Online BT orders - right royal mess

Hi all

I thought I would voice my frustration that I have had with moving from Sky Talk and Fibre Optic broadband to BT's Line and Infinity Unlimited broadband.

On 5 January 2015, after Sky not being able to match the offer, I signed up online for BT's Infinity unlimited broadband package with line rental. £10/month fibre optic broadband, opting to pay line rental upfront with the offer of receiving a £125 Sainsbury's gift card.

BT's order tracking website kept showing that the order was fine and was still in progress. My HH5 was due to be delivered on 15 January and I was to be connected on 19 January. Checking BT's order tracking website did not give the link to the tracking service and so I was worried. I called BT on 15 January. Spoke with a lady on the Open Orders team who seemed to be non-UK based. She seemed to know what she was talking about and transferred me to Jenny in the Doncaster Customer Options team. Jenny advised me not to worry and that the order was still progressing. What a pack of lies! she even asked me to wait until 6pm on that day in case I would receive the HH5...at this point I had my doubts. The lady at the Open Orders team mentioned that around 80% of the online orders post 31 December 2014 were being rejected by BT's systems without the customer being informed. The only time that the customer knew that the order had been rejected was when they called to enquire about the status of their order.

Well the evening rolled over to the 16th and I called BT to query about not having received my HH5 and also voice my doubts about being connected on the scheduled date of 19 January 2015. Well, what could be said? Just as I thought, there was no chance that I would be connected on 19 Janjary and that open order had to be cancelled and a new one placed.

After voicing my concern within BT's own forums, one of the Mods took up my case and called me today advising me that the offer was the same to that when I applied despite me advising him that the reason I ordered on 5 January was that the original offer was going to expire on 7 January. He then called me back advising me that the offer was the same and for me to make a fresh online application. I then proceeded to check BT's website and discovered that only £50 of Sainsbury;s vouchers were on offer instead of £125. After having emailed BT's customer team to advise them of this was I told that the Mod would personally ensure that I would receive £125 of vouchers and all I had to do was to just place the order online.

Do I have my doubts? Probably, yes. Even though notes may be placed on the system, when it comes to claiming the voucher, who is actually going to read the notes before sending it to me? So what will probably happen? I'll probably receive £50 of vouchers and then end up making another complaint.

What complete shambles it has been. I thought Sky was bad but having gone through this experience, Sky's customer service team are a lot better than BT's including their ordering system, even if they can't work out what refund amounts are actually due and just rely on Sky's system to calculate it correctly, which I have proven on many occasions is not actually the case.

I will keep you updated on what happens next. I keep asking myself...why am I still going ahead with the order, why, why, why?

Finally, I have emailed OfCom urging them to investigate the 80% online orders rejection matter as I really do think BT have royally messed up on this one and they should be deserved to be investigated on this matter.

I urge anyone who has had their online order, placed after 31 December 2014, rejected to contact OfCom to alert them of this. The more requests OfCom receives, then I'm sure they will be inclined to investigate and give BT an appropriate telling-off or fine for their complete shambles of a system.

Ofcom don't investigate individual complaints.

They do if they get enough on the same topic for the same ISP. That's why the OP asked anyone also affected to contact them. "I urge anyone who has had their online order, placed after 31 December 2014, rejected to contact OfCom to alert them of this. The more requests OfCom receives, then I'm sure they will be inclined to investigate ...."

To further add to the suspense you will receive a "Sainsbury Gift Card" also known as a "Sainsbury's Everyday Shopping Card". The problem is that there is no way of knowing what value is loaded on the card (as far as I could see) until you spend on the card which then shows the value remaining on the till receipt.

Well, we've only got the unguarded remark of a BT agent letting the cat out of the bag that 80% online orders are rejected, and we know how reliable they are.

Altho' there has been a spate of EE new attempted joiners since before Xmas who have heard nowt from EE, have received no router, have not been activated, have had their old ISP pull the BB plug and, therefore had no BB for weeks. Knowing EE, it is unclear whether this is down to EE alone or to BT OR.

Routers are nothing to do with OR so not likely to be them. However:-

Posted: Wed, Jan 14 2015 at 16:20:30
Subject: Regional Repair Delays - UPDATE

We've received notification from BT Openreach that they have declared what they refer to as an MBORC (Matter Beyond Our Reasonable Control) in certain areas of the country. This has the potential to cause fault resolution delays due to recent bouts of severe weather.

A copy of the notice is as follows:

"Parts of the UK, in particular Scotland have been hit with severe storm conditions, including strong wind and heavy snow, over the weekend of the 10th and 11th January, and continuing this week.

This seriously impacted Openreach's infrastructure, both above and below ground with fault intake in these areas at extremely high levels. The adverse conditions have also seriously impacted transport in the region.
Openreach is therefore declaring MBORC for repair activities, in the following area, with effect from 23:59 on 14th December 2015.

Central and South West Scotland

We are directing available additional resource into this area to bring the position back to normal as quickly as possible.

We are monitoring the situation and will remove MBORC as soon as service can be restored to the levels they were at immediately before the severe weather."

I would suspect the BT Wholesale (or maybe BT Consumer) ordering system used for BT Consumer and EE. It cannot be for all BTW-based ISPs otherwise these forums would have erupted long ago.

How have (failed) joiners been cut off? Surely that would only happen if they gave explicit notice?

I never implied that BT OR would be responsible for all those non-events, but it could well be that any BT OR lethargy could snowball into EE's laziness .

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

How have (failed) joiners been cut off? Surely that would only happen if they gave explicit notice?

Could well be! EE custs tend to be naive/stupid, but some do deny being in touch with losing ISP. OTOH Losing ISPs on receiving a request for an unsuppliable MAC (i.e. TT & Sky) may misinterpret it as notice of termination.

Hi all

Thanks for all of your responses. The BT Mods on the forums have been quite helpful. I received a call from them today and even though I won't be connected until 2 February it would appear that the re-order has gone through as I received a whole bunch of auto-generated emails from BT.

She couldn't do much until I was connected but I didn't quite get the answer I wanted...oh well. I shall wait and see what happens next in this saga. No doubt, I'll keep you all posted but for anyone who's had the same problem...please contact Ofcom to let them know so that something can be done about this whole rejection/stuck in the pipeline mess.

Edited by PS123 (Tue 20-Jan-15 17:13:09)