Absolutely livid - considering legal action.

Question

Firstly, in there interest of manners and politeness, hello there. First time I've posted in here, and I wish it were on friendlier terms. Sadly I'm about to go off on a rant.
On the 18th February we started experiencing problems with our phoneline, causing both our dialtone/phone to drop out and our broadband to lose connection. This of course meant we lost our BT Vision as well, and as we have no other TV we were left with NOTHING. The fault was sporadic, cured by unplugging and then re-connecting our equipment to the BT socket and resetting the home hub. I spoke to people in India at least twice who were useless (to put it politely). This lasted a week until 25th Feb, before I lost all services completely and finally got BT to acknowledge it as a fault on the line. I should add here that my neighbours either side both run businesses, have 7 phonelines between them, and have experienced no faults. Not one of the other 8 houses within 1/2 mile of mine have experienced any faults at all either - I've asked around and it's just me.
I was given a 'deadline' of 2nd March for repair, and on the 1st March an Openreach engineer called round, did some checks on the line and pinpointed the fault to being with the network approx 300m from the property. fair play I thought, and he said they'd be back "tomorrow" (2nd) to rectify the problem. Needless to say, the 2nd March came and went with no sign of any Openreach activity anywhere within half a mile - let alone 300m.
I rang to enquire what had happened on the 3rd March, and was told there was a delay as the engineer had reported it as being a major fault that needed dig work, so it'd be another 3 working days. That came and went, as did the next deadline of 3 more working days. Finally I was given a date of 22nd March for the contractors to do the dig work, with the Openreach teams coming in to do the joints/cabling to fix the fault on 23rd March, over 4 weeks from the original fault being reported. That is an unacceptable amount of time in my opinion, given that I have a 20 month old daughter, my wife is pregnant, and that I am trying to run a business from home which has suffered considerably.
23rd March came and went, still no repair!!!! Fairly livid now as I am sure you can imagine.
I should add at this stage that I have spoken to at least three customer service managers, and one was 'kind enough' (after 45 minutes on my mobile, at my expense) to escalate the problem with Openreach around the 9th-10th March, and say he would keep me informed. I also explained that there was no way I was going to continue paying my £60 monthly bill when they weren't supplying the services I had already paid for in advance for period 18th Feb-17th March, and was told this was understandable.
On 24th March I received a voicemail from BT's "Keep In Touch" team, saying they apologised (I have had 43 expressions of apology from BT staff over this to date) but that the fault had still yet to be fixed, but that the contractors were scheduled to do the dig work on 12th April, with the Openreach team coming out to do the cabling on 19th April. The very next day I received a call from a customer service manager asking if I was happy with the repair carried out on the 23rd... "WHAT *&%*(^&^&*^( REPAIR?!!!!"
Firstly, this further delay is unacceptable and I am considering legal action over it - BT is clearly failing the Duty of Care it has towards it's customers by putting my wife and family at risk by leaving us completely isolated - we have no mobile signal at home and I fail to see how they can supply phone services to properties all around ours but not to us.
I would like to know exactly why the dig work wasn't carried out on 22nd March, and why it would then take a further THREE WEEKS for them to come out on 12th APRIL, and a further week after the dig work for the engineers to come out and sort the cable when originally it should have been 24 hours.
In the mean time, on the 18th March my bill was due. As explained to BT Customer Services, I wasn't going to pay for it - they had a month's money on 18/2 and only provided a sporadic service for under a week so as far as I am concerned, they owe me. Today is the 4th April, and I received an email today saying my service has been suspended and my info will be shared with credit reference agencies etc. Needless to say, I am utterly furious.
BT have failed on multiple occasions, the customer service departments are spread so far and wide they have no clue what each other are doing or saying to their customers, and the engineers plain and simple just don't do their jobs when they're supposed to - and then you can't speak to them direct yourself you have to go through the abysmal customer service teams again.
Please can someone who knows what they are talking about, can get things done, and is able to sort my phone line out within an acceptable timeframe get in touch with me and get this sorted - I am seriously considering legal action and leaving BT altogether... oh yeah, I forgot, I can't do that as there's no phoneline in place so I can't go to any other provider as they all need phonelines where I live.

Answer 1

Hi PeteG
Welcome to the community.
Send us an email using the form linked by Hamish72 above and we shall have this investigated for you.
Thanks
Stuart
BTCare Community Mod
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