BT move of business telecoms - A tragic tale of co...

Question

My story starts thus..
2 months ago I informed BT I was moving business premises and would like them to assist me in this endeavour.
A nice man from BT local business called me and said this is what we can do for you and this is what the costs will be. We agreed and entrusted him and BT to ensure our business could be moved succefully keeping disruption down to 4 hours.
The big day arrives, the BT new movers team have arranged for all the various engineers to come round on time, and they did. The ISDN 30 switchover happens without a glitch, but the broadband swap.. what a sorry tale.
By accident, some (semi independent spun of) department within BT has booked the broadband job as a 'new install' rather than a  'move' which means certain steps happened in the wrong order (according to the engineer who visited us this morning). So on the day of the move some glassy eyed ("its your problem that there is a problem") openreach engineer does whatever he needs to do, and tells me that the broadband on the line has not been activated and that I need to call such and such number.
I thought no, I wont call that number and be in a queue for half an hour, I will speak to the business movers team, they call some other (semi independent spun off) department within BT and said 'hold your horses, the line could be commissioned anytime before 8pm tonight' so I think OK, these guys know what they are doing so leave it at that.
I come in the next day and still no broadband. I ring the new movers team who say they would love to help but they can't access the system to see whether I have a problem. They transfer me (after the obligatory 10-40 mins wait) to the broadband faults department, who say the 'broadband has been commissioned succesfully, we cannot help you', who thus transfer (after the obligatory 10-40 mins wait) me to another (semi independent spun off) department within BT, who handle the physical lines who say 'they have run a line check and it works, it must be a broadband fault", and then transfer me back to the broadband faults department.
I end up in the bizarre situation of mediating a dispute between one department of BT and another, each blaming the other for the fault. I say 'I have paid 7 grand for you to look after this move for me, why am I the referee between broadband faults, line faults, new movers faults,  openreach faults, and wholesale faults?'. Anyway it is resolved that a broadband engineer will come to visit me between 8am and 1pm the next day.
I ring the new movers team and ask politely if I can have a 0800 dialup number as a backup while the problem is solved (I get this automatically with plusnet if there is a problem on my home broadband, which costs me £10 a month). Unfortunately as much as they would like to help they cannot. I get the new apprentice at the office to lookup on his iphone 0845 dial up isps, and I find one, and restore very very slow connectivity. I previously asked whether they could give me a password for a local open zone hotspot but was told that was not their department.
I must add when I spoke to the broadband faults team, i asked for the problem to be escalated. I spoke to a manager who gave me her mobile number and assured me she should would call at 10 am this morning to ensure progress was being made. This call never came, and when I rang the number some guy quizzed me "who are you, how do you know them" etc. When I explained the situation (for the 50th time) he asked for my number, and assured me someone would ring me back within half an hour. Someone did to be fair, but at that time the problem had been temporarily resolved.
Anyway, the broadband guy came round this morning, said "the broadband modem isnt even trying, its not been switched on on this line", he tries to ring a colleague at the exchange, who does not answer, and the engineer says "I could punch his face in, he is allways doing this", because this guy never answers his phone when he is in the midde of something apparently. Our engineer pootles off down to the exchange, and one hour later comes back and say the 'job has been booked in as an install, rather than a move, and thats where YOUR problem is". He says it will work fine now, which it seemingly does. Our engineer dissed the standard router supplied by BT (a silvery slabbish thing) and says he is allways seeing trouble with them, and advise us to not bother usiing them.
So he connects with this little Alcatel 100 model previously supplied by BT, and confirms the line works. He then replaces this modem with ours, which then breaks down. He (which he didnt need to do) tried to fix it for us, but to no avail. He then says he has to get to his next job, and leaves us with a now functioning broadband line, but no functioning equipment to access it.
I drive home and get another router, connect that up and all is fine again.
For another two hours.
After said time, the whole line goes dead (i.e. not only no broadband, but no dial tone). I ring the 5 or 6 (semi independent spun off) departments within BT, who transfer me endlessly (after the obligatory 10-40 mins wait) between themselves after saying "I would love to help, but its not my department" with not only no broadband, but no analogue line to receive faxes on, or to connect my PDQ too.
That is where I am now.
BT's efficiency drive may seem sound on paper, but I have spoken to at least 12 operators within BT, 5 engineers who have called out on visits, who have managed to totally screw up a simple broadband move, and because of the sheer number of personnel involved, must have cost 10 times as much if just one project manager and one engineer had managed such a simple task!
Not only is it frustrating for customers, it is equally so for your employees, because I kid you not, every single person I have spoke to at BT agrees with me about the lamentable structure and service that characterises BT that only becomes apparent when something goes wrong.
Sort it out please.
Anyone got any similar stories?

Answer 1

Join the club.
I had an unfriendly Openreach engineer come to my property in January to get a line activated. He made me run around the flat myself to find a line, and 10 minutes after he arrived he just said that he can't install a line, they'd have to dig up the pavement and charge me for that.
Fine I said, and phoned the same day to the provisions team to cancel the new application I made the 2 weeks prior. The lady I spoke to agreed to cancel everything and confirmed that there would be no charge.
for the months of January till end of March I kept receiving bills and eventually a final demand for a new line installation and several months' line rental. Every time I phoned I spoke to a manager who promised me that the problem is resolved and they have now closed the account, however that never happened. 
Then they passed the account to a collections agency who phoned me all hours of the day/night - one time they phoned 4 times in a row after 3am on a thursday morning until I picked up.
Then I went and saw a solicitor, took all the documents etc and got them to write BT a letter and finally it all stopped. However, my credit score was affected by all of this and that I'm still trying to resolve...
I swore I'd never return to BT but they're the only ones providing FTTC at the moment and Talk-talk got an Openreach engineer out recently who installed the line for me with no quibbles whatsoever.