are earning this sort of money for 45minutes work, please do enclose an application form with your response. In the traumatic financial world that exists today, I could do with a higher salary. However, I don’t believe they are, and I would very much appreciate a breakdown of this fee to ensure I’m not being over charged in anyway shape or form.

As I finish reading the bill, I spot that the amount £146.35 is to be debited from my account on or around the 27th October 2008 – this is not something I agreed to or indeed set up. So once again, I call “Customer Services” where I’m informed my billing date has changed and the payment date has been brought forward as it cannot be more than 10 working days after the bill date.

This is not acceptable. Like the vast majority of the British public, I get paid the last working day of each month, and therefore I arrange all my direct debits to be taken from my account on the final day or the first day of each month.

Following a heated discussion regarding this, I was informed a manager named Sue, would return my call within 48hours.

My point which seems to be misunderstood is, if I did not wish to pay by direct debit, then I get charge a payment processing fee.
We all know is an illegal penalty charge which you cover up by classing it as a service. I would choose to pay from bank transfer if my billing date cannot be moved, which to my knowledge requires no manual intervention and therefore should be exempt from this charge.

If I do pay by direct debit, BT dictates when they take it, and if I don’t pay by direct I get charge. So I’m in a no win situation.

I am the customer, as long as you receive the payment before the due date, then I decide when and how I pay, not BT.

Monday 20th October 2008
Following the failure of the member of your management team to have the courtesy to fulfil the promises made during my last conversation, I call back to BT and speak to Shab.
Once again, I get the normal cold hearted apologies, but she did suggest I cancel the direct debit, pay by debit card and then once the balance is cleared, the billing date can be changed and the direct debit re-instated.

Quite a simply thing to undertake I think, but why wasn’t that suggested Friday and why, seven days on from being informed a manager would call me, am I still waiting for that call??!!

Your team of receptionists, which in effect is all they are, lack compassion, understanding, courtesy. It seems clear that this attitude is present throughout the company and therefore, I can only assume that it must be something that is instilled in your employees on their induction day. These people are your advertisement, your front cover and urgently need to be overhauled after level of incompetence I have received in recent weeks.

In an attempt to resolve my grievances and restore my ailing faith in BT, I would like to receive the following from yourselves:-

· A written apology
· A billing date which enables the direct debit of both accounts to be taken on or after the 1st of each month.
· A breakdown of the £124.99 fee charge for reconnecting a telephone line.
· An offer to compensate me for the lost of time and money spent on the telephone.

I hope the above will be forth coming and from this we can move forward.


Yours Faithfully

[Ell-enn]

Brilliant - you are of course going to send it to their CEO ian.livingstone@bt.com ?

[Milo19]

I will now - their complaints have had it, Ofcom (or whatever there called now) have had also!

Cheers Jim

[Ell-enn]

You'll very soon get a call from a nice lady in the CEO's office (you did give them you number?)

[Milo19]

yep....all numbers on there!

[locutus]

The problems you may find is £124.99 is what BT Openreach charge BT Retail. You may have escaped most of this fee (£95 discount) if you'd signed up for the discount connect on an 18 month term, but as the advisors on the phone get 0 commission they tend not to mention this.

You should have been informed the BT broadband cannot be ordered until the BT line is in place, and it takes 5 working days for BT broadband to go onto the line before hand, and any technical "glitches" will add to this lead time

If you pay by direct debit on the "monthly payment plan" you can state what date and how much comes out of your account (as long as it covers your estimated bill) Frankly I'm surprised no-one mentioned this before, as the people on the phones get a small commission for getting people to accept this.


For a telecommunications company they don't communicate well do they? Hopefully they will offer something sensible to get this sorted, and as you said, move on.

	The Direct Debit Guarantee • The Guarantee is offered by all Banks and Building Societies that take part in the Direct Debit Scheme. The efficiency and security of the Scheme is monitored and protected by your own Bank or Building Society. • If the amounts to be paid or the payment dates change, we will notify you three working days in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed. • If an error is made by us or by your Bank or Building Society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate refund from your branch of the amount paid. • You can cancel a Direct Debit at any time by writing your Bank or Building Society. Please also send a copy of your letter to us. This is a term of your banking contract and you can sue on it.

