Letter To BT

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Mr Pig

New Member
Dear Mr Williams,

I have just spent a rather exasperating twenty minutes trying to help you but quite frankly, considering how little effort your company seems to put into customer care, I don't know why I'm bothering.

There is one of your telephone poles directly behind my back garden fence. The pole is clearly not physically sound, has been leaning for many years, and is more or less only held up by a support tether running to the ground behind the pole. I reported the leaning pole years ago and one of your engineers came out and replaced the next pole along! The benefit of the doubt would say that he made a simple mistake, despite the fact that it's fairly obvious which pole is leaning. The fact that the faulty pole has twelve lines coming off it to the two on the perfectly good pole he replaced might have influenced the choice but who am I to suggest he couldn't be bothered doing the right one.

So your pole is still there, but not for much longer I fear. A few weeks ago, as part of the ground works for the new Airdrie to Bathgate rail link, work men excavated the ground to either side of and behind the leaning pole. It looked to be left in a rather precarious position but I assumed they knew what they were doing. However, looking at the pole today I can see that it is making a bid for freedom and will soon crash onto the sheds at the bottom of our garden!

Thinking that maybe promptly reporting this to BT might be a good idea I tried, in vain, to call you. What should have been a simple, two-minute phone call rapidly turned into a fruitless and frustrating exercise. Every number that I called seemed to lead to the same automated choice machine which took forever to be no help whatsoever. None of the choices offered related to what I wanted to report, I was even asked if I wanted to complete a survey!!, and opting to wait for an advisor left me shuffled between a telephone ringing out and yet more recorded messages. You seem to be under the delusion that if you tell people that their calls are very important to you often enough we'll believe it despite the opposite being clearly true.

So I gave up and decided to mail you instead. Maybe you'll be able to communicate with the relevant people quickly enough to stop this pole crashing onto my properly, I don't know. However I do know who'll be paying for the damage if it does! There are two garden sheds directly in its flight path and numerous cars and vans under the birds nest of wires. Add the possibility of the pole or flying cables hitting people, including my children, and I think it would be best if you did manage to sort this out.

As a footnote, when I decided to complain I found that your web sites seem to be cleverly designed to make finding an address to complain to as tricky as possible. A nice try but, on top of the time I've already wasted tonight, one which has only made me decide to complain to your regulatory body instead. I appreciate that none of this is likely to make a blind bit of difference to a company who still seem to think they have a monopoly but you don't. We have real choices these days and rubbish customer relations will result in one thing. Less customers.

Thank you for your time,
Regards,
********
 

gaz

Cycle Camera TV
Location
South Croydon
A letter gets you further than a phone call, i have found that out the long way more often than not.
 

vernon

Harder than Ronnie Pickering
Location
Meanwood, Leeds
Mr Pig said:
Is 'less' grammatically incorrect? Yeah, I guess that technically it is. Bit picky though eh? ;0)

He was correct in being picky about your incorrect use of 'less customers' rather than 'fewer customers'.

You don't want to be responsible for contributing to the incremental deterioration in standards of English grammar do you?
 

Rhythm Thief

Legendary Member
Location
Ross on Wye
Chris Sirrus said:
Not really, his meaning is clear.

maybe, but it's enough to make a difference if it lands on the desk of someone like me. Besides, it's as easy to get right as wrong.

Was anyone else strangely entertained reading that letter?

Indeed. Let's hope it gets some results.
 

Rezillo

TwoSheds
Location
Suffolk
With reference to the original post, it's just as difficult getting a compliment to BT. A couple of years ago, some builders cut our line a few hundred yards away while offloading materials. I reported this on leaving for work and on my return, the line had been fixed and a cheery message left on my answerphone by the engineer.

I thought this was pretty good service and wanted a message passed on to the engineers to let them know this was appreciated. Firstly, no way via a phone itself. The only human being I got through to hadn't a clue how to pass this kind of message on. Not put off, I tried BT's website. Not much luck either but I eventually found a customer feedback link, filled in the details and without much optimism, pressed the submission button.

Three weeks later I got an email apologising for the "delay in dealing with my complaint". It had a contact number so I rang it. The subsequent conversation was almost surreal.

After giving the call centre droid my reference, I received a further apology for the delay in dealing with my complaint before I could get another word in. Pause. "You haven't actually read my message, have you?" "Er, what do you mean?" "I submitted a compliment for good service, not a complaint - god knows why because ever since I tried to do this, BT's service for handling it has been rubbish. How do I complain about that?"

The rest of the conversation was spent explaining what was clearly a freakish event, or at least something that wasn't covered by the call centre scripts. It also became painfully apparent that the chance of any message actually reaching an engineer in the field was close to zero so I gave up.

John
 

Crankarm

Guru
Location
Nr Cambridge
Nice letter. Not a tad of sarcasm anywhere :tongue:.

Did you send it to the Chief Executive c/o the registered BT business address?

I did when I complained. It appears from the prompt and satisfactory way my complaint was dealt with there is a special inner sanctum complaints team tasked with dealing with those addressed to the Chief Exec which suggest legal action is imminent :thumbsup:.


With more strong winds forecast for mid week maybe you should get down to Wickes or Homebase to choose a couple of new sheds and check out your LBS as your Cervelo and Pinarello will be smashed into millions of tiny pieces if the pole takes a final dive for your sheds. Then sue BT to recover your monies :thumbsup:.
 
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