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, Reply)