So we finally got a working ADSL line and an ADSL modem. Shame we ordered two, but I consider us lucky. We’ve managed to cancel the (non-existent) broadband on one line, but still have to cancel the phone line itself.

Our account manager, Sophie Vickery of BT Local Business Newbury, is quite possibly the worst account manager I’ve ever met. Sophie has been confrontational, defensive, innefectual or incompetent and actually hung up on me at one point. Needless to say, I was being my usual diplomatic self at the time.

We had a working line with working DSL and a working DSL modem. I called Sophie to tell her we wanted to cut our losses and cancel the other line. Sophie wasn’t happy. She told me the only way we could cancel it and get our money back was to register a complaint, which I asked her to do, and she then slammed the phone down before I could ask her about the process.

I e-mailed her and her boss about the fact that I wasn’t particularly happy with the fact that she’d hung up (one of my colleagues heard it from the other side of the office). She wrote a bizarre response informing me that she was 33 and didn’t behave that way. Then she told me that she was sorry I thought she put the phone down on me. Way to go, they obviously teach people conflict/dispute management well at the BT Local Business Clown College. She also said she’d raise a complaint. This was on the 11th of August. We never heard from Sophie again.

Maybe she’d gone into hiding, Salman Rushdie style. Maybe she’d gone on a special commando mission to cancel our line for us and get us a refund.

Alas it was not the case. We got a bill for the broadband we never had, so I rang up BT. 4 hours and 8 phone calls later to different departments I found someone within BT Broadband who could cancel our broadband, but not the phone line. Each department I’d spoken to informed me that no complaint or request had been raised, that there was no note on the account to cancel anything.

So we have a broadband connection going down – next week I’m going to try for the phone line too. I just need to clear another 4 hours to get round to it. Ho Hum.

When it came to getting phone lines and broadband for our new office, we thought that maybe it was worth giving BT a try. Sure, they’ll be more expensive but it should be the most hassle free way of getting things up and running.

Big mistake.

This is our experience so far. BT Broadband have cost us an estimated £6000.00 and want to bill us for lines we have no use for, other than to call BT up to ask when our broadband will be switched on.

We put an order in on the 4th, being told it’d take about 10 days and that both the lines and broadband would be switched on at the same time. Two letters arrived in the post explaining that the kit would go live on the 21st – not exactly 10 days, and that our kit would arrive beforehand.

The 21st came. Two of us went to the office (there’s no point in us being there without an Internet connection so the office is currently unused) and noticed no kit. So off we went to the shops to get an ADSL modem to test that everything was up and running. The engineer turned up and installed and checked the phone lines. So off we tried with the ADSL.

After several discussions mostly telling us “It’ll be on before 6pm” we found someone who told us that it was scheduled for the 28th, not the 21st, and that it had always been this way. I read them the letters, but it didn’t make any difference – they were adamant that it was the 21st.

Our account manager had gone on holiday. Not that we knew this, later she told us she had no out of office assistant functionality and that she didn’t change her voicemail to say she was away or to provide other contact details because she wasn’t there to handle our problems – that was BT Broadband.

When she came back from holiday, we had a heated discussion on the matter. She told me that the 21st was 10 or 11 days. I counted on the calendar from the 4th (14 working days) and insisted I was wrong. After 3 recounts she gave in and said it’s roughly 10 or 11 days!

More letters arrived, this time telling us it’d be due on the 28th. On the 26th I rang up to confirm that our equipment would arrive, after being told several times by different engineers on the 21st that it would. It turns out our account manager never put the order through for the equipment – just the lines and wires only broadband.

The 28th came. Nothing. Several calls and “It’ll be on before 6pm” or “It’s pending, which means the Engineer’s at the exchange” (for a whole day?) and to call back after 6pm. The provisioning team, who told us to call back after 6pm told us that they close at 6pm but a 24 hour support line would help us. At 6:10pm after still nothing from the ADSL lines, we called the support line, who told us they couldn’t get through to the provisioning team because they close at 6pm, and therefore couldn’t tell us what was going on. We’d be best off calling on monday.

Well, as of 20:00 we still have no ADSL on either line, they’ve been fobbing off my colleague telling him it’s still ‘pending’. The techie told us we’re still waiting on a billing account to be set up, which could take 48 hours. Our account manager. Useless. My blood pressure. Off the scale.

Surely there must be some other way?

This has been an utterly surreal experience. If you’re a provider of phone lines and DSL in the UK and want a business customer, come and get me. If you’re someone who’s had pain dealing with BT professionally, please post your experiences below. Two things stand our more than anything else in my experience with this excuse for a clown college:

• The absolute arrogance of about 60% of the people we dealt with, from account manager to techies
• The lies spun from 1st line tech support to get us off the phone
• The fact that we have written statements from BT promising the 21st, 28th, the equipment being sent to us when no order was made for it and the denial by BT staff that they’ve done anything wrong

Ok, that’s three things, but I don’t care. The world needs to know that BT are the AOL of business. Please, read the post, spread the word, tell your friends, Boingboing, Digg and Delicious and anyone who’ll listen. Post your experiences here and I’ll update as the saga continues.

As the Zodiac Mindwarp quote above goes, SnakeOil Labs isn’t dead, it’s just sleeping. Real life has bitten in hard over the past few months as the business starts to take off. I will try and start posting again as time allows. In the meantime, here’s a great music video from Warp Records’ Plaid. The song, Itsu is a fantastic piece of Electronica.