Hi there, I'm new but thought I'd give you all a fascinating tale of woe, haha.

Anyways, straight to the point, I live in a student house and once everyone had moved in we decided[me and my housemate who was to take the contract on after everyone agreed to split internet and tv accordingly] we strolled threw town to the virgin store to attempt to set up a Virgin account.

Anyways, a few things, firstly, the foreign girl who had moved into a room in the house had already tried to transfer her Virgin Media over without consulting anyone, and low and behold, we where informed you can't have 2 VM accounts posted in one household.

Anyways, after this the BT stand cornered us with their BT vision box, and after a long hard sell we went for the option, partly because Setanta came with it, and we'd get a couple of live football games a week plus some boxing etc.

Anyways, to cut a long story short, BT have been fairly horrific to the account owner, with endless delays, however, after visiting here I sent a quite drunk I must admit, email to the CEO, posted below:

Dear Ian,

After hunting around the web for several hours on our overly slow BTbroadband, I found your email address and wondered if you'd be delighted to take a view of our situation and see if you can assist.

On September 22th, myself and a housemate of mine took the trip into Plymouth town centre to negotiate with Virgin Media regarding internet andtelevision for our student accomodation. Fortunatley for your company, aBT 'shop without walls' as such was on hand and we stopped by to check outthe services provided.We opted for the maximum television package, the unlimited internet andthe phone line hiring per month as required.

Checking on your very own website the salesman informed us 6 mb/s could beachieved to our address and it would also be upgraded in the near futureto quicker. We thought this was a reasonably decent speed and accepted.This is where the problems begin.First and foremost, my friend paid the deposit required (£25) and a weeklater we awaited for a free homehub and a btvision box.Low and behold, as you'll see further on with BT, it didn't arrive. Herang up to query and was told no deposit had been paid, even though he hadgiven his credit card details a week earlier. We trundled back into townand re-gave the information to the salesman, and again awaited.We recieved the hub, plugged in and voila-nothing.

We ring up and are toldthat our activation date has been put back another 2 weeks because someonehad 'cancelled'. We put up with it for now. We query complaining to someone but are told that we can't complain about the delay of over 3weeks from initially signing contracts, until the internet is working,absolutely barmy. We're essentially being told that our complaints cannotbe processed until the delayed internet is up, the exact thing we wish tocomplain about.Next things, our phone and wireless don't work on the homehub, fair enough you might think. We are told to ring up technical support(Please bare inmind our phone line didn't work, so calls are from mobiles and thereforecost us poor students money, with hundreds of hours in total being spentover 6 weeks worth of calls to 'technical helplines') and discuss it withthem.

Low and behold, they can't send us a new working homehub.Fortunatley (and I've no idea if it's against company policy) the storewithout walls guys agree that since BT had screwed us around SO much withthe delaying of our internet, that we could switch to their 'presentationhub' which fortunatley now works, but led to a delay of nigh on a month.Further on, the BT seemed extremely slow for a 6 meg a second service. Wecontact the salesdesk who tell us a 'check' on our actual phonelinereveals only 2 meg a second is possible.

Talk about a misrepresentation ofcontract. We bought into the 'tv and internet from BT' BECAUSE 6 meg asecond was on offer and was what we where promised and sold, not 2megabyte.Carrying on, our BTVision box did not appear(Please bare in mind we havehad statements threw showing that we are to be billed for a phone linethat was unusable for the internet, with a phone that didn't work and alsobilled for BTVision) on time, as most things in BT seem to be 'within afew days' and we contacted BT AGAIN. What where we told?That our BT Visionhad been cancelled. Absolutely barmy, we insisted it hadn't and they toldus it had been 'reordered.'

So, some 5 1/2 weeks after initially ordering,our BT Vision box arrives, we plug it and it brings up an error code,which leads to MORE calls to BT.Firstly, we are told that our 'free' Setanta sport infact requires a card,which was suppose to have been sent 'recorded first class' on Monday, as Itype this in the early hours of Friday morning still absolutely nothing,and I fear yet another lie about times we have been promised.Secondly, we are informed that it doesn't work because it hasn't been'activated.'

Great, we request an activation,we are informed that cannotbe done and that we had 'agreed an activation date of the 5th of November.' Shame for BT that my friend, with whom the account is held andwho is too patient to complain when he is being 'screwed over' for lack of a better word, has been in hospital with treatments for his eyes and couldnot have made contact with BT.

This therefore brings us to the point where, after agreeing on the 22nd of September for BTVision and BT Internet to be installed 'within 2 weeks',our BT Vision will not be activated until 45 whole days after we signed acontract, 6 1/2 weeks later.An analysis shows that just with our one house, the following has occured:

1)Late activation of broadbamd
2)Broken home-hub
3)Misrepresentation of speed able to be achieved when signing contract.
4)Broken phone.
5)BT Vision box arriving 5 1/2 weeks after contract signed when promisedwithin 2 weeks.
6)BT Vision not being activated until the 5th of November, 6 1/2 weeksafter contract initially signed, we where promised it within two.
7)Hundreds of hours on phone.
8)Cost of hundreds of hours on mobile phones because phone provided did not work.
9)Billed for October, no BT Vision in October and only a week's worth of internet in October.
10)Setanta card supposed to be arriving 28th of November, as of the 30th nothing.

Now, it appears your technical and customer support team have offered us'one month's free internet' but frankly the service is appaling. I alonehave spent £21.40 ringing lines to sort the problem alone this month, andmy friend more, plus hundreds of hours ringing up to find us jolted fromone place to the next.

If there is one person whom can sort the situation, I would expect it to be yours, should you wish to insist and get a great review on my studentcommunity site, myunisite.net, then I'd love you to review our case withthe details below, and come up with something better than offering us ameasely £25 in credit on our on-demand BT Vision which isn't even due foranother week. I'm sure my mum would love to see that £21.40 re-inbursed onmy phone bill that she has to pay because of your incompetance as acompany.

Phone Number: Phone number deleted
Address: Address deleted
Account holder: Name deleted.

I look forward to hearing from you soon,

Yours,

Stalinor

~~~~~~~

To cut a story short, everything was sorted within 48 hours of someone in the UK taking control of our account. Only thing thing has been bothering us, when sold the package it was told to us that any Setanta would be provided threw the internet connection to the BT Vision, alas it's threw the aerial and a 4 story house with the lounge on the bottom floor doesn't get good Setanta. So basically, if you persist you can get some things done, but more importantly, has anyone else had this problem with BT?

A £10.99 a month channel we where promised for free not having been given, it's frustrating to say the least.

Sorry for formatting, it should be easier to read now.

One last thing, BT don't let you complain about a service until it's been installed, therefore a 6 week delay on our BT vision meant that we couldn't complain about it being late until the 6 week delay had passed and we where connected, barmy.

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