Broadband down…after 2 hours we find out it was a 14 day reminder for a bill

[js69uk]

Our internet went down yesterday and after 2 hours and a call to BT technical support it turns out to be a bill reminder. Now I would have no problem if this was an OVERDUE bill as you are well within your right to cut our service but to bring the service down to remind us is beyond a joke.

Apparently we should have had a warning on screen which we could just accept and the service would carry on...we like hundreds of others looking at various forums online never got this message an instead had just a restricted internet service bringing our office to a standstill.

I was told the only way to avoid this is to signup to a direct debit and was asked for my account details on the phone to your customer services. No apology just straight in to asking for my direct debit details to stop it happening. Infact no matter how much I argued the point they kept asking for the details.

After over 20 years of being a BT customer we are now moving our broadband and the phone line it is attached to another supplier. We cannot afford to be without internet because you want us to remind us we have a bill. If we turned off every clients website after only 14 days of getting a bill we would have no clients.

[Burkem5]

Hi js69uk

I am really sorry that you have had this problem,  as the agent has said there should have been a landing page asking you to click to continue browsing.

Often this happens when a person comes into the office, sees this page, and instead of clicking continue they close the browser and then reopen.  the billing reminder page does not come up a second time and will appear as a no web issue.

Again I am sorry that this took so long to resolve, and for the impact that this has had on your business

Burkem5

[js69uk]

That is the same excuse given on the phone and is not the case. No one in the office closed the browser with that message as I was the only one on the internet at that time and I certainly didnt.

Looking at your forum and others we are not the only ones not to get the message displayed and then have a no internet issue so it is clearly an issue at your end and not ours.

[unrealbob]

I just signed up to the forum so I could comment on this specifically.

Just had EXACTLY the same problem this morning. No page was displayed to us, this is probably because our business firewall blocks any attempts to highjack page requests. 

BT as you are a phone company, have you tired picking one up to remind people? Or sending an Email? Or a letter?

Unacceptable way to remind a business that something needs paying. Not this first time this has happened either, so I am pretty annoyed.

[kennyfraser]

We too had this experience on the 26th March 2014 and have the transcription of the Live Chat support... basically it was, I quote, down to a "Red Reminder" message relating to a bill sent by BT on the 11th March 2014 and received on the 17th March 2014.  We were told that the "broadband won't work until you bypass the message". What message? It would be okay if it appeared, but this bypass message did not appear to any of the three users at our Dundee Buisness address. Perhaps our firewall stops it (if its a 'pop up' it may do); Besides BT confirmed "you get 30 days to pay, its not a disconnection". We are a business, we choose not to pay by direct debit, for obvious business reasons, however, I was told that "you (we) can avoid the message by doing DD". This practice may be perfectly legal, but for BT to use this policy as a busines itself is very unprofessional and mistrusting of it's customers. 

However the big question remains, why remind and block the broaband after so few days from issuing the bill???

It would be completlely understandable it this was done, say 35 days after the issuing of the bill. But less than three weeks? What happened to customer service?