Awful service - want to leave BT

Question

I have been experiencing problems with my BT phone line and broadband since November. This is still ongoing and even after continuous verbal commitment from call centre staff the problems have not been resolved and I am unable to get through to anyonto who has the power to cancel the service so I can go elsewhere. I would appreciate any advice as to how this may be resolved. The details follow...
In November 2012 we noticed a regular low pitch hum on the landline and slow broadband speeds (about 3Mbps on an Infinity service advertised as 10Mbps). I reported both faults on November 11th and was told that it would all be fixed in 3 business days.
The following Friday (no resolution) but a careless driver knocked down a local telegraph pole taking out our whole area. After I raised a fault of no landline, BT used some odd logic and decided to cancel the original case (I guess they figured there would be no noise on a dead line) and told me that the line would be back in 3 business days.
10 days later the line was back with the same noise and poor broadband speeds. I had to raise the original problem again and was told it would be 3 business days to fix again but was assured that this was a priority and would be addressed with full service restored.
By mid December I was still without any decent service and called to request for my contract to be cancelled.  After 1 hour on the phone I was convinceat that an engineer would be sent and reslove all the problems before Christmas.
Eventually an Open Reach engineer came on 21st December and resolved the noisy line as a bad connection in the cabinet but told me he could not address the broadband  issue as this was a landline callout not broadband. The call centre called me back to check everything was ok and I raised up that broadband swas still and issue. He booked and engineer for 2nd January.
This engineer arrived and told me it was a landline call (even though I was assured by the call centre that the new job had been logged as a broadband job) but thankfully he traced the data signal from the fibre cabinet to my street and found that, although my infinity modem could get a small signal, his test equipment failed to get a signal from 20 metres down the road. He told me that it would had to be retested by the broadband team as they had the power to pull new cables if necessary.
I had to raise another case with BT (on Jan 3rd) and they offered me an engineer for Jan 18th. Yesterday I saw that my service ticket had been cancelled and when I called up customer services they told me that the system automatically closes a ticket after 5 days of inactivity and that an engineer will not be coming on 18th.
Today I received a call from level 2 support who left a voicemail saying that they would be testing the line today and could I also do a speed test. When I arrived home this evening I have found that I now have no landline or broadband. When calling the call centre again tonight they tell me that they will raise a new ticket as a landline case and that because there is no landline the broadband call out will be cancelled. I said I wanted to cancel my contract and they told me that I would have to speak to someone in BT Options (150), but when I spoke to BT Options they were sympathetic but said that they could not cancel contract it would have to be done by the Indian call centres.
I am going crazy with this whole situation - surely a phone line and broadband should be the bread and butter for BT. Even the Openreach engineers told me that BT customers were treated as a lower priority to the competitors customers because they get heavily fined by the others and therefore make sure their service is at a higher level. I find it unbelievable that the company can run in such a manner.

Answer 1

If you would like to contact one of the UK based BT Care Team who moderate this forum, they should be able to help you.
They can be contacted using this link BT Care Team
They normally respond by phone or e-mail, within three working days, however you should get an immediate confirmation, with a tracking number.
There are some useful help pages here, for BT Broadband customers only, on my personal website.
BT Broadband customers - help with broadband, WiFi, networking, e-mail and phones.