BT internet problems

When you pay for business services, you expect a certain level of professionalism, respect, and competence from your business service provider. In my experience so far, BT business broadband services completely fail on every count.

I mentioned before that I was having problems with BT Business Broadband services - after they set up an incorrect billing account they suspended my access to the internet.

After over 3 hours of telephone calls, the service was eventually resumed by a technician.

That should have been the end of it - billing should have been corrected, BT should have said sorry, and everything should have been updated fine.

Or so you’d think.

Instead, what BT Business Broadband services have done over the past 7 days is inexplicably exaggerate the billing to amount more than 3x the annual cost of the service.

And then a couple of days later, late on Friday night, they cancelled the account without warning or explanation.

The following morning, technical services at first claimed that it was a modem problem and advised me to uninstall/re-install my modem. After doing that, I was then told that the account was not simply suspended but cancelled entirely, and that it will take around 7-10 days to process a new order.

I don’t think I have expletives enough to describe my view of BT’s negligance and incompetance in the matter.

Because the disconnection happened on a Friday night, any department with claimed authority to deal with the issue - such as credit control and their complaints dept, are closed. In fact, even the complaints dept will not guarrantee to get back to business customers immediately - just within 5 working days.

My only options have been to find a mobile broadband connection - such as via T-mobile wireless, or a BT OpenZone. However, the BT Open Zone helpline is closed on a Saturday, and T-Mobile claimed that there were no T-Mobile wireless areas in Stirlingshire, but that they’re own records were hopelessly out of date anyway.

The only other option was to book into a hotel with an internet connection - but they were all booked up on Saturday, so I’ve only just been able to get online.

I’m very lucky that my business in majority runs on monthly subscriptions, and my servers already have paid-for managed services - but even still, there is a considerable potential for loss of income, loss of important tax documents from bounced e-mails, not to mention significant costs of now having to stay in a hotel for up to 10 days just to access the internet.

First priorities on Monday:

1/ Ensure I talk to one of the managers at the BT Order Dept to see if there is a cat in hell’s chance of getting the previous account re-instated without a 10-day re-connection period.

2/ Sign up with Pipex or NDO for business broadband options, to get away from BT’s utter incompetance.

3/ Make an appointment with a solicitor about this entire ludicrous situation, and see how they advise I deal with BT for my losses and costs.

Lesson: An office outside of home would provide redundancy against such a situation, and will likely be essential once I start doing ecommerce sites.