Saturday, August 04, 2007

Fuming

I've just spent the last hour on the phone to BT and I'm red with rage.

This morning I received re-directed mail from BT containing a final demand for £84.39 but for the phone in our old flat. Which is strange considering we moved out in April and had received a final statement for the account and a refund of £16 for overpayment.

So I rang BT and spoke to a nice Mancunian woman who said they had obviously made a mistake and not turned the line off, but she needed to transfer me to someone else as it wasn't her department.

I was transferred to Fazila who said that not only had I not requested the line to be turned off but it was only installed on 10 April. Why would I have a line installed in a flat I was moving out off and that had a line in for the 3 years we'd been living there?

She said 'Well you did, it says so on my system'.

I explained again that I had requested it to be turned off and that I used to pay the bill by Direct Debit so obviously that had stopped otherwise there wouldn't have been a bill.

She countered with 'But there are calls on there. You are still using the phone'.

I, less than patiently, explained again that I haven't been living there since April, now have a new phone line with BT at my new address and that obviously the calls were being made by the new tenants. I asked to speak to her manager.

Five minutes later, Fezila is back and said 'We've decided to give the benefit of the doubt and won't be charging you the £10'.

I said 'What do you mean give me the benefit of the doubt? Its your mistake. Your colleague admitted it was your mistake. And its £84.39 , not £10' I asked once more to speak to her manager - she said I couldn't because she had already spoken to them on my behalf.

I said I was unhappy with this and could I take her name. 'Fezila' she said. Can I have your full name please I said. 'We only have first names' she said!

I then put through to the complaints department where I complained about having wasted so much time, Fezila making me feel like I was trying to defraud BT. Apparently all charges will now be dropped, they've apologised for the mistake and my feedback about Fezila's manner has been noted.

I now have a headache.

4 comments:

Roses said...

Sweetheart, sit down, I'll go get you a glass of wine. You deserve it.

Don't you just love big business? Just makes you feel so special. Hope she loses her several tick boxes on her HR record.

SandDancer said...

Thanks for the wine!

If I'd had any doubts about whether I had asked for the line to be turned off, I wouldn't have been so bad, but the fact that I had a final statement and refund from them is what made it was frustrating.

Anonymous said...

I'm not surprised you are frustrated - I'd be fuming too - all these big corporations that deliver our utilities are just crap and they always seem to think they are right even when you know they are in the wrong and can prove it.

We only made progress on a 5 month intermittent fault on our cable when I emailed the chief executive and quoted him from a recent interview about customer service and then demonstrated how his company was letting me down - we had our own personal engineer within 48 hours!

SandDancer said...

Good for you for taking it right to the top!

We had trouble with our internet/television provider too - it took 3 engineers to final get it sorted out - each one seemed to be better than the last until it was finally sorted.