Switching phone company.

M

moehat

Senior Jockey
Joined
Nov 22, 2008
Messages
3,155
Have changed my line rental from BT to TalkTalk, and now have no incoming calls. They blame BT and BT blame them. Wanted to change line rental and broadband to BT but AOL wouldn't give me a mac code. AOL and TalkTalk are now one and the same so they didn't need a mac code. Has anyone else had a problem? Dido Harding is Chief Executive of TalkTalk so I thought I was in safe hands [but apparently not]. Most fed up about it! [no sound on the computer either; not sure if that's a different problem..can't listen to William Hill Radio]
 
Talktalk is one of the worst telecom companies, even worse than BT. I went 3 months unable to make outgoing calls before abandoning them. I ended up reporting them to Oftel. They really are terrible. But so are BT, and I gave up on AOL about 15 years ago so I'm nots urprised if they're now merged with talktalk.

I also tought it was illegal for a telecom company to refuse to give you a mac code.
 
In future, use these guys: http://www.uswitch.com/

They do everything for you and work on a commission from the companies I believe. Any **** ups, they deal with them.

British Gas and N Power screwed my gas up properly and they managed to fix it seemlessly and move me over to EDF in a few weeks. They do the same with phone/broadband.
 
I seem to remember using uswitch or something similar, but hit a problem with the mac code. Problem is that my broadband is registered in my ex's name, even though I've been paying the bill for 10 years. I arranged to switch broadband to BT, but BT needed a mac code. AOL wouldn't give me a mac code, they said they had to speak to my ex. It seemed more straightforward to switch phone and broadband to TalkTalk; being the same company as AOL they didn't want a mac code. I've been paying way over the odds for ages for my phone and broadband, but kept putting off changing because I thought something bad would happen. At least I've got the internet almost working [sans sound]and I can phone out so it could be worse....I suppose. Miss Harding is going to get one stinky letter from me, though!
 
I ordered my new phone/broadband in July - mid-October and I'm still waiting for the modem to be delivered from Orange (after various muck ups from BT with regards the line).

Have a bitch about them on Twitter Moe - did that with BT and they sent an engineer round every day for a week to get the issues fixed.

Martin
 
Believe me, we get really angry about things like this. Will start off with the Independent and/or Observer, then letter writing to the Chief Executive Officer [they always have to reply to a letter even if it takes a long time]. I'm beginning to suspect that the fault actually is with BT, though. I'll give them a few more days. Still, I suppose it's still better than the days when I had to queue outside a phone box for half an hour.
 
Irish Stamp said:
Have a bitch about them on Twitter Moe - did that with BT and they sent an engineer round every day for a week to get the issues fixed.
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They told me they were doing that when my phone was out for a fortnight. Unfortunately I drove past the part where they were supposed to be working (including one call which came just as I was driving past the fault - "they're there right now Mr Simpson") and could tell that they were doing nothing of the sort. They were jsut saying that to mollify me.

BT are a shower of utter c**ts. If it wasn't for the fact that Talk Talk are just as bad if not worse and that I'd still be reliant on BT for my line I would get rid of them.

We need more competition in this market. A large part of their failure to provide decent customer service lies with their Fault Contractor (Kelly Communications via Open Reach). Another part is the complete lack of service which is received from their offshore call centres.

It would cost them approximately £125m extra in actual costs to house those call centres in the UK with proper training and support.
A far better level of customer service in their faults provisioning could be achieved simply by better management - but lets say you need to pop in an extra £75m to make it work.

A total of £200m to resolve their horrendous customer service.

BT made a profit last year of £2.4bn.

C*NTS!!!
 
moehat said:
Have changed my line rental from BT to TalkTalk, and now have no incoming calls. They blame BT and BT blame them.
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PS I'd be blaming TalkTalk for that. There is a system whereby companies transfer numbers (I take it you kept your number?) between each other on the day. If anything has gone wrong with that, at either end, it is the responsibility of the company you are paying to provide you with service to resolve the issue. It's up to them to chase BT to resolve it if its at that end.
 
I agree entirely with your description of BT, simmo.

I would relay my experiences with them but it makes me so angry that I fear for the safety of our cats!
 
