BT just get it wrong

Well happy new year to my occasional  readers.

I have promised to give BT some bad publicity because of a catalogue of errors they have made in selling me a package for my new home including a new landline, wi-fi and BT Sport.

When I set up the new line I was told by a sales assistant that a special package for international calls called International Freedom was available for less than £7 a month which would give me 300 minutes of call time per month to international destinations.

I questioned at the time whether this would include Ghana. The sales assistant confirmed yes. I said including mobiles, and he said yes. This was important as there is only a limited area of Accra (where the old colonial buildings are) which has landlines. Everyone else uses mobiles.

So a month later my first bill shows up with over £80 of calls to Ghana. I go on line to complain and after a recorded exchange with an assistant I bargain a refund of £40 plus the withdrawal of the original cost of the International Freedom package.

I end the exchange at this point and discover that if you have a complaint against BT (or any other telecom operator) you should write to ask for a "deadlock" letter. I did this.

In response to my letter I get a call from a friendly woman from BT who wants to talk about my complaint. It appears through this call that the first assistant who sold me the package is no longer employed by BT and, would you believe it, the call that I made was NOT recorded for training purposes.  How convenient. We also discover that although the transcript of my online complaint exchange indicates I was to get £40 taken off my bill, this was not done either.

I am annoyed. I ask for the entire cost of our calls to Ghana to be wiped. My wife has been using the services of Lycamobile for years which still offers better value than BT's standard International Friends and Family rates. We only changed on the promise of something cheaper still from BT.

I am told that they can only offer me £50 in reductions. I said I would accept this as an initial offer but still wanted the deadlock letter. This is when it gets really silly. I am told the offer of any compensation is withdrawn entirely if I persist in having a deadlock letter.

BT are not doing themselves any favours by treating their customers in this way. To withdraw an unconditional offer made in writing (I still have the transcript) beggars belief.

So we will proceed to the next stage of the complaints process.

To be continued...