[Goldlady]

Well as BT took 8 weeks to move our business phone lines half a mile nothing about them surprises me. What really made me mad was that, whilst we placed the order on their website and received an email acknowledgement, they argued that the date the order was processed by them was several weeks later thereby carefully avoiding them having to pay us the 'up to 25k compensation' advertised on their website.

No matter, ran up a big bill (not 25k unfortunately!) and then went onto internet based phones.

[389shell]

Excellent letter, let us know what they say to that.

[Milo19]

Hi - UPDATE!

I received several replies from BT that evening, the last being the one below. I will post my response on here shortly.

Dear

I am replying to your email of 24 October addressed to BT’s Chief Executive Ian Livingston. I have been asked to investigate your concerns and respond to you directly and would firstly like to apologise for the problems you have recently encountered. BT’s prides itself on providing excellent customer service and it is clear that we have let you down.

In view of your concerns regarding the connection charge billed to your account, I checked the orders details and must confirm that the fee has been correctly raised. When work is required to activate a line, the standard connection charge of £124.99 is applied. In common with other large service organisations, most of the work we do, including connection of service, has a standard national charge. This charge is based on the average costs of a large number of similar jobs throughout the UK. Apart from being a condition of our operating licence that we publish and adhere to standard national charges for our services, it would prove administratively difficult to assess each individual installation. Indeed, such an approach would be likely to increase our overall costs and may cause delay whilst jobs were surveyed. It would be a breach of our licence to remove this fee; BT must treat all customers the same, at all times.

Turning to your comments regarding payment of your account, our records confirm that you were previously paying your account by whole bill monthly direct debit. Payment of the bill is taken from customers’ accounts 10 days after production of the bill. This may lead to a slight variation in the date that payment is deducted. The direct debit agreement on your telephone account has now been cancelled and once payment of the outstanding balance has been made, a new direct debit agreement can be set up. BT offers three methods of direct debit; you may find that our Monthly Payment Plan better suits your needs. A set amount is deducted from your account each month on a date specified by you. This method can also be used to pay your broadband account.

I would like to take this opportunity to explain that the payment processing fee has been introduced because some methods of payment are costly to process. But it’s not just about the cost of taking the payments; following up when customers forget to pay on time involves spending time and money. If you choose to pay by direct debit, we try and give you up to 10 days from the time of receiving the bill before processing the direct debit, giving you plenty of time to ask questions and we tell you on the bill when the amount will be taken from your account. There is also a direct debit guarantee which protects you and your money. If any error is made by BT or your bank or building society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate refund from your branch of the amount paid. If, however, you choose to pay your bill by any method other than direct debit, a payment processing fee will be levied.

We are currently transforming our systems and processes and it appears that, on this particular occasion, we have let you down. We did, regrettably, experience problems with our systems that lasted for nearly a full week and this clearly impacted on the level of service we offered our customers. I trust you are now enjoying a trouble-free service and hope you will accept my apologies for the delay in activation of your broadband.

BT does not offer compensation for time spent trying to resolve issues but I do appreciate that your recent experience has not been a good one. In recognition of this, I would like to offer you a goodwill credit of £35.25. This equates to one quarters line rental credit, please let me know if this acceptable and I will credit your account accordingly.

Your comments regarding the poor customer service you received have been noted and I hope that future dealings with BT will have a more positive outcome. We are keen to improve the experience we provide to our customers who contact us to complain. With this in mind, would you be interested in taking part in an on-line survey? It will only take a couple of minutes to complete but will allow you to provide us with feedback and help shape future customer service. Please let me know if you are agreeable and I will arrange to have a link sent to your email address.

Thank you taking the time to let me of your recent experience, customer feedback whether good or bad is always welcome. My contact details, if I can be of any further assistance, are shown below.

Regards

	The Direct Debit Guarantee • The Guarantee is offered by all Banks and Building Societies that take part in the Direct Debit Scheme. The efficiency and security of the Scheme is monitored and protected by your own Bank or Building Society. • If the amounts to be paid or the payment dates change, we will notify you three working days in advance of your account being debited or as otherwise agreed. • If an error is made by us or by your Bank or Building Society, you are guaranteed a full and immediate refund from your branch of the amount paid. • You can cancel a Direct Debit at any time by writing your Bank or Building Society. Please also send a copy of your letter to us. This is a term of your banking contract and you can sue on it.