Blimey ..i thought virgin were bad...but in fairness nothng like this

overseas call centres (cue Guardian readers wanting to shout racist) are awful

virgin used to have theirs in liverpool and scotland and the help was first class. Now its god knows where and might as well talk to a fcking bollard sometimes

Savvy buniesses are chucking the overseas call centre crap (and advertising the fact) and surely reaping benefits. the whole stupid move was driven by autistic accountants who wouldnt recognise customer service if it sat on their face
 
When you sign up with them you get nice Geordie lads and lasses, but the minute they've got your direct debit it's off to India. I can't be hard on those people; they're just doing a job and it's not their fault I can't understand then [and vice versa]. Why have we got a country that treats it's customers like s**t?
 
moehat said:
they're just doing a job and it's not their fault I can't understand then
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Not understanding I can forgive. Complete failure to do anything except that on the script in front of them I can't. These people are 95% graduates (in fact - a company I used to work for had a call centre in Bombay go on strike because they started to employ non-graduates - they eventually had to be segregated). They are not stupid by any stretch, they just refuse to to do anything that isn't in the script - and that goes for their backroom staff as well.

In short, it IS their fault. They have the wherewithal to be so much - they just choose not to.

They also, perhaps surprisingly, don't give a toss about the job. Most of the call centres are in industrial estates of call centres - they walk out of one and into another.
 
moehat said:
Will start off with the Independent and/or Observer, then letter writing to the Chief Executive Officer [they always have to reply to a letter even if it takes a long time].
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Do they?

When I had a major issue with BT six or seven years ago, I ended up (after months of trying to deal with various levels of BT management) writing to Sir Christopher Bland, then Chairman of BT. I didn't even get an acknowledgment.

That was when I gave up and moved on... to talktalk, who turned out to be just as bad.
 
Agree with simmo

If they cant understand then they are wrong for the job...simple as that

Firms should be forced to declare the location of crap call centres in their advertising. That would be good.
 
Desert Orchid said:
When I had a major issue with BT six or seven years ago, I ended up (after months of trying to deal with various levels of BT management) writing to Sir Christopher Bland, then Chairman of BT. I didn't even get an acknowledgment.
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to be fair to them - I'd guess the letter got lost somewhere - they have a specific dept set up to deal with executive level complaints. Which is probably a bad sign in itself. email address for that dept is below. :)

elc@bt.com
 
simmo said:
to be fair to them - I'd guess the letter got lost somewhere - they have a specific dept set up to deal with executive level complaints. Which is probably a bad sign in itself. email address for that dept is below. :)

elc@bt.com
Click to expand...

If I remember correctly, I'd got to that level (still have the guy's email address in my contact list!) and all I got was platitudes and no action, so felt obliged to take it further.
 
I had a total nightmare with Talk Talk at one stage.

I think I went on the Digital Spy forum, or something similar and got not one but two engineers round the following day.

It turned out one of the members was a manager with the firm.

Only other suggestion is try there own forum to see if you get a response.
 
A lot of the problem stems from the fact that BT trading as OpenWorld have a monopoly on the phone lines. Bascially, OpenWorld have 99% of the lines (other than the fibreoptics installed by a company ie Virgin independently).

So it doenst matter really who you pay your bills to - at the end of the day if there is a fault you have to wait for OpenWorld to deal with it.

My internet went down for a week last year and it ended up with an Openworld engineer coming out and faffing around for a couple of hours and still nothing. Turns out it was a fault at the exchange which hadnt been noticed - despite a mass of posts on the forum from people in the area!

BTW I am with Sky and they are generally very good at sorting things out.
 
Phoned myself on my mobile tonight and nearly died of shock when my phone actually rang! Maybe it was BT's fault all along. Someone from the call centre has phoned me twice today as well. Thing is, would it have taken a week anyway; was it actually BT's fault and would it have got fixed if I hadn't kept complaining. Still no sound on the internet though, but that might be something I've done wrong. Pity really, cause I was spoiling for a fight. Will go and kick the dog instead.
 
I've been with BT since March and found them to be excellent at home. At work, we ditched them as they were a total farce though.

Regarding foreign call centres, it totally depends on the training. Often, the training in Indian call centres is appalling and done on the cheap by management and hence the poor levels of service. I've had some good experiences with some Indian call centres and some appalling experiences with some British call centres (Southern Water winning this one). It's not the fault of the operators in India but the fault of the company for trying to offer customer service on the cheap. Naturally, non-Native English speakers will require more training and thus more investment than native speakers but most firms seem to forget this.
 
Serves me right. Having complained about TalkTalk not phoning me back Michelle [who is now a saint in my eyes] phoned me early this morning on my mobile to tell me my phone was now working, thus waking me up on my only lie in day of the week. I shall mention her in despatches. Think it was BT not releasing the line so Dido wil not be getting the stinky letter from me that I was composing. Still no sound from the computer; hadn't realised how important WHill Radio was in my life. Think I've turned something off by mistake.
 
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