I want to leave BT but no-one answers the phone

Question

After 20 years as a BT customer I've had enough.
I have had no home phone line since Saturday (a line came down in the snow) and BT are saying it *may* be fixed next week. Calls are diverted to may mobile, but we live in a rural area and mobile reception isn't very good in the house. Calls are often disconnected or keep breaking up so it's difficult to have a proper conversation. And of course there is the cost of having to use my mobile to make calls. I also frequently work from home, so broadband access is a necessity for me, not a nice-to-have.
This is the second time I've been without a phone line in just a few months. In January, a phone line came down in ourvillage. Openreach fixed it for most of the properties affected within 24 hours, but they didn't do a proper job (I was told this by the second engineer who came out to fix it properly) so our property had to wait much longer to get reconnected. They were originally quoting two weeks to fix it properly but after many phone calls (eventually getting through to a UK centre) it did get fixed after 5 days.
As well as these major problems, the broadband service on the line often goes down for several hours at a time.
The thing that makes it worse is the dreadful customer service offered by the call centre. I have been hung up on, told lies and generally told anything that they think will fob me off.
I know that Openreach is a big part of the problem when it comes to the lines themselves, which will remain whoever I pay for my phone, but I am fed up of such appallingly bad customer service that I do not want BT to have any more of my money. So I tried to call them yesterday and selected the options for leaving BT. Not surprisingly given my experiences, this particular department was "experiencing an extremely high volume of calls". So I sat and waited for 20 minutes (not cheap on my mobile either) without getting a response. It's odd isn't it that if I call for general customer service they offer you the option of leaving your phone number and someone will phone you back, whereas when you are fed up enough that you want to leave they decide to make you even more annoyed by not answering your call. Though I suppose it is one tactic to retain customers.

Answer 1

if you are leaving BT then get your MAC code otherwise you will get a £30 disconnection charge when you transfer to another provider  http://www.getamaccode.co.uk/bt_mac_code/index.php
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