BT plc Correspondence Centre
Durham
DH98 1BT
07 August 06
Account No. MY505212370028
Dear Sir or Madam,
I was recently pleased to receive your letter informing me that the line rental for my call plan has been reduced by an astonishing £1.55! Although here are some better ways you could probably spend that money:-
1. Please arrange for an engineer to come and fix my line. Since your company installed it there is constant interference on the line which gets even worse when my broadband is switched on (my broadband is also supplied by your company).
2. How about employing some staff for your call centres that can actually speak English, preferably in this country. For some reason I find BRITISH TELECOM (short for telecommunications!!) rather humorous and ironic.
3. When you find some English speaking staff for you call centres how about sending the ones responsible for technical help on a technical course that teaches more than saying “the problem is with your broadband/phone supplier, (depending on which department I’m on the phone with) we can’t help you, you will have to contact them!”
Here’s a great money saving tip; if I didn’t spend 15min on the phone to the phone department then the broadband department and then repeat this process over the last SIX WEEKS without any other solution that the one in point 3 above, then maybe you wouldn’t need so much staff. If this concept works and you need to cut staff, how about starting with the ones that can’t speak English but work in the call centres or the technical help personnel who have that much technical knowledge that I’d be surprised if they could wire a plug.
If for some strange reason you missed all of the points I tried to make above let me recap:
There is constant interference on my phone line which when my broadband is connected is so loud that I can’t hear on the phone. I have contacted the help desk on many occasions over the last six weeks with no help to solving this problem. I have tried new phones & micro-filters, I have no extension cables and have tried the test socket. When I paid £100 for installation of the line, no engineer came out, the line wasn’t checked and it hasn’t worked correctly since I moved in. Every call to you help-desk offers no more help than to contact a different department. I have explained all this to your staff on the phone more that once which has proved a waste of my time and money!
Can you please arrange an engineer to come out and correct any problems as soon as possible, as I don’t feel it is fair to be paying for the phone service and broadband service when I am not being able to use them properly. If you cannot solve this problem quickly then please feel free to cancel both my phone service and broadband, and I will seek repayment of the connection fee and any services charges paid through legal means.
Please note that I am not being personally rude to the person reading this letter, I just don’t have the personal address for your managing director(s) to let him/her/them know what I think of this company.
As much regards as BT has shown me!!!
Craig Fox
Hey Craig,
I’ve been in a similar situation with telephony companies. They can be exceptionally dire at times, because the people they “help” are often confused by much of the lingo they use to cloud up their own stupidity. The problem is, in that line of work, the people who actually understand the infrastructure simply cannot be paid to work on the phones – I don’t blame them. You end up with a rather annoying paradox. The more educated the worker, the less keen s/he is to work on the phones.
BT is world renown, however, of having an exceptionally bad reputation. A handy hint for you: switch to a telephony company that is less well known. Their telephone team are genuinely more expert because there are less people to accommodate. Some of them even give you home phone numbers to contact and skip the mind-numbing queues! Often, you’ll also find those companies are a trifle cheaper as well. Put your money where your mouth is and act with your cash. Show BT you won’t tolerate incompetence.
Good luck,
John.