On 12th August I posted that BT had negligently deleted 9 years work by deleting my emails and the complaint went through the BT 'in house' complaints procedure which did not comply with their published 'rules' and maladministration took place. I then sent the complaint to the Ombudsman Service-Communications(OSC) to review, they are the appointed Alternative Dispute Resolution(ADR) expecting that they would review the procedure only to find that the maladministration at the OSC was worse than that suffered from BT, I then complained to the Independent Assessor(IA) who found in my favour. The OSC decision is final and cannot be appealed even thought it has been found to be legally flawed and based on nothing more than false assertion, this has all taken 18 months to discover which has delayed any 'due process'. It is clear, I now understand, that the OSC are not equipped to deal with complaints about BT when the complaint is about 'negligence', 'maladministration' or 'misinformation' as they are more guilty of these topics than BT are which is why BT are and will remain the most complained about Internet Service Provider in the land. The OSC is a private company and as such have no obligations under the freedom of information rules and it seems they are also exempt from Ofcom control/regulation which came as some surprise after the event, Ofcom were told that, in my opinion, that the OSC were showing signs of 'incompetence' but showed nothing more than passing interest even though the IA was less than complimentary about the OSC and BT do not follow guidelines that Ofcom do have control over. I will be interested to hear from others with similar experience of BT and or the OSC.

Yes and had been so since BT started service.

I refer to the regulator of ISP's rather than email in isolation, email forms part of my contract for telephone and broadband service and in this case BT, my ISP, is in breach of contract.

The main point I am trying to make here is that there is no regulator regulating. When the emails were deleted I checked with other ISP's as to what the 'industry norm' was, the people I spoke to said reinstate the webmail to where it was, this was not done by BT neither was it attempted, instead what they did do was abuse my trust when I agreed to 'screen share' with BT NOT computer share. When BT put programs on my computer without my specific consent they were in breach of trust and I believe the Data Protection Act. The Law, as I understand it, makes BT the expert not me, I paid BT for a service which was not professionally delivered, no care or attention to requirements of Sale of Goods and Services Act and the OSC have not taken any regulatory action against BT, all the OSC have done is taken the explanation from BT over mine when I supplied email evidence to what I was saying, BT have no, to my knowledge. This was a 'custom and use' issue, I had done the same as I had done for the previous 9 years, without loss or corruption of my emails, when the emails were lost BT had control of the emails and could have reinstated my webmail but they chose not to, not me. Had this not been the case then there would have been no requirement to install Outlook Express and for the second time put my emails and 9 years of my past life in jeopardy. It is most interesting to hear your views and I am open to listen. All I am looking for here is for the regulator to regulate, not only for my own benefit but for every user on the Internet, it is well known that BT have the worst customer service record in the industry, I now know why, it's because the regulators do not regulate.

I assume that you have read the 'thread' and I am grateful for any constructive input. I used the emails daily, I have a copy of my 'sent box' it was the 'in box' that was deleted. The emails were used every day and had been so for 9 years, the loss of email was reported to BT on the day they were deleted.

Thanks for your continued interest, this happened in September 2013 and is something I became more aware of, after the event. On the BT website there was a guarantee that no email would be lost as a result of the change from Yahoo to BT. I can and have produced emails that confirm my conversations with both BT and Yahoo, all 135 of them. The customer service that is available from BT is terrible and clearly designed to make you so fed up that you give up and go away, the problem here is that I not going to give up and go anywhere until BT stop telling lies and the OSC start to regulate and stop 'Passing Off' also using false assertions on their 'adjudication', many people have said "it's a case of who pays the piper", that may be what is being attempted but the OSC are 'independent' and must behave in an independent manner rather than merely attempt to protect BT. I can only refer to the actions and customer service of the OSC as suffering from the 'Savile syndrome', there are clear and detailed Terms of Reference that must be complied with by both the OSC and the complainant, any alternative dispute resolution scheme is only as good as those who oversee that the scheme runs efficiently and in accordance with the published 'rules'.

