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BT Business Broadband - Big Waste of Time

Lauryn
Member

Hi There,

 

I am a new customer to business broadband. For some reason I thought that the service from BT would be far greater being a business customer than a residential. I am also trying to run a business from home so thought BT would react to any faults or problems far quicker if they knew I was a business customer.

 

On the 10th Nov our telephone line was disabled due to yet another fault with our exchange. It took BT (BRITISH Telecoms....laugh!) until the 14th Nov to get it back up and running. As a business customer you would expect at least a call from BT to inform you of the problem and what they are going to do about it.....nothing. Now without a phone line your BUSINESS broadband doesn't work which means you can't actually run a business in this day and age. We happen to have a VOIP business phone system (luckily not with BT) which also failed to work without broadband. We obviously couldn't use the home phone so had to resort to mobiles. In our area the phone signal is terrible so we invested in a sure signal box to ensure we can use our mobile anywhere in our house/garden. Imagine my great surprise when again, because we had no broadband, our sure signal box didn't work!!

 

In order to run our business we had to have all our VOIP calls diverted to our mobiles. Normally I can do this but not when the system isn't working so I had to contact the provider. I then had to pack all my files and laptop and drive to the nearest hotel in order to function.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but surely paying extra for a BUSINESS service, we as businesses should be entitled to some sort of service? I have just called and spoken to the billing team in order to recoup the costs involved for having to move my business for a few days where they kindly offered me £3.07!! The guy I spoke to went off when I laughed at him and came back with a better offer of £5.00! After 30 minutes of my time wasted on the phone to this guy I now have to type a letter to make an official complaint. This guy was very nice and apologetic although I'm not sure he had a clue as to what I was talking about being based in India!

 

I actually don't think it's about the money, I think it's now the principle that we are paying for a business service and receiving just as poor service as we do as residential customers. Unfortunately, BT seem to have the monopoly in our area so we are stuck with their service. I wish we could actually speak to the owner of BT and tell him how crap his business is and what he/she has done to the meaning of the word 'British'. Its the worst company/Industry that is out there and I am disgusted that they can get away with it.

 

Please, please, please, if you have the option to use another provider don't hesitate 😞

2 REPLIES 2

MHC
Guru

 

 

Why not rant at Vodafone too - after all they have not provided you with a satisfactory cellular/moile service and that is for a lot longer than a few days.

 

Maybe making all of your comms; broadband, telephony and mobile reliant on one single copper pair or an identifiable single point of failure is a mistake that you have made.    Did you ever consider the possibility that one item might fail and you would loose all three?

 

If you run a business and take a risk, as you obviously did, you should accept the consequences.

 

 

JKHypno
Member

I imagine that Lauryn assumed that using BT and centralising the services was a fairly safe option. It is much harder to resolve a problem if your phone line is with supplier A, your broadband with supplier B, your mobiles with supplier C, your web hosting with supplier D, etc. who then all blame each other when something goes wrong.

 

I also agree that the use of an asian call-centre is a bad idea. I'm sure the operators are trying their best, and I have always found them to be polite, but they do sometimes fail to grasp the problem being raised.

 

When you buy a service, you have a right to expect a level of service appropriate to the charges that you pay and the reputation of the company that you deal with. It would appear the perceived reliability and customer service provided by BT are below what we would reasonably expect from a company such as British telecom.