Four Hours Trying To Contact BT Ireland

laois | miscellaneous | opinion/analysis

Saturday October 21, 2006 12:53

by Mark C

Last Friday week I spent four hours trying to contact BT Ireland with a very simple query (can they reset my wireless connection so that I don't need a password to connect to the internet?). I spent four hours on the phone to no avail.

After 45 mins. holding for someone in Technical Support, I eventually got to speak to someone in Customer Care who said I need to talk to Technical Support. I explained that I had rang Technical Support and was somwhow re-directed to him. He said he'll put me through to Tech. Supp. and I'd be top of the queue. This sounded reasonable, but when he put me through I got a voice telling me: "We are very busy, if you'd like to leave your name and number we'll call you back or else hang up" and then the line went dead!

I was told by a voice many times while holding that I could email customer.care@btireland.ie with my query and they would get back to me asap, and when I did this I got an autoreply saying that they would be in contact in the next FOUR DAYS. (I later learned from representative that Customer Care were told not to reply to emails and not to call people back, which I presume to be true because now, 8 days later, I still have had no reply from Customer Care, but did from Residential Support).

I spent the next two hours calling Tech. Supp., determined that I was going to get to speak to someone and was re-directed more than once to a voice asking me to Press 1 for Global Internet Sales, Press 2 to Take Over the World or something, and if I would like to talk to Tech. Supp. I could call 1890 923 111 (the number I had called to be told this!).

Eventually I got to speak to someone, told him how appalled I was at their service, and he tried to convince me that four days' wait, just to be contacted, not necessarily have the problem fixed, was not a long time. I asked him would he be happy if he had called, for example, Sky Digital with a simple query and was told that sometime in the next four days they'd contact him to ask what his issue was, and the most I got was that perhaps it was "not a short amount of time". This was also the person who told me that he had received an email from his boss telling him (and the rest of his "team") not to reply to emails or people leaving their contact details on their message machine because they were too busy.

Me: Why not take on more staff?
Him: The problem with taking on more staff is that the lines will eventually get blocked up again.
Me: Why not take on less customers so?
Him: Ha Ha Ha
Me: I'm not joking.

I also knew that this was not the person that I needed to talk to, as he informed me, I needed to talk to someone in Tech. Supp. He did put me through to Tech. Supp. but after holding for another 45 mins I got cut off, the time was about 7:30 (four hours after I had begun trying to contact them) and I admitted defeat. I did manage to get an email address, from an automatic voice, telling me that I could email residentialsupport@btireland.ie, which I did, and they replied to me Monday afternoon and their reply almost fixed up my problem, except I now needed a "Router Configuration Password" so I replied to ask what this might be and got what I consider to a very "snotty" reply asking me if I had "bothered" to read the instruction manual (no consideration given to the notion that I live in Portumna and was trying to fix up the problem for my mother and younger brother in Portlaoise, and no matter how good my eyesight was I could not read a text from a hundred miles away).

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Comments (17 of 17)

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rtfm

by x

Sat Oct 21, 2006 17:48

Unfortunately the techie guy is right - the default router password is in the little esat manual that comes with their routers. If I remember right, you login as admin with password 1234. I could be wrong though - check the manual. You can also email them - customer.care@esatbt.com - much quicker response, and you arent sitting on the phone getting pissed off.

PS I'm no fan of Esat, they overcharged me numerous times on my broadband bill and i STILL havent got my 125 euro security deposit back, two months after I left them - dont EVER use them as a service for broadband.

You got a prob with BT ireland Mark?

by brrr brrr - brrr brrr - brrr brrr-

Sat Oct 21, 2006 17:55

Then Take it to the Lists!!!!

Esat

by john mcdermott - www.fiannafailparty.biz

Sun Oct 22, 2006 03:20

I have had good experience with ESAT I have to say.They are probably the best of a bad lot at present.The whole problem lies with fianna fail and the scandalous lack of real alternatives to the Eircom monopoly..it's a mess.

