Where to start...
On Thursday we decided to contact BT about renewing our Broadband Contract for another year and enabling BT Sport on our Sky box. Sky had spontaneously offered a great deal to switch to their BB but we were happy with BT after having Option 3 and Anytime Broadband Talk calls for some years.
I did explain the reason why we had the package we did to the person on renewals. I am a carer for my mother who after a major stroke is paralysed and bedbound and has very limited communication. We need daily contact with hospitals, carers etc (hence paying for a 24/7 call package).
I explained we had just one phone. Not a landline phone. A BT 750 using Broadband anytime talk catering to her needs.
We were given a renewal figure, asked if we wanted to save money by paying line rental in advance - so I paid £141 for this purpose.
The lady tried to set up BT Sports using our Sky card number without success but said there was a procedure form to send to Sky to resolve this.
An hour afterwards I tried to use our BT 750 and got a message saying 'You cannot make or receive calls on this phone'. I rebooted our old hub, twice, without success then called BT. I had to use my mobile and used up all my credit. As a carer it is five days before I can leave the house to get more as carers give me 2 hours per week when they take over so I can go to shops etc.
In desperation as to what to do I tried pressing 5 (as you could do to get a landline call) - though, as I had told the person renewing us, we never used our landline as we paid for a 24/7 anytime call package on broadband so why would we.
This got a signal and I gambled on calling BT this way (hoping an 0800 number to be free even on the landline - as it was NOT free on my mobile).
It took almost 3 hours and countless holds being passed throgh about 8 different people around the world but nobody could fully resolve what had happened.
I was told that I should have had a letter about Broadband Talk ending (I had not heard of this or got a letter) and that renewals were now adapted to the same package on the landline. This meant we lost the broadband phone number alloted to us when we joined BT broadband from that moment of our renewal. This loss was never explained during renewal as it obviously creates massive problems for us. ALL our medical support (lots of it) have that broadband number and have used it for years - not the landline number we now discovered that we had to use for everything instead. I was told just to let everyone know as they would be unable to get hold of us now otherwise!
Worse still, whilst we had paid for Anytime broadband talk from the off years ago (our last bill was £142 for 3 months so not on a cheap deal) we now had a SEVEN DAY gap before they moved this to our landline. Why? Nobody had a clue.
So we were supposed to either leave my mum in danger by not having any way for medical teams to contact us for a week or pay for all these calls to notify them of the change of number before our 'renewal' kicked in a week late.
I kept asking why they did not just keep the Anytime Broadband Talk going for 7 days until the switch to landline (after all we were paying constantly for years and just renewing not a new customer) or apply the switch to Anytime on landline immediately. Nobody knew. Nobody could fix it.
One very fine chap in cancellations (after 3 hours we had had enough and wanted to quit BT for Sky) said he would try to fix it overnight and was very helpful. But his attempts to cancel and rebook simpy made things worse. I had to pay the £141 line rental a second time and after trying to get our Broadband Anytime number/calls back immediately (no) or our Anytime Calls on landline immediately (no again) we ended up with it being pushed back a further day to 8 days without a call package by this method!
Our BT 750 receives no incoming calls (even from those calling our 'new' number) and we can only call out from it by pressing 5 and (we assume) paying for every call to notify essential medical staff.
I guess we also now need to buy a new phone which is not fair on us as all we wanted to do was renew our broadband with BT!
Over two days on nothing has changed, despite more calls. It was suggested we pay for the calls and if charged argue it out on our next bill in October. As I had to give up my job to look after my mum 24/7 some years ago I regard all of this pretty horrific treatment by BT. We are not exactly rich.
To cap it all the order confirmation e mail has never arrived. Another 30 minute call via 3 people brought a promise it would be with us within 4 hours. That was yesterday afternoon. It hasn't.
Oh, and we now have a bill today that will come out of my bank by direct debit soon. This charges us both for landline - as we have not paid this, it says (despite paying TWICE the £141 advance savings rate) - and charges for the coming 7 days for our Broadband Anytime Talk package. The one they took away immediately from us leaving our phone useless!
You could not make it up
And it also charges us in advance for 6 weeks for our Anytime 'Evening and Weekend' calls on landline into August despite we having taken out an ANYTIME 24/7 call package for all the reasons I have explained to about 10 BT personnel all across planet Earth in the past 2 -3 days.
I am astounded that such chaos can ensue over what to me seems a simple request - to just renew the BT broadband and calls package that we have had for years for another 12 months.
As you can imagine I will take a huge amount of persuasion to ever trust BT again.
Can anyone help, please?