BT and online help

TBH I don’t know what’s going on.

I thought it was BT who had taken over EE but I read that ...

BT’s consumer division is rebranding to EE, making EE the flagship brand for BT Group’s broadband, TV, and mobile services. While BT still exists as a company, services like BT TV are now EE TV, and BT broadband customers are being moved to EE which sounds like an ongoing process. You may see changes in branding, but the underlying network remains the same.

I only became aware of this late last year when I saw the overlapping payments in my bank statement.

Don’t feel they have taken pity on you as you have every right to ask that Open Reach come out to assist. It may be something they can fix in minutes.

Whoever the provider, signals all come down the same cables and, as I said, it’s all under the umbrella of Open Reach which is owned by BT but the company is legally required to treat all service providers equally.

Well I think it was BT as I reached the helpline via the BT web pages and his chat responses had BT at the top or bottom, I can’t remember which.

Are you actually speaking to BT or EE?

The latter has taken over BT’s business.

I did have cause to call them recently over a billing issue and it wasn’t easy. EE call staff are charged with trying to sell extra services before they will deal with the customer’s query. I was passed to four different people who all tried to sell me a mobile phone. Nobody seemed qualified to deal with what was a simple billing query, an overlapping quarterly to monthly billing when BT admin was rank over by EE so I was charged twice for one month. Simple, eh? Nope. All they wanted to do was sell me a phone. When I grumbled about just wanting someone to deal with my query I was told they must try to sell or they are penalised my management. What a racket. I’ll be switching too when my contract is up.

Line maintenance all comes under Open Reach anyway, BT, Sky, TalkTalk, EE, Plusnet, Vodafone etc.

Depending on you age you could or should be on a register that gives priority to older customers.

Locked in until May next year, I’m afraid. Our fault for not shopping around but I always thought BT gave the best service until now.

Have you considered changing providers?

£80 a month sounds very high to me.

I concur, Nandalot. On the couple of occasions when I have used my mobile to complain that I have no internet, eventually an engineer was agreed, and a broken link was fixed.
Not before, of course, I had been on the phone for some time, following copious instructions - to no avail.
Exasperatingly, whilst on hold (!) , a soothing voice told me, endlessly, that problems were best resolved by going to the website and....but, dear lady, I am ringing to tell you that I have no internet..
Is anyone familiar with the song "There's a hole in my bucket, dear Liza"?