Bad BT customer service

A relative of mine initiated a switch from BT to Sky in late December, it completed mid-January. Sky Hub plugged in and working, data usage logged on Sky control panel, phone calls appearing in My Sky, IP address belonging to Sky. The telephone number stayed the same.

Then in early February a BT bill arrived, expected to be the final one. Instead, it not only did not refund payments from mid-January onwards, it also billed up to early March. The services at BT had not been cancelled, despite my relative having received a letter from BT advising they would be.

So I took up the case for my relative (with their permission of course) and rang BT (customer options team). On checking his systems, the agent was adamant that my relative's service had not transferred to Sky. I told him my relative's telephone calls and broadband usage were being logged in my relative's My Sky, and he was not interested. He said Sky had not processed the transfer correctly, and therefore Sky needed to sort it out. He said if he processed a cancellation, my relative's phone and broadband would be cut off. Since the man would not listen to reason, I had no choice but to ring Sky, knowing what the outcome would be.

I rang Sky who confirmed the migration to them had processed correctly in mid-January without issue. He checked Openreach systems to confirm it, and he even apologised despite it not being Sky's fault.

So I rang BT (customer options team) once again. This time I was passed to someone who was willing to listen to me, he checked Openreach systems and confirmed that the migration had taken place in mid-January and that my relative was incorrectly being billed by BT from that date. He wrote notes for the offline team and I think (and hope) that it will now be resolved.

I accept errors in the migration process can go wrong, but the first BT guy was a nightmare. Completely unwilling to accept an error could have occurred on BT's side and steadfastly blaming Sky when it was not their fault at all, resulting in far more hassle and frustration for us than there needed to be.

Yes, they are ridiculous. It seems they have some call-counting going on which means that the more calls you make, the better the response you get.

Did the relative get a 'have you authorised moving your broadband and phone' letter? They should get one under the new rules for how migrations work, if that did not happen it explains why they carried on billing i.e. retail was not aware of the move.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Did the relative get a 'have you authorised moving your broadband and phone' letter? They should get one under the new rules for how migrations work, if that did not happen it explains why they carried on billing i.e. retail was not aware of the move.

Yes, my relative received a "sorry you are leaving" letter from BT a few days after they signed up with Sky.

Typical BT... Always playing the blame game... they need to understand that even if it where Sky's fault that they need to fix the issue as they're the ones requesting payment...

In which case retail knew very well about the move, so hammer clearly falls on to them

Same thing happened when I switched from BT to the Post Office. BT were adamant they were still providing the service for weeks after the switch. It was a complete nightmare to resolve.