PANTS, PANTS, PANTS & MORE PANTS! (btopenworld.co.uk)

Member Name: Parsley

Product:	btopenworld.co.uk
Date:	17/11/01 (295 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Free call access when you can get online

Disadvantages: Where do I start? Extreme difficulties connecting at peak hours

I have been a customer of BT for quite a number of years and up until 10 weeks ago I would have been singing their praises. I was really happy with the service and I had no problems connecting. I got on first time, every time and I would have given the service 5 stars - even though I did get disconnected from the service every few hours, I only found it a minor inconvenience. At this time I was a very happy, satisfied customer. For £14.99 a month I got free call access 24/7 and I felt that I had a very good deal.

So what happened?

Well about 10 weeks ago there was a major shake up of the service.
Like many people I am a heavy Internet user and benefited greatly from the ?Anytime? service. Anytime I took to mean literally anytime and between me, my husband & a few visiting friends, we clocked up many hours between us.
However, BT decided to change the Internet access number for anyone using the Internet more than a certain number of hours (not sure how many to be precise ? they wouldn?t tell me!) So all the light users were given one number and all the heavy users including myself ended up on another number. The net result was total chaos and complete inability to access the service. Why no-one envisage that this would cause problems is beyond me! I guess that all the light users were very happy and continued to get a good service ? while all the Internet junkies like me got thoroughly upset because they couldn?t get online.

The first warning we got was when BT announced ?Good news? for all its customers and an ?improved service?, then I was told that in ?X? number of days my call access number was expiring and I had to use the new number which I duly complied with.
Well I tried and I tried and I tried to simply log in and access the web to no avail. I spent many very stressed evenings trying for hours to log on but I got nowhere. The computer is in the middle of the living room so while I was doing the housework or looking afte
r my children, I kept retrying to log on. The record length of time my husband & I spent was 3.5hrs trying to access the web with no result. I was absolutely disgusted by the service and it went on night after night with me being completely unable to log on, read my e-mails or get a fix on dooyoo. I was going completely spare.

In desperation, I repeatedly telephoned BT Internet services and asked for help and an explanation for what had happened but got no plausible explanation and no solution to the problem. What was worse was that they refused to give me an alternative number so that I could have access to the Internet and gave me a ?helpline? number. They also refused to let me have my old number back.
Well, I thought that the idea of a helpline was to be of some use and to offer some help, but no, not in BT?s case. This was a complete rip off, they gave you a number to phone whereby you had to hang on the line for about 20 minutes before you got to speak to someone who told you that they couldn?t do anything or help you! It was a complete exercise in futility phoning it. Unfortunately, I fell for it & my telephone bill will soon testify to the damage. They told me that they were working on it and that the problem would be solved in a couple of days, but this was untrue as the problem went on for weeks.

Eventually after a few weeks, I did find that I could get on during the daytime, but this was very inconvenient. To me BT ?Anytime? service should mean just that, but I was completely unable to get online for more than a few minutes at a time. It was so infuriating to try 20 times to get in and on the rare occasion that I could get in ? I was thrown out in about a minute. I don?t know what was more frustrating not get in at all or thinking I was online and getting thrown straight out again!

I rely very heavily on the Internet, apart from dooyoo, I buy & sell on ebay, I use ASDA online to get my groceries delivered, I send free SMS t
o friends, I use the MSN messenger to chat to my friends, I keep in touch with family by e-mail, I shop at halfpriceorless.com and that is just for starters!
As you can see I was more than slightly inconvenienced by being offline ? I found that I had to order my shopping at ridiculous hours of the night because it was the only time I could get online!

To grudgingly give BT its due after 4-5 weeks of an abysmal ?service? (I am loath to use the word ?service? because I didn?t get one!) things have picked up. I can now get online during the evenings but I find that during peak times it is very hard to connect and sometimes I get thrown out and cannot reconnect for half an hour to an hour which is highly inconvenient. The service I now get is a very poor shadow of its former self.

Why didn?t I leave? Well I wish that I could have done, but due to the very large number of contacts who have our e-mail address including many job agencies, family & friends, it would be more hassle than its worth to change it. Unfortunately I am stuck with them. I am still one extremely upset customer. I?m disgusted with the complete fiasco of the number change and fed up with the difficulties using the service ? I certainly would NOT recommend them!

PS - Please could you rate this opinion if you enjoyed reading it as loads of people have read it without rating & I need all the 3p's I can get LOL!!!!!!!!!!!

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