Cut off, with no chance of a reprieve (btopenworld.co.uk)

Member Name: psipple

Product:	btopenworld.co.uk
Date:	02/07/02 (197 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Stable

Disadvantages: Poor customer service, Tough disconnection policy

BTopenworld has suffered rather a lot of bad press of late, including a feature on BBC Watchdog about their below-par billing and technical support. As I'd been with BTO for some time as a happy customer, I didn't take these complaints too seriously. I had been very pleased with the speed of connection, services offered (including webmail and SMS email alerts) in the past, and expected to be with them for some time, even after they increased their fees to £15.99 a month and withdrew the free SMS alert service.

This however changed at the end of April 2002, when BTopenworld decided to cut me off for reported over-use of their Anytime account (evidentally this should be called BT Someofthetime). You are not permitted to connect when you're not in front of your machine, "unattended use", they call it. And if you do it more than once, they pull your account, and keep the money.

Whilst I accept that I may have breached their conditions, this is most likely due to the way my PC is set up - to dial and collect emails at fixed intervals.

The disconnection policy appears to be "guilty unless you can prove yourself innocent", and there's a charge of £10 to pay if you want BT to give you information about the alleged breaches.

For the last six weeks, I've been trying to get BTopenworld to put together a proper response, or let me know the escalation process. There appears to be none, and the chance of appealing is nil.

After a little more badgering, I got a reply quoting "...we will not reply to any further correspondence", which seems to demonstrate their contempt for their customers.

Apologies for adding a link to my own site, but I've uploaded details of names, addresses, phone numbers and links to sites that may be of use to anyone who's been unfairly treated, or disconnected from BTopenworld. The page is at:

www.consumerdeals.co.uk/btopenworldcease.htm
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Before signing up to BTopenworld, my advice is to read the terms and conditions. BTO are far more strict than other ISPs, and they are very unresponsive to customer queries and complaints.

Summary: