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Merging 2 Adsl lines into 1 Fibre line, same business name and location. Lost Email?

DaveUK
Member

Hi,

Can someone please help me get some clarity on this, I have rang BT several times recently, different representatives say different things, some of which doesn't make sense to me.

 

The situation is very simple but for some reason its made to sound more complex when talking on the phone, one of those things that is easier written down I think.

 

 

Our business used to have two lines.

One for Phone

One for Fax.

We originally, 20+ years ago, setup internet on the Fax line when it was dial-up, later upgrading to adsl broadband.

Presumably a fairly common situation I'd bave thought.

 

We no longer use Faxes so wanted to do away with that line.

Some BT sales man, in about 2017 offered us Adsl Broadband on our phone line, which we accepted, the idea was, as he explained it, setup adsl on our main phone line, then swap our old broadband package over, including Emails, etc. then cancel the other line altogether..

 

As it turned out our phoneline gave less than half the speed of the fax line, we had the engineer out 5 times or so without any progress.

So in the end we kept both adsl broadband packages.  (one of the engineers fobbed us of that it would get faster the more it was used, but it didn't, and by then was too late to cancel..)

We had heard fibre was coming soon, so hoped to complete the transfer then.

 

Fast forward May 2021, I ordered Full Fibre 150 with cloud voice on what was the phone line.

When ordering I explained the situation regards us not wanting to have the 2 broadband packages, and wanting it transfered as was originally supposed to happen.

I asked multiple times throughout the process if there would be any issues transfering our emails over, my dad the business owner is in the process of important rent negotiations..

The BT representatives, almost laughed at the question, ofcourse Sir, no interuption at all as long as your Billing account is the same..  Emails follow the account number not the phone number I was told.

I spoke to at least 5 BT people who made these assurances. Two from the marketing setup, then when they put the order to BT proper I was keen to check again, the initial person confirmed what I'd been told, then when he forwarded me to the man who actually recorded the order I checked with him as well.

My mind was put at rest.

 

Last week our contract on our old adsl broadband was finally up so I put in the cancel order.

I also checked with the man who processed that, he assured me there was no problem.  So I went ahead and put the cancel order in.

 

Immediately a confirmation email came through listing all the services we would be losing, including all our original email addresses.

 

I assumed this was an error on the automated email, so I rang BT to check.

No Sir, you can't have those email address if you cancel that package, he said. I explained the situation.

He said there was no way at all to transfer anything over from our old package and it was a totally different system now..

He was completely unhelpful, I offered to pay extra to in some way retain them, he just answered that it wasn't possible to everything I suggested...

 

To me this is ludicrous.

We are paying more money for a higher package and we are losing important business email addresses and there is nothing we can do to transfer them over?   We are at the same Business Name, Address and Account numbers.

 

I rang back the next day hoping to get someone else, and actually they did appear to be making an effort to help, but in the end they said there is nothing they can do short of rescinding the cancel order on the original adsl broadband package.

 

Again, for me this just can't be right, we have Full Fibre 150 coming into the property about 3 meters away from our old fax adsl line giving us 20x the speed and we are told we have to retain the old adsl package just to keep our business emails?

Its crazy.

 

 

 

The reason I am querying this here, I figure this surely can't be the first time this issue has come up, indeed I'd have thought it was quite common, a lot of small businesses used to have seperate fax lines, later changing to mainly internet, which presumably get dropped for Fibre lines in recent years?

There must be a way forward, yet on the phone I am met with confusion and very long waits causing me to wonder if they are messing me around, I feel like putting in an offical complaint.

 

 

 

4 REPLIES 4

AshleyWright
Member

How do you make an "official complaint"? It seems that there may be no other means of getting stuff like this made visible to someone at BT that could actually do something about it.

DaveUK
Member
Well when I’ve been searching the help section of the bt.com site I have sometimes been offered the option to make a complaint.. I assumed that was it but have not yet tried it.
I am really surprised this forum doesn’t give more active support from an official representative, especially during Covid-19. Most queries are not getting replies.


Do you have the same issue as me?

DaveUK
Member
So I now rang up to ask about the status of our old adsl line now that we’re out of contract and what the best way forward is.
The guy was bemused and insisted that our data/emails can be transferred.
The issue has now been elevated the second and then third tier..
BT can be good once you get hold of the right people,

So as far as I understand the problem is this.
BT full fibre Cloud Voice doesn’t have business emails associated with it.
If upgrading from an old package that did have an email license, you do get to keep the emails..

What we did was upgrade to fibre but on a different number (same house and business) , this caused some confusion..

DaveUK
Member

 

Seems like with BT the first tier guys tend to pass the buck a fair bit keep suggesting I ring different numbers etc.

 

But once you get through to high level guys they make a real effort to help. I'm thankful for the help, and believe its now fixed as it should be.