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BT Business, you’re not worth the money
For the newcomers, BT Business provide the broadband and phone line for businesses, with the key promotion being that you get much better support.
I don’t want to get into a rant, but in my opinion BT Business represents one of the worst organised companies I’ve ever come across. To back this opinion up, here’s only a select few of the problems I’ve encountered so far in my 7-8 months with them:
- Four times larger bills than normal broadband users
- The only apparent reason for this being English speaking customer service representatives who answer within ten minutes and not Indian speaking customer service representatives who answer with two hours (both on 0845 numbers)
- Having to be forwarded to a different department at least once every time I ring up because there are only 2-3 numbers listed on the back of each bill, and the website is utterly useless at suggesting what number to call
- Being forwarded to the wrong department 50% of the time
- Despite originally ordering from one sales guy, I have two separate accounts: one for phone and one for broadband
- They both have different people to ring up separately to change any details
- For each there’s a department that will change your address, a department to change your card details, and a department to change your company name. Not to mention the sales, faults, technical and other useless departments for each of these accounts
- Engineers that come out to install the broadband are from a different company altogether, Open Reach
- They have to deal with Indian call centres
- They can’t directly ring up BT and put in an order for anything, but they can ring up and say they’ve completed a job
Back when I was much younger, BT used to be a company I looked at in awe. Now days it seems they’ve done everything they can to ruin what was a fantastic customer experience ten years ago.
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BT Business support - worthy of a lawsuit
So around three weeks ago I signed documents and put down some of the deposit to hold my new apartment in Marco Island, located in the Nottingham City Centre. All utilities are automatically arranged for me besides my phone and broadband, and the apartment requires a BT phone line for every broadband provider, so I decided to just go with BT for the broadband and get it done with.
Customer experience one:
I go onto the website and look at the ‘total broadband’ residential package, it says it requires a phone line. I order a phone line on the website and go to order the ‘total broadband’ package, but it requires a phone number and an active line installed. Thankfully they have a helpline number for this sort of thing so I give it a ring.*Sixty minutes wait later*
“Sorry the Total Broadband package has to be ordered with a phone line at the same time through us, otherwise we can’t arrange it to be installed. You have to cancel your phone line in order to order the broadband”
“OK, so can you do that for me?”
“No we can’t, we only process orders here - I can forward you to the people responsible”
“OK”
Ninety minutes wait later - I hang up and decide to give the BT Business guys a ring and pay the extra for better support (very clearly advertised, as 24/7). To put it bluntly - the phone didn’t even ring, someone picked up and processed my order and within forty minutes I had a BT Business phone and broadband package ordered and my new business phone number. One tidbit I did learn from this call though - it takes three months to process a residential phone line order that is ordered on-line, so I wasn’t going to be hearing from those guys anytime soon.
So about two weeks ago my wireless in my current living arrangement goes missing in action, but only with my Mac’s. The Xbox 360 and all four PC’s in the house all work with the router, but all of a sudden both Mac’s (an iMac and a MacBook Pro, both the latest Intel models) can connect to the network but can’t get the internet from it. It’s now at a point where I can stand directly next to the router with my MacBook Pro and not see the wireless network. We tried everything, but ultimately the router isn’t giving any love to my Mac’s and everyone else gets the internet just fine, so it was time to move forward the moving in date for my new apartment along with that beautiful BT Business broadband and phone I had ordered.
I should mention here, that I tried out my newly acquired Nintendo Wii yesterday and that can’t get the internet from the router either.
Of course to do this, I would need to use my newly paid for BT Business support service to see if they could move forward the installation of my phone and broadband. Three hours later I learned:
- BT Business ‘after sales support’ doesn’t exist - there is no option 4, it just forwards to option 2, which is residential support.
- Residential support takes an average of 20-40 minutes to pick up and is always Indian
- Residential support gives you a nice constant ringing sound with an annoying computer telling you you’re in a queue and that they are ‘very busy’
- Business support has classical music whilst you are waiting, which is almost always under two minutes
- Every single department only has one thing they can do with a computer, to do something else they have to forward you to another department where you have to re-explain things all over again
- Half of the time you are forwarded to the wrong department
- If the computer asks you for a phone number to be put in and to go through the options, in ten minutes it *will* ask you to start all over again - whether you are ‘in a queue’ or not
- BT Business support doesn’t know that because you are a BT Business support customer you are forwarded to another section of the BT Business support team and for every particular extra task will gladly forward you to BT Residential support without even thinking about it half of the time.
- Of the thirteen people I spoke to during those three hours roughly eight or nine were residential support engineers, clearly defined by being Indian and having the ringing tone during the waiting time.
- The only way to get someone to put you ’straight through’ to the correct department or to get your problem sorted out, is to clearly point out in a agitated and clearly annoyed manner that you have just spoken to x amount of other people in the last x minutes/hours and you are ready to x someone’s x if they don’t help you soon
In the end my phone installation has been moved forward from Thursday to Monday, but the broadband can’t be moved what so ever. So here’s praying that there’s a BT OpenZone network or - god help us - an open network for me to use for that week until BT comes along to install things.
In closing, BT’s Business support is terrible and is too merged with the residential support to make any slight bit of difference to my support needs in this situation. Their Indian support is just as terrible as everyone else (Virgin/NTL for example) - though it is free and not a 0845 number. That said, in other situations BT Business support do have direct lines that aren’t merged with residential support and hopefully I’ll never have to lose another three hours of my life like that again.
Update:
I’m into the new apartment, the BT Business hub arrived before I moved in so I picked it up and plugged in for fun ready for when they come to activate the lines etc. It’s Saturday and my Internet isn’t supposed to be put in until Thursday - but here I am, accessing it via the ethernet point whilst the hub is connected to the ADSL line.Update two:
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The phone installation guy says they normally activate lines up to 3-4 days in advance of ‘installing’ the broadband at the exchange. So I was lucky enough to get it put through early and have it installed 6 days early.
