BT’s just not listening when its customers are treated badly

From: MP Fitzgerald, The Crescent, Northallerton.

I FELT that I had to reply to a letter from Norma Bartle of Cottingley (Yorkshire Post, October 15) about service (or lack of it) from BT.

This year, I and a few neighbours have experienced loss of service due to breaks in underground cables, first in February, then May to July, and most recently September 23-October 2.

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BT engineers from Openreach came out to fix the problem, but only to help the person who had reported the fault. But what a difficult problem reporting a fault is.

As I am with BT, I have had to phone the faults line and eventually got through to a non-English speaking person.

One operator even told me that he didn’t understand Geordie. I can sympathise with that as I, too, do not speak Geordie.

Speaking to three different people (two female), I found I had to keep asking for things to be repeated and had to spell out my name letter by letter, and they still called me “Mr Fizeal”.

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In July I was told I would have to pay £99.99 reconnection fee and in September was told I would be charged £129.99 but I refused, as the cable breaks were all over 100 yards from my house, and neighbours I spoke to were not charged anything by Sky, AOL and TalkTalk.

I have had 11 weeks of disconnection this year but BT will not refund my line rental of £21.50 per month.

I asked them to refund me for two months (£43) for May 13-July 11.

They told they could only give me compensation of £1.02 which I refused, so have got nothing and still they take £21.50 each month from my direct debit.

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I seem to have upset them for asking to speak to an English-speaking manager, when connected.

He told me all his staff speak perfect English and found my comments offensive.

They insisted in May, and again in September, that it was my phone that was faulty and 
their tests showed the line was okay.

An engineer who called to test my phone found it okay but found a cable break 105 metres away from my house and said it needed a hole digging and they did not have anyone available to dig.

Obviously BT staff are trained to put all the blame on the customer. I wonder how many more BT customers have been treated like this.