Ceridwenscauldron

The Trainline site where you can book rail tickets on line has now decided to charge an extra 50p for booking with a debit card and 50p just to pick the ticket up from a station ticket machine.

Why not just add a pound to the ticket price quoted rather than hit people with extra charges once they have booked.

Just another example of how basically dishonest big companies are!

Thursday afternoon about 6.30pm

The Moff gets back to Uni town and rings

"Hello Dad I'm back home but BT have cut off my phone and internet and we have been on the phone since 3.30 this afternoon and no one seems to know when I can have it back cos they say I asked them to cancel it and I didn't and it might be two days or two weeks before I can get reconnected but I don't know whats going on cos Grandad and I have been on the phone to them all afternoon and they keep hanging up and no body at BT wants to help me".

Cook rings BT customer services gets put through to call centre in India explains situation and asks for call back from manager in Britain, call handler very apologetic and promises someone will call back in half an hour.

No one does, Cook is not in the least surprised, so he looks up BT corporate HQ on internet, finds press office number and calls it. Duty Manager answers phone, Cook explains problem and duty manager promises to get someone to call back.

9.50 someone who claims to be Customer Service Manager rings just as Cook's dinner comes out of the oven,to tell me that the reason they cancelled the service was because someone contacted BT sales and said they were taking over the service from Moff's address so thats why they terminated the line.

Cook "But we never asked you to"

BT "Yes but we have a care of duty to new customers to set up their service when they ask for it"

Cook "Yes But its our address and we never asked you to terminate the existing service"

BT "We did write to confirm that you were moving on June 26"

Cook "But my daughter was not moving and we never received a letter from you and even if it was delivered my daughter would have been back in London anyway what with term having ended did it never occur to you to send an e-mail to the billing address for example after all people in summer are often away on holiday, but can check e-mails from anywhere"

BT "No we only ever send one letter by mail in cases like this"

Cook "So if someone is away on holiday you just cut them off should someone tell you they are moving?"

BT "yes because we have no way of knowing that they are not"

Cook "But this is obviously a mistake perhaps someone gave you the wrong address or someone at BT took it down wrong"

BT "We can only act on what customers tell us"

Cook " Be that as it may what are you going to do about the reconnecting the service"

BT "Oh you will have to ring this number as its a different department that deals with that gives number"

Cook "And this will put me straight through to someone who can solve the problem because I don't want to be shoved from pillar to post like my daughter has been today?"

BT "Yes"

Cook "But why can't you do it after all your supposed to be a customer service manager and its obviously your mistake"

BT "You will have to ring this number tomorrow as they close at 9PM tonight and no one will be there now because its a different department that deals with Broadband"

I won't bore you with the rest of the ultimately pointless conversation I had with the so called customer service manager other than to say whats the point of people in customer services if all they are going to do is ask you to call back later on a different line, especially as its a problem the company have created themselves. Incensed I went back to the website and penned a note to the corporate press office hoping it might rattle someones tree.

Friday morning ring the number BT gave me, explain the situation, get put through to call centre in India, explain situation again, get put through to someone in the UK, explain all over again, operator gets supervisor, explain again, get put on hold for about thirteen adagios from Eine Kleine Nachtmusik then told its a priority case and someone will ring me back in an hour.

Get reply from corporate press office saying they are looking into it, pen one back saying that I have already spent half an hour speaking top four different people on two continents this morning.

Three hours later someone calls, obviously a bit rattled as the fact that I have contacted the chairman's office is mentioned, told the service would be reconnected today (it wasn't) or at the latest Monday.

You know what annoys me its the fact that BT won't admit that they made a mistake and keep reiterating this nonsense about their duty of care to new customers wanting to set up accounts, well perhaps if they checked out whether new customers were actually taking over the addresses they claim they are they would not mess up existing customers who pay their bills on time. The fact that someone can seemingly set up an internet account at someone else's address on the basis of a phone call makes me wonder how secure BT's systems are in preventing ID fraud, as far as I can see in their quest for new customers they are not secure at all.