BT Support - f*@!ing useless timewasters!

[gavstar]

Trying to get support from BT when your broadband service is down - what a fing joke! One and a half hours of "unplug your Sky box, unscrew this, test that!".... off, just check my line won't you!!!
Time to change ISP I think....no wonder they receive more complaints than any other company in the UK.
And breathe.....

[SS2.]

Been there, done that..

The minute they find out you have a 'non-BT' component in the system (like my Belkin router, for instance), they immediately blame that, suggest that you call Belkin and offer naff all technical support from that point forward..

Its fortunate (for them) that my BT ADSL line hardly ever goes down - if it was a regular occurrence, I'd be off to another provider in a flash..

[gavstar]

SS2. said:

Been there, done that..

The minute they find out you have a 'non-BT' component in the system (like my Belkin router, for instance), they immediately blame that, suggest that you call Belkin and offer naff all technical support from that point forward..

Its fortunate (for them) that my BT ADSL line hardly ever goes down - if it was a regular occurrence, I'd be off to another provider in a flash..

What's even more annoying is that they make you go through this rigmorole every time, and only then will they do a proper line test. Is adslguide.com still the best place to research alternatives?

[mattyb123]

Interesting...had bt broadband for about 4 years now with no problem whatsoever. I always find the best thing to do in emergency situations is to just find the answer yourself from google searches. ringing people who are reading from a script and have no tech knowledge at all is a complete waste of 50p/min and your time.

[gavstar]

mattyb123 said:

Interesting...had bt broadband for about 4 years now with no problem whatsoever. I always find the best thing to do in emergency situations is to just find the answer yourself from google searches. ringing people who are reading from a script and have no tech knowledge at all is a complete waste of 50p/min and your time.

But when the router lights for DSL and Internet are not lit up, surely that points to a problem with the line, that no amount of disconnecting and moving kit around will fix? Once you've rebooted the router there's not a lot more an end user can do.
BT are fine until you need to ask them for help.

[ThePassenger]

gavstar said:

mattyb123 said:

Interesting...had bt broadband for about 4 years now with no problem whatsoever. I always find the best thing to do in emergency situations is to just find the answer yourself from google searches. ringing people who are reading from a script and have no tech knowledge at all is a complete waste of 50p/min and your time.

But when the router lights for DSL and Internet are not lit up, surely that points to a problem with the line, that no amount of disconnecting and moving kit around will fix? Once you've rebooted the router there's not a lot more an end user can do.
BT are fine until you need to ask them for help.

If everything inside the network is working and the router passes it's diagnostics (or starts complaining about no ADSL sync in it's logs) their is bugger all you can do as it's outside your control.

[plasticpig]

gavstar said:

Trying to get support from BT when your broadband service is down - what a fing joke! One and a half hours of "unplug your Sky box, unscrew this, test that!".... off, just check my line won't you!!!
Time to change ISP I think....no wonder they receive more complaints than any other company in the UK.
And breathe.....

Unplugging everything is perfectly reasonable thing to ask you to do. One of the best tests is to unplug everything and plug in the modem/router to the master socket and see if it works. The best way to test a line is without anything plugged in. It ensures that the problem is an exchange/line fault rather than a equipment fault.

[gavstar]

plasticpig said:

gavstar said:

Trying to get support from BT when your broadband service is down - what a fing joke! One and a half hours of "unplug your Sky box, unscrew this, test that!".... off, just check my line won't you!!!
Time to change ISP I think....no wonder they receive more complaints than any other company in the UK.
And breathe.....

Unplugging everything is perfectly reasonable thing to ask you to do. One of the best tests is to unplug everything and plug in the modem/router to the master socket and see if it works. The best way to test a line is without anything plugged in. It ensures that the problem is an exchange/line fault rather than a equipment fault.

OK, I appreciate that, but they could do a line test first, determine that everything outside the house is OK - all they have to do is click on a few buttons to do this. Then if that's OK, go down the route of disconnecting everything. The fact that these people can barely speak English and fall apart if you dare try and get them to deviate from their script that makes it frustrating.

[SS2.]

plasticpig said:

Unplugging everything is perfectly reasonable thing to ask you to do. One of the best tests is to unplug everything and plug in the modem/router to the master socket and see if it works. The best way to test a line is without anything plugged in. It ensures that the problem is an exchange/line fault rather than a equipment fault.

They were much worse than that with me. Once they discovered I had a non-BT router, they suggested I contact the router manufacturer and that was that - end of chat..

For the purposes of demonstration and to humour their support dept., I installed a BT Voyager ADSL modem I had kicking around and that wouldn't connect either. Surprise, surprise

Contacted BT again at which point they claimed to have a problem with their database and they would call me back when it was sorted.

24 hours or so later and the ADSL came back on-line. Never did receive a return call from BT.

Useless....

[Zod]

SS2. said:

plasticpig said:

Unplugging everything is perfectly reasonable thing to ask you to do. One of the best tests is to unplug everything and plug in the modem/router to the master socket and see if it works. The best way to test a line is without anything plugged in. It ensures that the problem is an exchange/line fault rather than a equipment fault.

They were much worse than that with me. Once they discovered I had a non-BT router, they suggested I contact the router manufacturer and that was that - end of chat..

