back to article BT swallows a third of new broadband punters

BT's resurgence was confirmed today when it announced broadband and other "new wave" products had boosted fourth quarter sales and profits. In the three months to 31 March, BT added 800,000 new broadband customers, bringing its total across retail and other parts of the business to 10.7 million. Revenue for the quarter was up …

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  1. Robert Lee

    They may have the quantity, shame about their quality

    Yes, they are now spending a fortune on advertising, and watching the latest advert with Ramsey trying to fix a PC with a knife while his chefs playing cards just makes me laugh so much.

    Few weeks ago you posted an article on a mortgage firm who is now sueing BT, I were the IT advisor to that company, and from day one I told the BT engineer over the phone where the fault came from, still I had to drive there and tell him face to face, then on the phone to his broadband support department just to confirm what I said the first time.

    We deal with a lot of business customers, heres a small list of what I have seen in the past year :

    Company moved across the road to new office, BT accounts manager didnt put the order through for new broadband as requested, so they went without broadband for 2 weeks, large compensation paid out.

    Company moved, and BT screwed up the phones and broadband order, then add salt to injuiry, they delivered the new phones to the old office.

    Customer moved house, BT did a remote diag and determined that the best way to install broadband is to put it on the same line as the switchboard number (its a huge house), pointless to say, it didnt work, after 2 weeks of farting around, we managed to get the BT crisise management team to sort the problem out, boy, you should see how fast things move once you got hold of the right people.

    Company moving office, since the move, the broadband been down for weeks, then fixed, then off again, its a line fault ? but does it take months to fix ?

    Bottom line is, BT is now selling the idea of 'You should be using your time running you own business, do what you good at, and let BT handle the your IT and communication' when they are the one who causes most of the comunication problems.

    Have to run, need to call BT to find out why after they fixed my broadband line that my speed dropped by 50%, this is after their senior investigator came out and spend a whole morning here trying to find out why out telephone lines keeps dying every few months.

    Thanks BT, you are really helping me and my business !!

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    God knows how

    Having just being through the process of signing up to a BT broadband package, I'm still too irritated to type a coherent complaint. However:

    It asks for my phone number, then tells me that 'this information is not available'. What? 5 minutes later it's ok, 5 minutes later it's not. This happened on two consecutive days.

    When I phoned them up after the first instance of the above and had gone through the very 90s "how shall we wind our customers up" multiple telephone options spoken by some chirpy bint who you just want to punch <breath>, I got cut off.

    Forgot to mention that during the experience above, said chirpy bint kept telling me that I would be served much faster on-line. Yes, I know there's no way they can tell that I've tried that and the fact that it's crap is why I'm now phoning, but that doesn't make it any less irritating.

    I had to enter my DOB and gender for BT Yahoo services. What the hell is BT Yahoo services? I don't care. I don't want it. Needless to say, I just clicked on the first available option. Apparently I was born in 1900. Needless to say it was one of those huge drop down lists which are oh so much easier to use than typing in 4 digits.

    Managed to get half way through the process before being told that I needed my BT customer number. Went home, got a letter from BT with 'account number' written in big letters on it. Restart the process. Attempt 8 or so. Account number on letter is not in the format expected by the site. Happen to spot that the 'our ref' on the letter is very similar to the 'account number' but with a couple of extra letters. Try that. Bingo. Thanks, BT, I needed some mental stimulation after repeating the same slow, mind-numbing process for the eighth time.

    And of course, my longest running single bug bear - if at home I can get caller ID, how is it possible that these big companys can't? Especially when it's B frick'en T.

    <clams down> Very therapeutic, thanks.

    Why did I go to all this hassle? Well after the first couple of failures, I did try NTL, etc but (quickly and efficiently) they told me that they couldn't provide me with a service. Which is probably the only reason BT's doing so well. Oh well, that's you get when you live out in the sticks (Brighton in case you're wondering).

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT stands for Billing Twice...

    and charging 30% more than they quoted for broadband, and adding charges which were never mentioned when they were asked to list all the charges involved in upgrading to broadband, and providing faulty software with faulty documentation, and having a help desk who know nothing, not even the English language.

    The so-called customer services does nothing. A letter to the chairman gets an acknowledgement then sits around for weeks being ignored. Phone calls to the person supposedly dealing with the problems results in no action. Billing is supposed to be suspended while they investigate - and that's not happening.

    So Christopher Bland thinks he should pat himself on the back? Allow me to help, with something heavy enough to bash in the concepts of customer service and honest trading.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    From the trenches at BT

    I'm one of the "chirpy bints" who actaully work on the BT Business Tech Helldesks, and believe me it's not any better on the other side of the phone.

    1. Inadequate systems- customer phones up- can't do anything as the systems go down faster than a hollywood wannabe, every single day at least one program gives up, so we can't test/ pass on fault to right morons/ billing check, etc.

    2. The processes change twice a week MINIMUM- so if we're chasing up something for the customer we get "ooh, you're through to the wrong department *click*" when you were given that number by the same agent two days before.- and if you try and use one of the old methods, a nice letter comes down from above with your P45 attached.

    3. You actaully get in trouble for helping the customer- one case I found i was actaully quicker to walk over to the faults team on the other side of building, talk to them for update and escalation than it was to phone them and go though the multi-option system- get back to desk and managment not happy I left my desk, leaving customer on hold.

    So, yes BTcustomer service sucks, mostly beacuse Bt management don't have a clue about what they're doing.

    "So Christopher Bland thinks he should pat himself on the back? Allow me to help, with something heavy enough to bash in the concepts of customer service and honest trading."- that's what evry memeber of staff thinks when we get the brunt of customer's anger

  5. Andy Wager

    Pity help us consumers

    BT may be getting the lions share of the customers but it is just a shame that they cannot sort out their domestic broadband service.

    If I want to surf (or whatever) at 3 am then great I can get 8meg.

    Want to do anything at 5pm through Midnight.... then I am lucky to get 0.5meg.

    Of course I expect speeds to drop during peak hours but not that much.

    Come on sort things out before bragging about the size.

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