BT Internet-Yahoo customer told to get borked

BT Internet-Yahoo customer told to get borked

I was one of those who were slightly disturbed to hear last month from BT that "Your email service will also be upgraded" as part of their collaboration with Yahoo.

My BTInternet email has now been inaccessible since at least Friday 12th March. On that evening I thought "ho hum, a little server problem, I'll try again later." When I couldn't get through the next day, I tried searching for a number on their site that I could phone.

Aha! No easily findable numbers. I guess BT doesn't really believe that "It's good to talk" after all. (See if you can easily find a number off either www.btinternet.com or www.btopenworld.com . See, I told you.)

So, I called in the help of Google. They found a number for me in "Customer Relations". I called it, pressed various buttons and ended up speaking to someone who was, I suspect, in India. I have absolutely no problems speaking to someone in India in principle. In practice, this phone line was so poor that it was difficult for me to hear them and vice versa. A lot of the time was spent by each of us asking the other to repeat what had just been said. Over the next hour I worked my way through most of their support, constantly checking the settings in Outlook Express - and finding that they were correct - and regularly assuring people at the end of the line that no, I hadn't changed anything on my email. Eventually, after literally an hour, I was speaking to someone in Canada who told me that this was "a known problem" that they were working on. He also gave me a number I could call that would tell me how things were progressing.

It's not clear to me why it took an hour to get this point on a known problem. Do they employ the Bastard Operator From Hell, perhaps?

Over the next week, I kept checking in. Still no resolution, even though towards the end of the week the news of the problem disappeared from their helpline. But - and I had to laugh through my increasing frustration - their status line (0800-169-0199) assures you that "BT Internet Services has an ongoing commitment to providing a positive experience" to its customers. Thank heavens they are not out to annoy us.

I also emailed the customer complaints line, with full details. You will be startled to hear that they have not come back to me.

Then, last Friday, my brother in South Africa phoned to say that an email sent to my btinternet address had bounced with the error

"554 delivery error: dd This user doesn't have a btinternet.com account (msjhaffey@btinternet.com) [-9] - mta807.mail.ukl.yahoo.com"

So on Saturday morning I phoned in again. The same poor quality line got me through to the same call centre where they couldn't hear me all that well but after just over 15 minutes realised that I had a problem. They assured me that they would put me through to "2nd level support" who would help. Second level support took another 10-15 minutes to decide that this was a known problem.

No, they couldn't fix it.
No, they couldn't tell me when it would be fixed.
No, they couldn't go back to doing things in the old way. I was going to get a new, improved service whether I like it or not. Eventually.
No, they wouldn't be giving me a refund.
No, they couldn't tell me how many of my emails they'd bounced or who the lost emails had come from.
No, I couldn't speak to anyone more senior. It was 3am in Edmonton and they don't have senior people awake at night.

OK, I said. When someone senior wakes up, could they give me a call? Staggeringly, the answer was "yes" and they took down my mobile number.

No-one phoned me on Saturday.
No-one phoned on Sunday.
But on Monday I got a phone call. It was 10.15 at night and I had just gone to sleep, being an early riser. It was "Brian", who pretty aggressively refused to give me his surname. And in no uncertain terms he told me that

- the service was broken
- they didn't know when it would be fixed
- they could not fall back to the previous system
- I wouldn't be getting a refund
- I could NOT speak to anyone more senior
- in no circumstances would he raise my concerns with his management

The term "yahoo" was coined by Jonathan Swift in Gulliver's Travels to mean a boor and after my phone call last night I understand what he was getting at. Brian was quite the rudest person I have ever spoken to at a supplier. He raised disdain and contempt for the customer to a new and unique peak and I did wonder whether just possibly it might have crossed his mind that he might be waking me up.

Now email isn't that tricky. I've been using it for about a quarter of a century. If Yahoo can't do it for BT then perhaps BT should have a go at doing it without Yahoo. I really do not want to speak to another Yahooligan, whether they are in India, Canada or anywhere else.

I just want my email back. Can ANYONE tell me when this might happen?

Sean