BT Vision, You View...... in fact BT in general

Question

I cancelled my BT Vision service on 10th October to actually finish on 19th December ie at 12 months.
The reason I cancelled was because my You View box has been an awful experience, its been totally unreliable, I object to acting as a test bed for debugging problems and finally one day it erases over 250 hours of programmes some of which I had been keeping for the winter nights. 
I followed up by telephoning BT on 13th October just to make sure it was cancelled (based on previous experience with BT) and was told it was cancelled. At the same time I renewed my BT package to now include unlimited broadband and got an email listing telephone line, telephone anytime calls and broadband unlimited as my new package to start 19th December.
All seemed fine until I got a bill in mid December which included BT Vision up to mid January 2014. It also included anytime calls twice (yes twice) as well to rub salt into the wounds.
I rang BT and they told me I hadn't cancelled my BT Vision and that I could cancel from that day but the cancellation would require 30 days notice. Strange says I, you sent me an email listing my new package starting 19th December which doesn't list BT Vision.
Since then I have made eight more phone calls, I have noted down each and every one I have spoken to, to get this sorted. I have spent nearly an hour each time talking to various people. I would love to list some of them here to embarrass them.
In addition I have had demands to return the You View box. I have questioned this only to be told that I should ignore this request as I had the subscription for the minimum of 12 months. I have asked them to write to me or email me telling me that I can keep the box and until today nobody has been in a position to email this to me, "I've put a note on the file" is the answer I get to which I reply, will that be as reliable as the note on the file to cancel my BT Vision in the very first place?
Today I get a letter and a plastic bag telling me to return the box.
I phone and finally speak to a decent person in BT who emails me to tell me that I can keep the box. Wonderful!
In addition I have now sent two detailed letters of complaint to BT, both by recorded delivery and both to the MD for the retail division. Both have been delivered, one mid Nov complaining about the YOU View box problems I have had and one mid Dec complaining about this latest debacle and also including a copy of the earlier complaint.
To date NO REPLY!  Great communications from a supposed communications company.
So BT let me explain to you what is going to happen, when this latest package is over I'm going to kiss you goodbye and go to a communication company who can communicate reliably with their customers. Assuming there is one of course.
Oh yes, by the way, I am told today that I have a credit coming on my next bill £6.90 for the BT Vision overcharge and £5.15 for the duplicated anytime calls. Thats a total of £12.05 credit for what must be eight hours spent on phone calls to BT and for writing two letters of complaint.
It saddens me to say that I used to support BT but it really has no idea how to look after its customers.

Answer 1

Hi
Well to update, today I have had a call from a Neil who has apologised for the bad service.
It seems that the first of my letters has been received but no action was taken, the second has not appeared as yet even though I have a tracking confirmation that it was delivered. Apparently BTs service standards are to reply to complaints in 6 weeks, yes 6 weeks. 
So yes all appears sorted, credits are on the way.
However. 
My experiences really are not an exception are they?
We ring BT to be told that they are "recording calls for training".......my word has anyone actually listened to the calls I have made and wondered why I as a customer stay and put up with this service?
We are asked to fill in surveys and my replies are damning, perhaps I am the exception!
I took up broadband about 7 years ago. It was a nightmare to start with simply becuase I had a router with a fault. Call after call to BTs technical help line, all of whom want to access your computer "to check the settings". You tell them that you have two computers and the dropping out occurs with both therefore altering the settings to one is rather pointless but no, they have to tweak this setting and ask you to see how it goes. I even get comments like "do you have a fluorescent light in your room" "do you have a fax machine" because at the time according to BTs technical help either would be the likely cause of me losing my broadband. And so it went on for months, finally one day I speak to a woman who looks at the history of my calls and says that she'll send me a replacement router. Problem solved!
Some years back I had horrendous problems with lost emails. Check me out for my other posts. Needless to say that finally after weeks of pestering yes they admitted that somehow a month of emails had disappeared from their webmail. As I work form home you can imagine the problems that caused me.
I have had numerous problems over the years, slow connections in particular however ring BT technical and its always me by default. You go through the most mindnumbing conversations with people who quite honestly in most cases I wouldn't let them walk my dog. Recently I spoke to one and happened to mention that I had a NAS plugged into my router. He in no uncertain terms told me that I should never plug anything else into my router........he hadn't a clue what a NAS was......this is BT technical help.
Then finally the BT You View, Vision debacle. I should never have done it. You see a box made by Humax and you assume it is going to work. The biggest issues with You View in my opinion are that its fairly clear its been launched and the customers are debugging it. Second issue is USB, theres two USB sockets which do nothing becuase they are not implemented. So after some many weeks possibly months of using the box I decide to back up some important recordings only to find I can't. Strange isn't it, we all know how hard drives can fail, we are told constantly to back up important data, theres two USB sockets that could allow this but don't. By then its too late to cancel the subscription even though I ask BT. No I'm told if I cancel early theres a penalty charge, why when the box has a USB socket in full view which on close inspection doesn't do anything.....its rather like having a towing hitch on a car only to find the day  you want to use it its made of plastic for decoration only. But no the earliest I can cancel with no charge is 19th Dec 2013. There then follows issue afte issue with the box, BT even send an engineer to check it and perform a factory reset but retaining my recordings. the final straw is one day in early October I turn it on only to find its telling me it needs a factory reset, to this day I don't understand why but some others on the You View forum have said that this is a bug! I perform the reset being paranoid to ensure that I pick the option which enables a factory reset and retains my recordings and you can guess over 250 hours of recordings deleted. Of course had the USB worked, most would have been backed up! 
So I cancel the box and somehow BT manage to lose this instruction even though three days later I ring to check this is being actioned and I'm told it is. The rest is as per my first posting. 
I have spoken to so many people most of whom are not fit for purpose. They can't action anything, they can't send emails confirming anything, yet they ask in my case did I get an email confirming the cancellation? For a firm dealing with communications they need to look up the meaning of the word in the OED.
Saying all this, every so often you come across someone who will help, Neil today, Aaron is another, both the BT engineers who have visited have been superb. Dare I say, when I moan to BT engineers about the telephone support they too agree its appalling.
You ring to be told "we are very busy". Well BT perhaps you wouldn't be so busy if you dealt effectively with customer issues the first time they rang and every time a customer ordered or cancelled something you could actually send an email confirming this. It all seems so random, sometime you do, sometimes you don't.
Sad isn't it? A great British institution which everyone I speak to seems to hate dealing with. 
But what do you do? Ok this is sorted, but I know deep down only until the next time. Is anyone out there in BT land reading this I wonder? Will anything actually change or improve.....no it will not of that I am 100% sure.
John