I've been one, slightly.
Dealing with BT to try and get my phone line working, after moving into a new place earlier this year. The line was simply dead - obviously a physical fault on it somewhere, not entirely surprising as it's a large block of flats and probably wired by some cowboy builder...

Of course, ringing the BT toll free line from my mobile is not, er, toll free. And on PAYG it gets really quite expensive. So I was heartily sick of having to spend ages working my way through the menu system ("Press 1 for accounts, press 2 for billing", etc.). At least I didn't generally have to spend much time on hold - they have this callback thing which rings you as soon as it's your turn.

Well, fortunately for me in this case, they appear to be really quite incompetent (no shit sherlock) - when I got my callback, my mobile displayed the number it came from. So the next time I needed to hassle them because it still didn't work, I rang that number. And a human being answered, pretty much immediately, though quite confused at first - "were you transferred to this department? no? you're not supposed to be able to ring this number directly!". He still helped me, though.
(julius, Wed 10 Sep 2008, 18:18, 3 replies)

POST THE NUMBER POST THE NUMBER
I hate waiting on that thing. It takes me so long and I've gone through a whole £10 PAYG voucher trying to change my landline billing.

POST THE NUMBER POST THE NUMBER!!
(little fawn, Wed 10 Sep 2008, 18:25, closed)

Aaaargh BT!
We had the same problem when we moved in last year. Every time they arranged an engineer to come and physically install the line, he/she never showed. Two weeks of failed appointments, days off work and £30 of phone calls. Not happy. Then they sent us the bill for the installation (£125!!!) and three months of line rental, before our line had even been installed.

In the end, an engineer came when we didn't have an appointment, and I was with my family about 200 miles away. Luckily he had a brain and managed to sort it - the problem the whole time was that the line was connected to a different (uninhabited) house at the exchange in the street.

Oh, while this was all going on they'd suspended my bill till it was sorted, but then cut us off because I didn't pay it. Even though I had paid it about 2 months before they cut us off.

Then they changed our number without telling us.

So yea, 3 phone numbers, £50 of calls, being disconnected and probably only talking to 1 competent person, all within a month.

I really, really hate BT.
( El Lazarus is calm now, Ish,, Wed 10 Sep 2008, 20:56, closed)

Sorry, haven't got the number.
The problem was sorted soon after, so I didn't think to write it down properly, and eventually it disappeared from my phone's call history. (Try here though.)

Oh, the BT story got worse. When I first requested to have the line connected, the signal quality (calling from mobile) was awful and I couldn't hear the guy very well - seems he used that to put me on the more expensive, 18-month contract (the benefit of which was free UK weekend calls, which I don't need). When I reported the fault, I also said "I notice you've put me on the 18-month contract, I don't want that". They said, no problem, it's still within the 7-day 'cooling off' period, we'll change it... and promptly tried to bill me about £300 for cancelling the contract early. I rang up the billing department (even more incompetent than the faults department, plus they're the Indian call centre, so I can't understand a word). Nice, if mostly incomprehensible Indian lady listens to my complaint about the £300, says "I'll sort it out for you, don't worry about that bill, we'll send a corrected one". So I waited for the corrected bill... and they charged me a late payment fee for not paying the first one. I rang up again, another Indian, who informed me that there was no record on the system of my first complaint - apparently she'd just babbled "I'll sort it out for you" while ACTUALLY doing fuck all. They did cancel the £300 charge, and I really couldn't be bothered hassling them more to get, say, the late payment fee refunded, or get a credit for the three weeks of line rental I paid while the fucking line wasn't working.

Oh, there was also the time I'd scheduled an engineer to look at the line, taking a day off work to do so - and OF COURSE he failed to show. I eventually rang them up again, and the guy at the other end stated, completely matter-of-factly, that the engineer was too busy and had been told by his supervisor to drop my appointment. Ah, thanks for giving me a call to let me know... oh wait, you didn't. You just WASTED MY TIME. (On the next appointment, the engineer did turn up, and did a fantastic job of actually fixing the problem.) Nothing wrong with the people on the front lines, but BT management need to be lined up and shot.

Sorry if the comments about the Indian call centres sound racist... I'm not, honest, I'm a foreigner living in the UK myself, but for a company mostly doing business in the UK, is it too much to ask for their customer service people to speak fluent English?

Whoa. Apologies for length, but that was therapeutic. But BT management still need to be shot. Or preferably killed by a slower, more painful method.
(julius, Wed 10 Sep 2008, 22:11, closed)