I am no longer a customer of BT, thankfully. I used the email daily and had done so for 9 years+, this was a clear act of negligence by BT who deleted the emails twice, once when they changed from Yahoo to BT and again when they put email into a program that was not compatible with my operating system.

Thanks for your interest, the problem is that it happened and nobody seems to understand how or why. This was BT negligence, twice over and as long as there is no regulation by Ombudsman Services Communications(OSC) BT will continue ignore justifiable complaints by BT thanks to their poor/non-existent customer services, unfortunately the service from the OSC is equally poor and non-existent.

This was not possible, I had an IT expert with me and we tried various things. The problem was that the email were deleted from my webmail, never to be seen again. I explained this to BT and asked that they return the email, to my webmail, this they failed to do. The emails simply 'melted' after being read. The emails were deleted in error secondly put into outlook express with no contacts listed and no possibility of moving them because of the corruption that had then taken place.

Many thanks for your interest, clearly there is more to the story than I could put on entry. For 9 years I had the emails safely stored by the BT website that promised secure and unlimited storage of emails, the email could easily have been recovered by BT and returned to my webmail, however BT chose to open Outlook Express on my computer during a 'screen sharing' session, without my permission. At the time all of this was going on I was speaking with my IT expert and learned that Outlook Express was not compatible with Windows 7, although I could see the entire list of emails when I opened the email to read/check its content the email was not complete (corrupted) and melted after reading, BT were informed. The problem here is that BT lost the emails twice, once when they changed from Yahoo to BT

In September 2013 BT negligently deleted 9 years of my emails, the emails contained information and evidence on a project that I had been working on, there were also attachments to emails and details of contacts that were also lost/deleted. I duly complained to BT and followed the requirements set out in their complaints procedure, unfortunately BT did not. Subsequent to which I reported the loss of emails to the Information Commissioner in the hope they would take an interest, the breach of the Data Protection Act as defined on their website seemed to have been satisfied. I was at all times told by BT that my telephone conversation was recorded which gave me some comfort, short lived when I found out this was untrue. At the end of the 'in house' procedure I was offered £100 as a 'good will' gesture, this I declined and reported my complaint to the Ombudsman Service-Communications(OSC) which meant my complaint was now Negligence and Maladministration against BT, I had spoken to the OSC at some considerable length to ensure that the nature of my complaint was within their remit and established that it was. The OSC, outside their suggested time scale, issued their 'adjudication' which was/is flawed in many respects in that they claim that my contract for telephone and Broadband services with BT did not include email, which it does/did. The report also blamed the 'negligent acts of BT on a 'system failure' which would/could not have been possible. The maladministration of the OSC that I have been obliged to deal with was/is worse than that suffered during my dealings with BT. I obtained a copy of the BT 'call log' that contains 135 entries and refers to failed 'call backs', in fact there were 27 failed call backs which resulted in 54 telephone calls from me to BT, each call took 40 minutes to get through to a person and even than not the right person. Subsequent events required that I must now issue a further complaint this time to the Independent Assessor who reviews action of the OSC, he found in my favour on a number of issues concerning Maladministration although he cannot review the findings of the OSC or their methodology. The conclusion now is that the service available for complaining about negligence of your Internet Service Provider(ISP) is not fit for purpose, a further complaint now lodged with my MP for progress through the Parliamentary & Health Service Ombudsman whilst still attempting to obtain a meaningful reply from the OSC regarding the false and misleading assertions contained in their adjudication, so far only the 'system failure' has been dropped and false reference to evidence that did not exist also seems to be admitted. Clearly I now need some help and any suggestions would be welcome. As to the value of my claim, this has yet to be discussed or assessed but the 9 years work was done whilst I became disabled and now suffer with COPD (respiratory dis-function) and the work can never be replicated or replaced.