For the purposes of demonstration and to humour their support dept., I installed a BT Voyager ADSL modem I had kicking around and that wouldn't connect either. Surprise, surprise

Contacted BT again at which point they claimed to have a problem with their database and they would call me back when it was sorted.

24 hours or so later and the ADSL came back on-line. Never did receive a return call from BT.

Useless....

Like when they told me that the firewall in my router was the casue of the problem, that this wa sa known issue and it needed to be sent back to Netgear to have the firewall removed. When I explained that it was merely NAT, that the connection had been working fine with the router for the last 18 months and that the ADSL sync light simply wouldn't go green, they just kept blithering on about the router.

Morons!

[Mr E]

http://pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.

[plasticpig]

gavstar said:

OK, I appreciate that, but they could do a line test first, determine that everything outside the house is OK - all they have to do is click on a few buttons to do this. Then if that's OK, go down the route of disconnecting everything. The fact that these people can barely speak English and fall apart if you dare try and get them to deviate from their script that makes it frustrating.

I agree. The problem is they have to work from the lowest common denominator. That is someone who is totally clueless about ADSL/Computers. The vast majority of customers will not have deviated from the kit supplied by BT. I think you will find that all of the large ISP's are generally the same. If you go for a smaller ISP you will probably pay more but recive a better level of support. I pay £300 a year for 1 meg which sounds very expensive but I get a very quick response to problems.

[k50 del]

Unfortunately we run our entire business on BT ADSL lines, which means I'm on the phone to what they call technical support far more often than I'd like.

There have been occasions in the past where the level of frustration has got so great that I didn't believe it was possible.

There people are given a script to read, expecting to deal with numpties and the moment you start taking about NAT and Static IP's and VPN's they have no clue and either fob you off or hang up.

I have never dealt with a company like them - words literally fail me.

[ThePassenger]

Zod said:

SS2. said:

plasticpig said:

Unplugging everything is perfectly reasonable thing to ask you to do. One of the best tests is to unplug everything and plug in the modem/router to the master socket and see if it works. The best way to test a line is without anything plugged in. It ensures that the problem is an exchange/line fault rather than a equipment fault.

They were much worse than that with me. Once they discovered I had a non-BT router, they suggested I contact the router manufacturer and that was that - end of chat..

For the purposes of demonstration and to humour their support dept., I installed a BT Voyager ADSL modem I had kicking around and that wouldn't connect either. Surprise, surprise

Contacted BT again at which point they claimed to have a problem with their database and they would call me back when it was sorted.

24 hours or so later and the ADSL came back on-line. Never did receive a return call from BT.

Useless....

Like when they told me that the firewall in my router was the casue of the problem, that this wa sa known issue and it needed to be sent back to Netgear to have the firewall removed. When I explained that it was merely NAT, that the connection had been working fine with the router for the last 18 months and that the ADSL sync light simply wouldn't go green, they just kept blithering on about the router.

Morons!

Not really, the problem is that you are given a script, you have to follow this script to the letter and if you don't get a valid response as dictated by the script you just go in circles. Often even if the person on the phone knowns you known what you're talking about AND understands themselves. They can't skip a step; neither the scripting system nor their terms of employment will allow them to do so.

[SneakyNeil]

k50 del said:

I have never dealt with a company like them - words literally fail me.

You're not alone m8! I called them on behalf of a customer last week (no DSL) - first guy I spoke said it was business broadband and gave me another number to ring. They then told me it wasn't and referred me back to home broadband. Second guy wasn't that bad, he then passed me to someone else who could not understand a single ing word of english and just tried to get me to repeat the exact same conversation I'd just had with the previous guy.

him: Unscrew the two screws on the faceplate and plug the router into the socket there.

Me: It's an old house, it hasn't got that type of master socket.

him: Oh yes I see. *pause* Unscrew the two screws on the faceplate and plug the router into the socket there.

Me: It's an old house, it hasn't got that type of master socket.

him: Oh yes I see. *pause* Unscrew the two screws on the faceplate and plug the router into the socket there.

Me: It's an old house, it hasn't got that type of master socket.

him: Oh yes I see. *pause* Unscrew the two screws on the faceplate and plug the router into the socket there.

etc.
etc.
etc.
etc.

Just imagine if an average housewife type end user had been on the phone, they'd still be there now, all tangled up in twisted pair!!

Not to mention my dad's speed problems not so long ago - any speed test you ran got no more than 40 odd Kbps. Swapped the router, filters, tried different machines, etc etc. no change. On no less than *4* separate occasions the BT bods told him that this result on their own speed test was fine, and nothing to worry about.

And of course let's not forget their old favourite trick, 'unplug it for 30 minutes and try it all again' - of course you then have to ring back and speak to an entirely different person who then starts right back at the beginning again, reference number or not.

To be fair, their business broadband support is slightly better though I'd say, but often let down by imcompetence elsewhere in the company. For example a move I helped with recently, they liased with the BT small business advisor bod for months before the move about what lines & servces they'd need and when they'd need them - come the move in date, 'theres no lines on the pole', game over. Took 3 weeks of constant badgering and broken promises to get them a single working phone line in the office. Them came the broadband woes....

I could go on all night. I have absolutely no idea how they manage to remain operating as a business, it defies belief.