British Telecom - General customer service and complaints procedure

British Telecom - General customer service and complaints procedure

British Telecom - General customer service and complaints procedure

Tel No 0191.237.7929

My telephone went out of order and it took BT over 7 days to turn up and put right what was a half hour job.

After the fault was corrected I tried to register a complaint online at www.bt.com but that procedure didn't work (and still doesn't at 1.30pm 28/7/2004). I then rang BT and was given an address in Gateshead, Co.Durham to write to (which I did on about 8th July). I rang today to see if the complaint was being processed but was told that the complaint had not been received - they then told me I had been given the old address to write to and the new address was in Durham itself.

They offered me &#16321 compensation.

I declined and I said I wanted a response to my complaint.

I asked if I could email my complaint in - THEY SAID NO - despite EVERYONE in BT having their own email address (mine used to be Email User) they said it couldn't be done ???????? maybe I should try Email User (although I doubt if he'd dare use that one)

I really only want 2 things

FIRST - the ability to EASILY submit a complaint about BTs service.

SECOND - a response from BT to my initial complaint (reproduced below)

""""To - BT Complaints dept. I reported my telephone faulty on 28 June 2004 (about lunchtime). An engineer called about 5.30/6.00pm the same evening and tested if the fault was inside or outside the house (good service so far). He even repaired a potential future fault with my house lead-in. He said it was in the underground network and might take a couple of days to get a U/G engineer there. It actually took a week to get a U/G engineer there (5th July) - which is quite appalling service. The 'alleged' reason for this extraordinary length of time was (from the various people I spoke to who included the fault report desk, her supervisor (a coach really), and a Tier 1) that - (a) the weather wasn’t too good; and (b) there were lot of faults at that time. THE WEATHER ??? - BT may not realise this but this is the British summer and this is about as good as it gets. No storms, gales or floods around here to my knowledge. LOTS OF FAULTS ??? - This statement is very subjective isn’t it. If you have 1 engineer and a 100 faults then yes its a lot. If you have 25 engineers with 4 faults each then that’s not too bad is it. However - I actually know you suffer from the former statement – lack of staff. THE REAL REASON YOUR SERVICE IS ABYSMAL - I know for a fact that the reason I received such abysmal service is that BT has taken a lot of the normal U/G engineers off their normal repair work and diverted them to BT's latest panic of the month project which is broadband installation. I know this to be factually correct as I have spoken to the engineers themselves, I have spoken to the external planning groups and also to people in the external works controls too. I couldn’t speak to anyone in the RSC as this has now been centralised (another BAD move) – although its still somewhere in the UK and hasn’t moved abroad yet which is some small consolation. The fact of the matter is that you are currently understaffed (why else would you cancel all the engineers time off in lieu (TOIL) arrangements, stop all unscheduled leave and have them working Saturdays and Sundays to try and cope with the mere SUMMERTIME fault levels. OK – back to the telephone fault. I actually live about 300yds from the cabinet (remember my phone was initially proved faulty between the cabinet and my house) and when the U/G engineer eventually turned up this morning it took him about half an hour to find and clear the fault in a joint in a JF6 close-by. (Time to clear is an estimate of an 8am start, get to site, cup of tea, locate the fault, clear and/or remake a joint then ring me at 9.30 to say its all ok now - please don’t tell me life’s not like that either). The whole point of all this is that if you had your staffing levels right in the 1st place then I would not have to wait 7 days to get a half hour job fixed. Maybe a good productivity wheeze might be to mail out a cab key, a tone, and a set of crimpers and get the customer to fix it themselves. At least I would have had it fixed 6 days earlier. Apart from my obvious gripe and the unbelievable sour taste you have left in my mouth by treating me (and all the other poor suckers in my position who have no other viable means of telecom supply eg cable) - in such an offhanded fashion I would guess that I am supposed now to say what outcome I want from my fault complaint. Well – I came back from the USA to UK to sell the house (where the phone is) and set 4 weeks aside for viewings etc. You cost me 25% of those 4 weeks (no house viewers could contact me) so I guess 25% of my flight costs would be in order - approx &#163125 (if you would rather do the calculation as a % of the house sale price instead then that’s ok too). You also lost me 25% of my monthly Tiscali broadband fees (approx &#1637.00) so that would be appropriate too (you don’t think I’d be daft enough to use BT broadband do you ??). As for pain and suffering – well it seems like I have lost both my arms and had my eyes poked out so if you look at BT’s on/off duty accident insurance policy I’ll let you work that out yourself. However - As I will no doubt be awarded reimbursement worth not much more than a wayleave for a polestay for 12 months then what I would REALLY like is an assurance that BT will readjust its staffing levels to the extent that it stands an earthly chance of meeting its obligations to its customers (e.g. ME) for maintenance within a realistic timeframe. I remember Ian Vallance (he used to be your Chairman) once saying he wanted BT to be TOP TELCO. Well, as a customer facing company these days you stand more change of getting on TOP OF THE POPS than of ever being TOP TELCO. As you can probably guess I am a little ‘hacked off’ (me being polite) at the level of dis-service I have received and I await your response with interest. J A Flack (Ex BT Employee who remembers when 1 day ‘carried overs’ were a crime – and a 2 day ‘carried over’ got a ‘please explain’ from the General Manager) cc – CWU HQ – a real customer complaint always helps when harassing (in dialogue with) the Chairman over staffing levels. Addendum – I have tried to submit this complaint via the www.bt.com website (‘contact us’ process) but the process always finishes with “there is a fault on this page” and wont let me submit the final information – this is why the complaint is submitted by post. Maybe it takes 7+ days to fix a faulty website too ?? """"

Jim F

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