[daz1981]

Originally Posted by locutus

You should have been informed the BT broadband cannot be ordered until the BT line is in place, and it takes 5 working days for BT broadband to go onto the line before hand, and any technical "glitches" will add to this lead time

To expand on this there is a simultaneous provide process which will activate the Broadband at the same time as the phone line is installed, provided at least 5 working days notice is given to the internet provider. If it's within 5 working days then the process can still be used, but the ADSL will be activated in 5 working days rather than when the telephone line is installed.

For example if your phone line is installed on the 10/11, and you contact your ISP on the 08/11 they will still be able to use the sim provide process, but the phone line will be installed on the 10/11 and the ADSL will be done on the 15/11. This should still be faster than if you waited for the phone line to be installed before placing the ADSL order.

Any decent provider should be able to offer this (and ignore the common BT Retail claims that this can only be provided by them, as it's available to any provider who decides to utilise this). A lot of the customer facing teams of the larger providers may not be aware of this process, and it's often difficult to get BT Retail to place the order correctly on their systems, but the process is there and it does work for a large proportion of orders.

[389shell]

Originally Posted by Milo19

I receive my bill from BT, for £146.35. The charge for installing this phone line of £124.99 is present and all seems correct. If technicians are earning this sort of money for 45minutes work, please do enclose an application form with your response. In the traumatic financial world that exists today, I could do with a higher salary. However, I don’t believe they are, and I would very much appreciate a breakdown of this fee to ensure I’m not being over charged in anyway shape or form.

and their answer to this

Originally Posted by Milo19

In view of your concerns regarding the connection charge billed to your account, I checked the orders details and must confirm that the fee has been correctly raised. When work is required to activate a line, the standard connection charge of £124.99 is applied. In common with other large service organisations, most of the work we do, including connection of service, has a standard national charge. This charge is based on the average costs of a large number of similar jobs throughout the UK. Apart from being a condition of our operating licence that we publish and adhere to standard national charges for our services, it would prove administratively difficult to assess each individual installation. Indeed, such an approach would be likely to increase our overall costs and may cause delay whilst jobs were surveyed. It would be a breach of our licence to remove this fee; BT must treat all customers the same, at all times.

Very lolable, was it a politician you emailed?

'BT must treat all customers the same, at all times'

You heard it here first folks, if ever there was cause for a mass exodus, then this is it, straight from the politicians mouth.

[locutus]

Originally Posted by 389shell

and their answer to this



Very lolable, was it a politician you emailed?

'BT must treat all customers the same, at all times'

You heard it here first folks, if ever there was cause for a mass exodus, then this is it, straight from the politicians mouth.

In that case surely Milo19 should have been offered the £29.95 connection offer for signing up to an 18 month term!

[locutus]

If being locked into an 18 month term would be OK with you milo7, I'd email back saying

"I will except this goodwill credit of £35.25 as settlement of my complaint PROVIDING you also apply the £95 discount connection to my account, as I feel its unfair to myself that this was not offered at the time. As you yourself pointed out "BT must treat all customers the same, at all times" If this is unacceptable, please forward me a "deadlock" letter so I can escalate my complaint to the Office of the Telecommunications Ombudsman (Otelo)."

	The Financial Ombudsman Service For the most part, don't bother. The Ombudsman is an industry arranged service which is under-resourced, takes too long, lacks clear transparency. You have no idea what evidence the FOS has received from the bank or how your complain has really been handled. The FOS is the preferred complaints route for the banking industry. The county court is to be preferred by consumers for its speed, openness, the quality of its awards and also because it will award 8% interest on top of any damages won by you. The Ombudsman should normally be used to solving little technical difficulties or customer service problems which you have expereinced with your bank.

[Milo19]

I like your point, however, it was change of address? And charge was for re-connecting the phone to the house (even though it was already here!)

[Milo19]

My respose!

Dear

Sorry for the delay in responding to your email sent ***
I believe your misunderstanding my complaint as I never queried the amount of the charge, or infact stated it was incorrect. I merely requested a breakdown of this fee. i.e. - Labour, materials etc

I require this information to ensure that I have not been over charged. It may be a national charge, but I cannot see how I can be charged for work that may or may not have been completed. For example - I pay the charge for the technician arriving and reconnecting one wire, whereas my neighbour pays the same for the complete rewiring of telephone points throughout the house.

