Re: argghh BT open reach engineer never turned up

Question

Where to start! 
    Im not entirly sure im even posting in the right place as even navigating through this forum was a task of epic proportions. 
    Our saga started back in August when we originally placed our order for BT Infinity. After setting up all the neccessary things for our account we were advised that the first available date for our installation was the 28th of september, a whole 6 weeks from first contact. At this point we were understanding of the fact we would have to wait a while, these things are to be expected, so we paitiently waited for the arrival of a BT engineer to set up our broadband. 
    On the 28th of september we were told the engineer would arrive between 1 and 6 o'clock. As a full time student about to embark on writing a dissertation i was unable to wait in all day for the engineer to arrive, in light of this my partner decided to take the day off work to wait for him. 6 O'clock came and went with no telephone call or email from BT or the engineer to inform us they would not be coming to the property. After many un-helpful phone calls to the automated helpline to find out the status of our installation (which just continued to say 'Your order has been delayed') we decided to phone the call centre. This telephone call to BT was the beginning of the saga in the most attrocious customer service i have ever experienced. I was spoken to as though i was a child, shouted at and condescended. The member of staff who i spoke to, Fukeshni was completely un-willing to help, only telling me the best they could do was get an engineer out to me on the 11th of October. Unsatisfied with this pathetic attempt to resolve the situation and fuelled by the rudeness of this employee i requested to speak to a manager in order to make a formal complaint about the way our situation had been handled. Fukeshni then advised me there was no manager available to talk to me, and there was no one else in the office above her to manage my complaint. Having worked in call centres before i am aware that there is always a floor or line manager available to speak to customers in situations like this so i pushed and pushed to be allowed to do so. After at least 5 minutes of going round the houses trying to convince this silly woman that as a customer i am entitled to the opportunity to speak to a manager she then confessed that there was infact a manager who would be able to talk to me however, and i quote. 'I would rather you didnt speak to my manager mam, as i feel i will not be able to explain myself.' I HAD BEEN REFUSED THE OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO A MANAGER AS SHE WAS WORRIED ABOUT REPERCUSSIONS. I have never heard anything so ridiculous in my life. After explaining to Fukeshni that one way or another i would be making a complaint about the way she dealt with my call, she reluctantly agreed to pass me on to her Manager. The manager i spoke to apologised profusely and then offered me two months free line rental by way of compensation. Still unsatisfied but unwilling to spend another second on the phone i accepted, however requested i was informed of the disciplinary action taken against Fukeshni, this may seem slightly neurotic to some, however if you could have heard the manner in which i was spoken to you would be flabbergasted. I was told someone would contact me within 48 hours to discuss this. Obviously this never happened. I also requested a reference number for this particular conversation.
    The 11th of October came and yet again my partner took another day off work in order to wait for the engineer to arrive at the alloted time between 1 and 6. Yet again 6 O'clock came and went and the engineer did not arrive, again no contact from either BT or the engineer was made to inform us of this delay. After returning home from university i put in a call to the BT call centre to find out why the engineer hadn't turned up, when the next available date for installation was and to discuss compensation. Again apology after apology was thrown my way, i was offered a further 2 months free line rental and was told the next available date for installation was 17th of October between 8 and 1. Again a refernce number was requested for this telephone call. The 11th of october came and unwilling for my partner to loose yet another day's wages i missed my lectures in order to wait for the engineer. At 08:13 an answerphone message was left on my partners phone from the engineer saying he would be at the property in 10 minutes. By 08:38 a 'sorry we missed you' card was posted through the door. Upon finding the card i went downstairs to the cafe below our flat where our landlords work to ask if they had seen him come. Our landlord informed us that a BT van had pulled up outside the flat, stopped for no longer than a couple of minutes and was gone. THE GUY DIDNT EVEN KNOCK ON THE DOOR. we live in a maisonette with the front room, where i was sitting, only a few yards from the front door, there is no way i missed his knock. I then put it yet another call to the call centre where i was told the engineer had arrived at the property and decided there was not appropriate access. ALL HE HAD TO DO WAS WALK FROM THE PAVEMENT TO THE FRONT DOOR!! Furious at BT's blatent disregard for good customer service and complete lack of 'getting the job done' i refused to speak to any more mindless and rude call centre operatives and requested to speak to another manager. Again actually being granted this opportunity was something i had to fight for, insted i was passed around from pillar to post, speaking to about 4 different call centre operatives before finally being handed of to the cancellation department, something which i had certainly not requested. Upon arriving at the cancelation department and informing them that infact i did not want to canel my installation, all i wanted was to speak to a manager, i was informed that unfortuantly the cancellation department didnt have the ability to put me back through to the call centre and i would have to call back. This would not have been such an issue, but anyone who has ever tried to ring a BT call centre will know that it takes at least half an hour of listening to various automated voices telling you to press 1 and waiting in lines for the next available operative before you actually get to speak to a 'human', but such is life, and so yet again i put in a call the the call centre. When i finally managed to get through to someone i immediately asked to speak to a manager and was referred to a woman called Kerry. Again Kerry was more than apologetic, agreeing with me that the way this situation had been handled was absolutely unacceptable, Kerry informed me that she would make the resolution of our issues a priority. Upon speaking to Kerry i unearthed that not only had the compensation we were offered not been added to our account it was also not BT'S policy to offer free line rental by way of monthly blocks, instead she would add credits to our account that meant we would recieve the eqivilent of 6 months free broadband, Promising to discuss further appropriate compensation after our internet had been installed. At this point we had already been offered two dongles, free BT FON (which up until then we had been paying for as some useless call centre operative told us we were not eligable to get it for free), two months free Infinity, and that she would look back at the recorded phone calls we had made previously in order to deal with disciplinary action in regards to the management of our situation. At this point i was satisfied with the steps BT had taken in order to compensate us for this ordeal, i then asked Kerry to confirm with me that the compensation we were now recieving was 6 months free broadband, to which she agreed. Kerry then told me she would be in contact with me within 24 hours to confirm a new installation date. Only one dongle arrived and 72 hours later Kerry had still not been in contact. During the last conversation i had with her, Kerry had given me her direct number and told me only to deal with her from now on, after waiting three days for her to get back to me, i rang the number with no success. The next day i recieved a phone call from Kerry, She informed me that not only was the 23rd of November the earliest date they could get an engineer out but we also had to make a second appointment to get our phone line installed. This was the first we had heard about multiple appontments. In order to keep us sweet kerry offered us more credit on our account which she confirmed would equate to a total of 7 months free broadband and also promised to put our names on a list which meant we may be able to get an earlier installation date. To her credit the next day Kerry rang back and told us she could get us an appointment for the phone line installation on the 23rd of october and an appointment for the infinity on the 5th of November. On the 22nd of October we recieved a text message stating that our installation date for the phone line installation on the 23rd had been cancelled and rearranged for the 30th of October. Finally on the 30th October our phone line was connected, when the engineer arrived at the property we discussed the fact that we had to make two seperate appointments for the phone line and infinity installation, the engineer informed me that he was a dual engineer and had the ability to set up both at the same time, he said he would check to see if he was able to do that at this point. After putting in a telephone call to whoever it was he informed us he could not carry out the task as his biss couldnt give him a job number. and on the 5th November our infinity was finally installed. On the 3rd of December i contacted Kerry in order to discuss the furhter compensation we were promised only to find out that BT were only willing to give us a total of three months free broadband as it was not their policy to offer anything more than that and no member of staff would have done so. I reminded Kerry that she herself had assured me we were recieving the equivilant to 7 months free, a fact of which she flatly denies. I asked kerry to listen back to the conversations we have had in order to jog her memory. Convenintly for her, her telephone calls are not recorded. Unwilling to accept this new offer of compensation, which was considerably less than we had first been promised, bearing in mind this telephone conversation was supposed to be in relation to FURTHER compensation, i pleaded my case to kerry reminding her of the absolute shamble this whole experience had turned into, she then told me she was going to listen back to all the telephone calls i had made up untill now in order to re-asses the compensation (something which she had categorically said she was going to do 2 months ago), this re assesment would also suggest that BT are able to offer in excess of three months free broadband. kerry then requested i give her all the refernece numbers i had collected up to this point. As soon as i began realing off the numbers to kerry she stopped me informing me that all BT refernce numbers have letters at the beginning of them, something which none of mine posessed. So not only had i been rudely spoken to, lied to, given false promises, messed about and left waiting for engineers who never turned up, i had also been given refernce numbers that meant diddly-squat! Kerry seemed very concerned by this matter and told me she would listen to the calls that she could and get to the bottom of this. She told me she would get back to me by 8:00 on Wednesday 5th December, its now 20:40 on the 6th December and after several phonecalls to her direct number, still not  a peep from Kerry. i realise this post may seem muddled and it is definately missing pieces of information, there has been so much to report its easy for a few things to slip your mind. However i am pretty sure Kerry is going to come back to me with some lame excuse as to why she cant help me. WHAT CAN I DO??? three months compensation seems like a pathetic attempt. I've spent the equivelnt of three months bills just in calling the **bleep** call centres. 

