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The following is a totally daft tale but sadly, true and concerns BT the so called telecommunications company who have designed a system to ensure that as a customer, you will never ever be allowed to ‘disturb a manager’ with a question or a complaint

On my return from living and working in the States I rented a flat in Bedfont, near Heathrow Airport and at the time BT launched ‘broadband’ which was technically fine except that they wanted you to pay for it monthly by Credit Card for some bizarre reason.

Trying to Talk to BT Management

Early 2002 I had it installed but I persisted in trying to find out just why the idiotic payment method existed, credit cards are not meant for this, bank accounts and direct debits are. Over 8 months and try as I might, I couldn’t get hold of anyone in BT Management to answer my question but whilst this was frustrating, worse was to come.

After about 8 months I had to phone the BT Accounts Department with a query and was told that “I should be paying by Direct Debit anyway !” After my experiences with BT at Bedfont, I definitely am not a fan and exactly why, I was reminded of it all again the other day.

Following My Mother’s Death

My Mother died last week so now we are going through the process of settling her estate and Probate.

Having a land line at home, whilst essential for a broadband connection, in terms of the cost of it, is highly questionable, as we spend more on rental than calls. However the other day a bill arrived that said that we owed them about £80, “But not to worry, we will increase your Direct Debit to £38 a month from 17th February…” That would be a miracle because my Mother’s Account that BT draws from, will be closed by then !

The only reason that my Mother paid it was because she was used to doing so, I pay for the broadband plus between my Mobile, VoIP phone and Skype, I don’t use the land line for outgoing calls.

To cut a long story short, after some heated exchanges with an Indian BT Call Centre (why have a call centre in India ?), it would appear that there is no automatic provision to deal with a customer dying… shit it must happen thousands of time a day ! I don’t want to lose my Internet and mail so how to deal with the wooden tops ?

Inspiration !

Thinking about it, I pay Plusnet (my ISP),£22 a month and BT will want £38 a month for ‘Phone Service’ which = a combined £60 pm = I don’t think so !

I phoned Plusnet Sales (they are owned by BT), explained the situation and said I wanted them to provide both the phone and Internet service and please take the existing line over. They phoned me back an hour later – yes they can do at a combined cost of £18 pm and I think that includes free weekend calls plus they continue to host my two existing domains with them !

They should get that done in 10 days, just ahead of BT wanting to take a DD from my Mother’s by then frozen account. We then get a final close of service bill to set against the Estate as a debt for Probate purposes, I keep the phone and Internet going on the same number.

What Amazes Me…

When you consider what is the “Heavy Lifting Phase”, Registering the Death, arranging a Funeral, sorting out the Probate, Pensions, Medical Services and so on, it all runs properly but there will always be some Dick Wad like BT who hasn’t thought things through and put in an obvious procedure for something which must be a daily occurrence and hundreds at that. Strangely of course it probably wasn’t too much of a problem when people paid their bills once a Quarter via a cheque, this has arisen simply because of monthly Direct Debits !

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