Wednesday 14 November 2012

How to Beat BT's Support Nightmare

Its taken 4 weeks to get a customer's broadband line raised from 2Mbps to 8Mbps.  They're in the middle of nowhere - so its MaxADSL only (upto 8Mbps) - so BT is their ISP and they provide all the hardware, so methinks this will be a simple 5minute support call.  Be aware that I'm not familiar with BT's ways.  Suffice to say I hope I don't have to go through this again.

4 weeks of numerous hours on the phone to India, Glasgow and who-knows where else. It was a challenge to start with but the pain soon followed.  Here's my guide to getting your BT Broadband line sorted out in a pain free way.

A. Do a Line Test
Perform your own line test as follows.
1. goto
http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/

2. Click the Yes round radio button
Select the top-left blue "ADSL and Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) Diagnostics" box.

3. Enter your line's phone number, click go and then ok.
The results in the grey box are what BT will be interested in.  Make a copy of these.

B. Contacting Support

1. When normal support routes fail, for they almost certainly will, register at the BT Care Community Forums.
http://community.bt.com/


2. Post your problem at
http://community.bt.com/t5/BB-Speed-Connection-Issues/bd-p/BBinHome
Include the line test results you copied earlier.

EDIT: the link in step 3. below is now not used. The message at it states "The moderators no longer use this contact link so please logon to the forum http://community.bt.com for further help"
3. Immediately raise a call with BTCare Digital Support.  These are the guys who know what they're doing. Strange thing is they don't have a telephone number.  Very strange but true.
This is the contact link you must use:-
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4951
You'll need to refer to the post that you made in the forum above.  You'll get an incident number.

4. You should get an email from BTCare within 24hours.  They will fix your problem 99% gauranteed.

5. If BTCare goes quiet - very unusual - but it happened to me - the very last resort  is ....Twitter.
Yes, good old Twitter to the rescue.
Follow @BTCare.  Tell them you have a problem and can they follow you so you can post DirectMessage  to them -> The incident number, phone number and contact person.  They will then prod the engineer and support WILL resume.

Easy.