Get screwed over have a chat with your Telecom provider

The most frustrating thing at this very minute is my blooming slow broadband. I want to kick the hub, scream at the ISP provider, throw the phone out with the rubbish. Then pull up the phone line as well wrap it up.  For you should not have to pay £16.99 to get  a phone line in order to get broadband.  The standing charge is exorbitant for something which is hardly used, ISP providers who generally are also telecom providers are milking the system.  They are monopolising access to broadband by making it a necessary condition households must have a phone line. Then in order to ramp up their profits they get a continuous stream of cash by ensuring the standing charges remain relatively high.  When the reality is, phone lines have been laid and upgraded and have paid for themselves many times over.

Probably the biggest culprit to this is British Telecom, the once nationally owned telecom provider is now so wealthy it is a constant revenues cash cow.  Speaking to BT has also been made an ordeal.  Call centres for repairs are based in third world countries where staffing costs are negligible andso is their understanding of English.  They just don't get what you say.  Especially when it is necessary to speak slowly and describe faults to them, this must be done repeatedly.  So phoning up because of a fault is a trial in itself. It gets to the point where you just cope with the fault, poor phone reception, poor broadband until it is critical and there is no choice in the matter.  Because you know this will take weeks to sort out and it will take hours of your own time.  Let alone money lost from taking time off work to be in the house for the phone engineers.  The strive for profits has made BT's quality of service actually non existent.  What BT does have is a great selling department where all the customer services staff are indigenous English speakers and based in the UK. Here they fully understand any request made are bend over backward to be helpful. It is important to have a good first point of call service for those who are in the switching process.  However, once they are hooked and have signed the contract it's all downhill.  The contract I signed up to with BT was set to last 18 months and it is now at the point of being completed and like an elector at the general election I have real power to kick them out and to shop around.

Another instance of crap service provision this week has been the screwed up account of a man trying to cancel his Sky package online.  Gavin Hackwood from Newport, spent 96 minutes in a Sky online chat trying to cancel his Sky bundle.  You might of thought it would of been easier, and in theory doing something like cancelling a subscription to any service should only be a matter of giving a short period of notice especially where the contract has already been broken. At one point Mr Hackwood stated to the customer service rep called Rachel:

“I have been on this chat session for an hour and we are no further forward. I have made you aware I wish to cancel which is all I am obliged to do under the terms and conditions of the contract with Sky… please cancel the account and stop wasting my time."

In reply she writes:

 “I am not doing this to annoy you. I made it very clear that I would need to go through this before I could make any changes to your account.” 

Sky and certainly this individual called Rachel who as far as we know is likely not to be Rachel but someone using this as a pseudonym for their real name. Unfortunately Mr Hackwood could not cancel his subscription until the story became a national news item.  What an utter and complete shame and embarrassment this should be for Sky who in reality should of offered a free service for a year and an unequivocal cancellation of the service with no hassle. This is certainly one provider I will not swap over to, as it would be going from the frying pan into the fire.

Before changing to BT my provider was ntl and before BT broadband it was TalkTalk who provided internet.  However, with TT the provider could only give a 2 meg line.  Time and again I asked them about upgrading, and repeatedly they said it was not available in my area.  However, it might be at some future date. The reality is TT were again stringing me along, I have never seen TT upgrading hardwiring. So it became a simple choice to convert to BT because in my mind it is BT who own the underground network of wires and fibres.  I had waited on TT to do something for about four or five years at the time.  Then moving over to BT was not as simple as I would of thought, even after getting a MAC code, which I had to do a second time.  It probably took about 4 months in all. Again this is unacceptable.  TT could not provide a service at the speed I wanted, I was also paying what I thought was an exorbitant rate for poor quality internet speed.  They must of been pretty sad when I left.  The thing was, their correspondence also stated when a customer leaves they should not cancel the direct debit. It will happen automatically and then I would get charged at the pro rata daily rate it was they provided internet.  However, TT took out the normal full month direct debit charge from my bank account.  They then sent me a credit bill and advised I contact customer services in order to get a refund.  However, this seems ridiculous because they already have my bank details and they should of automatically refunded any credit directly to the bank account.  I have vowed never to use TT again, but at the same time I now feel I don't want to ever use BT.

What I need to find is a small ISP provider which values every customer and can't do bend over backwards far enough for both loyalty and custom.  The question is are there any such companies?