Re; X

Mon Oct 23, 2006 16:11

Thanks for the help X, but I got that much figured from BT's reply.

What I was most annoyed about was the lack of sympathy by BT representatives (when you eventually get to talk to them), and also to be told that if I did leave my name and address I would not be contacted back anyway - a more senior person had emailed the person that I was talking to (and I presume the rest of his team) and told him/them not to call back people and not to reply to emails - they are too busy.

I still have had no reply to my email to customer.care@btireland.ie (despite being told that they'd conact me in the next four days, 12 days ago).

Mark.

What's the wireless router model number?

by No Sympathy

Mon Oct 23, 2006 16:30

got what I consider to a very "snotty" reply asking me if I had "bothered" to read the instruction manual (no consideration given to the notion that I live in Portumna and was trying to fix up the problem for my mother and younger brother in Portlaoise, and no matter how good my eyesight was I could not read a text from a hundred miles away).

BT were right. You could have asked your mother/brother to look at the router and tell you the model number, then google for information on it and then read the manual. There's absolutely bound to be tons of information about it. There's no way that BT or anyone else could employ enough people to answer that type of query: the reason it probably took so long to get back to you was because of thousands of other "Mark Conroys" not bothering to sort it out for themselves. It's not BT's problem it's yours. Probably some poor bastard with a genuine problem in service spent 4 hours waiting to get his problem dealt with because of the other 999 "Mark Conroys" spamming the help center.

On a side not you'd be well advised not to run the wireless router without some sort of authentication requirement unless you want "your mother" sending death threats to Bush. That said I look forward to war-driving your house.

As a wild guess without knowing anything about their equipment (which I sincerely hope they supplied to you and isn't something you just plugged in yourself) there may be a recessed pin sized button somewhere on the back of the router which can be depressed with a blunt pointed object for a minute in order to reset the router to factory defaults.

BT Ireland is a joke

by emma - residential

Wed Nov 22, 2006 22:09

we signed up to BT in mid Sept for this great €45 a month offer with broadband,calls and line rental included. Its now the end of November and still no modem for the broadband yet we have received a phone bill for nearley €200. We are on the phone to them every day and we are told every day that they are sending the modem but it never arrives. Ther doent seem to be any one up there capable of doing there job. How hard is it to send a modem in the post. I have asked to speak to a manager and they dont seem to exist. I've e-mail and never got a response. Now I'm going to be out of pocket because eircom will charge me to reconnect to them. HOW THE HECK CAN BT GET AWAY WITH THIS....! Some one should put them on one of those shows ( Business's form hell ).

bt service

by mike

Sat Dec 02, 2006 13:30

re; bt service had lots of hastle to get on line hours of ringing for 3 weeks .eventually got a techy with some savy took 30 mins but he was super all ok now ,leaves a lot to be desired mike

possibly useful advice for people trawling for some

by o kelly

Thu Feb 15, 2007 21:37

i emailed :

btiqueries@bt.com
residentialsupport@btireland.ie
customer.care@btireland.ie
&
customer.care@esatbt.com

all at once and received an actual reply the same day from seodhna.browne@bt.com

give it a try..

BT Billing Joke

by Garret

Thu Feb 15, 2007 21:46

I'm really pissed off at BT, like all the others on this site I spent hours and hours talking to a series of muppets. All polite, clueless and without the ability to actually do anything except pass it on.

My problem was the first couple of bills did'nt make much sense in terms of what I expected to be paying for a bundle product. I had no problem with the call charges they were such a small part it did'nt matter its the crazy way they include/exclude VAT on different items and then use refund and discounts to correct the bill. You end up with a mess that no one can make sense of.

Bottom line- do what the marketing people tell these companies to watch out for, tell as many friends & familt to keep away from this shower of idiots & then switch as soon as you can. The technology works fine its when you have to deal with the people in BT that the trouble starts.

Joe D

by Joe doyle

Fri Mar 02, 2007 17:23

Complaints@btireland.com seems to be the best e-mail address to get any action, they normally call back quick enough ...

