BT chasing me for debt I have been told I do not o...

Question

Hello,
I would like to seek some advice about my truly horrendous experience with BT.
To briefly explain the situation, I moved house on the 13th October 2011. I then arranged for BT to transfer my service to the new property on the 17th October 2011 and updated BT with my new address details at the same time. I had to take a morning off work to let in the BT engineer to carry out this work, which turned out to be a waste of time, as I will now explain. 
When the engineer arrived he said that he could not install the phone line in a place where I wanted it, as he was only paid to reactivate an old line. As the old line was in the kitchen with no electric socket nearby I could not use it as I needed an electric point for my phone and modem. So I was left with a service that I could no longer use. As I was very dissatisfied with this, on the same day (17th October) I rang up one of their customer service representatives, where I spoke to a lady to explain that I wasn't happy with the service as I would be paying for something that I couldn't use. After spending about 45 minutes on the phone trying to resolve this matter, I was told that I could cancel my service and I wouldn't be charged anything. I was led to believe that my account would be closed without any further charges. I then rang back on the same day (17th October) to double check that I wouldn't be charged anything and clarify that there would be no charges left on my account and the SECOND lady I spoke to confirmed that I wouldn't be charged anything and that I wouldn't receive any further bills. 
Following this however, I have since received bills that were being sent to my old address stating that I had charges on my account that need to be paid. A bill was sent in January 2012, so I rang their customer services department on the 28th January 2012, who put me through to one of their call centres in India. So I explained the situation again to the gentleman that I spoke to and I was then told for a THIRD time that I do not owe anything on the account. I recently received another letter (again, sent to my old address) dated 13th February stating that I owe £390.37. I rang their customer department immediately on the 21st February 2012 (the delay was due to the letter being sent to my old address, as fortunately the person living at my old address very kindly forwarded on this letter to my new address). During this call I was again put through to one of their call centres in India. I was kept on the phone for just over 45 minutes whilst they listened to recordings of conversations with their customer service representatives on 17th October 2011, confirming that I would not be charged. This ended up being a complete waste of time, as nothing was resolved and the person I was speaking to then decided that they would need to listen to the correct phone recordings and said that they would ring me within 48 hours to inform me of the outcome. This was particularly inconvenient, as I was due to attend an event that night and I missed it due to being late by being kept on hold with the call for 45 minutes. I had heard nothing of the outcome from this conversation until I received letter from BT's Debt Recovery Unit dated 5th March.
This has now resulted in me receiving a number of letters from BT's debt collection agency Commercial Credit Services and SC Gray Solicitors demanding that I pay £591.17 (again, letters were being sent to my old address). As I was getting no luck with trying to resolve this over the phone, I wrote a letter on the 15th March to explain what had happened. This resulted in a reply from BT to say that they have listened to the recordings of the phone conversations and they are standing by their view that I owe them money, even though at that point I had been told by THREE separate BT customer reps that I do not owe any money. Following this, I rang BT's general customer number as I could not get through to the lady who wrote me this letter and I was told by a FOURTH customer service rep that it states on my old account that "I have been promised that no charges or bills are outstanding on the account"!! So I wrote a further letter to BT dated 10th April and rang the debt collection agency (as advised by this 4th customer rep from BT) to say that I am disputing the debt. The debt collectors told me that they would contact BT to inform them that I am disputing the debt so that it can be escalated with the relevant managers. This clearly did not happen, as today I received another voicemail saying that they have listened to the recordings and they are standing by their view that I owe nearly £600. Clearly, BT are either listening to the wrong recordings (although I gave the names of the people I spoke to with the dates of the conversations) or they are being misconstrued somehow.
I find the behaviour of BT dishonest and unprofessional, and I feel like I am being bullied to the point of being physically sick with worry.
I would be interested to hear if anyone has any advice about my next steps, as I really am at a loss as to what to do? Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

Unless this recording kit has a magic facility to record all the calls you had in the last 6 or 7 months, it will be of absolutly no use in resolving your issue.
This is a customer to customer forum. Your circumstances are such that you are not likely to get any useful help from fellow customers, and your best course is to contact the forum moderators here: Contact BT Forum Mods. They are a small BT team of dedicated troubleshooters with a good record of success, who will take ownership of your problem and see it through. They are very busy and may take a few days to respond.
You can click the white star next to this message if you think it was helpful.