Answer 1

Hi and wow it's like reading what's happening to us at the moment. We placed our order on the 15th Oct with an engineers appt for the 5th Nov between 8am and 1pm and no he didn't turn up and no we weren't contacted. Since then we have had promises from the Indian call centre that they will definately call us with an update and one saying that our appt on the 5th was not definate - we have an email saying it was!! Other call centre members almost begged us to let them prove that they would phone back and of course they didn't. It took 6 weeks to finally be told that the reason for our delay was that because our house had been empty for a year BT had taken the line and used it for another house! Eventually I have been dealing with english call centres but no joy just texts and emails and phonecalls telling me that they will update me on a certain date. I have become so stressed about this my gallstone symptoms have come back and I have a constant stomach ache. I sent a slightly sarcastic email saying i had visions of a little man digging all the way to our house with a line - guess what? The reply said that they may have to dig to get a line in and that involved getting permission from the council. Why did they take the line in the first place? Our last but one update told us the line should have been in last Monday but guess what, we will now get another update on the 21st December so very little chance of using our new broadband/vision package over christmas is there. My husband found this forum and your complaint, so far we have been offered one months line rental in compensation - laughable and we have already paid for a year up front anyway. I wanted to reply to you because of the similarities especially with the Indian call centres and I actually have a suspicion that they were having a really good laugh at my expense whilst promising me that this time they really really would ring back and would i please give them this chance! I now intend to make a formal complaint to the Ombudsmanthrough the OFCOM site as our complaint has gone beyond 6 weeks and will actually be 9 weeks by the time we get our next update. I hope you are now enjoying your bt vision package and have received the appropriate compensation, as for us our fight goes on....................................