Turning to your comments regarding the payment of my bill. Again, you either misunderstand my complaint, or are choosing to skim over the fact, that I was informed by a member of your team, that the "billing date had been changed, and therefore for so has the payment date.

What I would like to know is, WHY???? I never instructed anyone to change anything in regards to the billing or paying of my bill, so why was this altered.

You also mention there are three methods of direct debit but only go into a small amount of detail for one of these methods. I would have thought it may have been more appropriate to give me the information for all your direct debit methods as I do not want to get charged for paying by other way.

Which leads me nicely on to your comments regarding the “payment processing fee” or other words “penalty/illegal charge”

Please explain why internet payment via your website or via online banking incurs this charge? They require no manual invention and are credited to the account of the customer within 24hours. By applying this charge, you are in effect dictating the way in which customer should pay their bills. I will be contacting Trading Standards in regards to this fee to see what the legal position of it is.

You mention that BT is undertaking a transformation of their computer systems, and this is the reason why my activation date for my broadband was delayed – however, you fail to explain why no-one from BT was instructed to contact customers. Bear in mind your have my telephone number, mobile number and email address.

Furthermore, the letter I received on the 2nd October from BT informing me of the activation date was dated the 29th September 2008, which is the same day I called you to complain that I was still without broadband. Somewhat coincidental wouldn’t you think?!

The only transformation required at BT is your staff. They simply do not care about customer service; otherwise I would have been contacted by your manager, Sue Perry. I don’t believe she just choose not to call me, I believe your staff failed to pass on my callback requests.
They need to stop passing the buck and see the issue through to closure.

Your offer of compensation is far lower than my expectation especially considering the catalogue of cock-up’s that I have endured.

I do hope your comments above, “BT must treat all customers the same, at all times.” is not true, as I pity the poor souls that have to go through this suffering just to be able to use the internet. I’m assuming this is why “BT does not offer compensation for time spent trying to resolve issues” as I’m sure you’d be paying out more than you were receiving.

In closing, I will of course help you shape for the future by completing your online survey, however, whilst I complete this, I would request you revisit the offer of compensation and come back to me with a more suitable figure.

I look forward to your response in due course.

Yours Sincerely,

[389shell]

Originally Posted by Milo19

My respose!

. Bear in mind your have my telephone number, mobile number and email address.

Brilliant once again, just to point out a small typo (sorry).

Can't wait for the reply off them, she'll be cursing you when she sees you are in her inbox once again

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[locutus]

Originally Posted by Milo19

I like your point, however, it was change of address? And charge was for re-connecting the phone to the house (even though it was already here!)

You would still be eligible for that deal.

[locutus]

Here is BT's link to this deal for you to check out yourself

BT Price List

[locutus]

Originally Posted by Milo19

Turning to your comments regarding the payment of my bill. Again, you either misunderstand my complaint, or are choosing to skim over the fact, that I was informed by a member of your team, that the "billing date had been changed, and therefore for so has the payment date.

What I would like to know is, WHY???? I never instructed anyone to change anything in regards to the billing or paying of my bill, so why was this altered.

You're billing date goes by the area that you live in. It is to ensure that billing queeries do not always come thrugh on the same day of the month thrughout the entire country.

Originally Posted by Milo19

The only transformation required at BT is your staff. They simply do not care about customer service; otherwise I would have been contacted by your manager, Sue Perry. I don’t believe she just choose not to call me, I believe your staff failed to pass on my callback requests.
They need to stop passing the buck and see the issue through to closure.

As an ex-BT staff member, I agree that it would be nice to see something thrugh to the end, however BT is split into several sub-devisions... For clarification, BT Retail only have the same powers as Tiscalli and the post office for setting up a line... they pass it to BT Wholesale who order BT Openreach engineers etc... so 1 member of staff Can't see the job from order to completion.

[389shell]

Ah yes, and I believe that anyone working for BT's Openreach had better get back over to BT as I have heard it is being bought out, pessimistic view maybe, but I doubt the perks and pension will be there for them and redundancies will follow shortly after the take over.

Anyway, back on track.....