Also on the bills part, if you opt for the on-line billing the information given is pretty cryptic, this is because they only show you the first page of the bill, there are normally four, the four in some ways explain what you are being billed for, but you will be still left with questions after viewing all four, customer service will email them to you if you ask.

BT problems

by jpar14

Tue Apr 17, 2007 21:40

Lika alot of employers in this c*******tiger country of ours if you pay peanuts you get monkeys, result worker do not give a flying ****. I was laying in my bed last night, looking at the stars and I thought to myself where the blazes is the ceiling.

bt ireland hold time

by laura

Mon Sep 24, 2007 18:42

Monday, 24th September 2007, on hold for 45 minutes.

This is quite good. Google "bt customer care hold time" and you get a story about a customer in the UK being on hold for 20 hours.

The customer service is appalling, but what can I do. Go back to Eircom? *sigh*

BT Call Times & Support

by kfm1000

Wed Dec 19, 2007 22:08

Hi all, there's a very simple way to avoid the BT problem:
Don't ever use BT services!

You can (usually) tell a company by how good their Customer Care is, but unfortunately, most customers just jump right in and sign up without checking.

I use Irish Broadband. CC is excellent. Waiting times 5 mins max.
People who KNOW what they are talking about and can talk you through the problem.

If you are considering signing up to boadband or calls from anyone, do yourself a favour and check the service provided by their Custiomer Care BEFOREHAND!

If you don't, then the result is what you have been reading so far about BT.

I know, I WAS that customer. Now I'm not.

Broadband help from BT

by Jean Swift

Mon Jan 21, 2008 15:14

I was three weeks trying to get help from BT Ireland on a broadband problem. In the end my frustration reached such a pitch that I gave up. The address Customer care has to be the greatest misnomer in modern business, in my experience with BT there is no customer care.

bt suck

by Declan - bt

Sun Feb 17, 2008 01:31

there are about 4 people working on bt customer care not all at one time tho! how i know cousin works with them he answersabout 20 calls a day"

btireland

by jp100 - free soul

Fri Feb 22, 2008 03:55

I ve been three years with btireland had alot of setup problems mostly to with passwords.I found the the best way to get through to cc was to one use a mobile on their free number they either answer quickly or hang up straight away .The other way I found on boards .ie was to ( if you are a HOME user) call their business line .the people I got through to were very nice people, when told apoligise for calling wrong number and they put you straight through to a home customer care person this always worked for me, if it was a women you had some chance the men (boys) forget it.Touche wood I have not had a reason to call them over the past two years.Now a problem of my owe I download alot 10gb limit so I always use to check my usage But for months now I have no usage http://broadband.iol.ie/usage/ back to a certain date does this mean their not checking .

BT customer

by Sean McC - BT

Fri May 30, 2008 19:17

hi, i worked for BT customer care for over a year. I just want to say that alot of your issues are viable, but you are soo ignorantly quick to forget, that we are victim of BT short comings as much as you are. If you are waiting an hour on hold to speak to an agent then its because there are people ahead of you being HELPED. the people who work here try ridiculously hard with the recources we have (which we would be the first to admit arnt perfect) Would you prefer we fcuk over those ahead of you so that we can get to you and devote ourselves to your 3 cent call that you swear you didnt make (best answer to that, tell you what ill post you 5p send me back the change). the abuse that is often recieved to some of the people i worked with was...... shocking. I mean you sometimes need a thesaurus to describe it. We could only work within the timescales that EIRCOM sent us, as they own the lines, control the engineers and basically bitch over Bt in the south. Just a tip, if your ever on the phone to a customer care agent work with them. We can be on a 2hour call with the biggest tosser in Ireland, have 30 secs to write it up and then one of you delightful people on the phone. I know its the job but seriously take a second you think you could do it. the patients and concentration required never mind the tolerance! So next time you phone BT or any other poor bastard (who wants to help you, if your lucky) think would you be able to tolerate you and your shit.

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Four Hours Trying To Contact BT Ireland

Comments (17 of 17)