Appalling Bullying Behaviour

[mike963]

I have just received an equally threatening email which has a number of lies in that they have never contacting me via email, letter, text or phone - I have tried to make a formal complaint but not sure it has actually happened but they sort of admitted the email had come from them - it was worrying as our mobiles rely on wifi calling and we are both expecting phone calls from drs in the next 2 week

Truly upsetting and terrible behaviour  

 

Account no : *********

  

PLEASE CALL US.

  

Without action, you’ll lose your broadband services.

  

Hello Mike,

This is an urgent notice. We have tried to reach you several times through emails, letters and phone calls about updating your services for the digital switchover before January 2027 deadline. But we still need you to take action.

This means your broadband service will temporarily stop within the next 5 days for 7 days.

  

To keep your service running, contact us on

 

0800 011 3712

[iniltous]

Adding your own problem onto an existing one isn’t a great idea , much better to start yiur own thread , however,

Do you have broadband and telephone from different suppliers, so BT supply your telephone service and a different company supply and bill you separately for your broadband ?

This arrangement is called SMPF , shared metallic path facility, and has been obsolete for years , it’s also unnecessarily expensive in that anyone still on it would be paying £30 ish for the telephone (unless they have been claiming they don’t have broadband which would be untruthful) and probably a similar amount for broadband, so basically paying double what service with a single supplier would be.

SMPF can’t exist after PSTN retirement (that’s the old fashioned telephone equipment in the exchange) and is now being removed , that means  broadband will be disconnected from the line before the PSTN retirement and the telephone service changes to a modern service , whoever supplies the broadband should have discussed this with those customers, but basically the phone service in SMPF arrangements is the primary service, and  for that to be migrated off PSTN which is being retired, the broadband has to be removed first , these type of customers will have had years to either join the broadband company and drop BT , or join BT for broadband as well as phone and drop the other broadband company, but in essence, they have reached the end of the road and can’t dither any longer , BT have made a decision for them  , the broadband has to go to enable the phone service to continue.

If this SMPF arrangement isn’t what you currently have then the letter must be regarding something else, as far as your claim that this is the first contact BT has made , we can only speculate about , perhaps they have tried to contact you previously, or perhaps they haven’t .

[garybs29]

It's not bullying, people ignore comms & they need to do something, would you much rather they just left it & let things mess up?

[AlisonM]

Hello @mike963 .

I share your concerns about this email. My elderly widowed and vulnerable mother received it too, 2 days ago.  As in your case, the statement that they had tried to reach her several times by various means was quite simply incorrect.

You did not include the subject line in your original post, but so that others can see it, it was

*****, your broadband will be cut off

It is also interesting that the originating address of this email is actually btconsumer.imicampaign.io.

I wonder if anyone here knows or could explain why the broadband would need to be stopped temporarily to facilitate migration to Digital Voice. The email also states: “Don’t worry, your phone service will be unaffected."

When I phoned BT on her behalf, I was told that the only way to stop the broadband being cut off was to book an appointment and that this would have to be for a free full fibre upgrade - it was no longer possible to have DV without full fibre. 3 different guides all said the same thing. She is not in a fibre priority exchange and I was unaware of any such change. A guide had manually placed an order for a DV-only migration last month, but this was apparently automatically cancelled.

[WSH]

In this case, I’d have to agree with @garybs29

The tone doesn’t suggest bullying, just urgency.  BT are making it clear that you have to do something about this, as time is beginning to press.

Come January the old phone service is being switched off.  The retirement of the old system is not just BT, it’s nationally.  It’s already been delayed for two years, so it won’t be postponed again

Would you be happier if the phone just suddenly & permanently stopped working in January?

[mike963]

As I have been trying to switch to Digital Voice since March then the urgency is somewhat misplaced. During March I was told I had to switch to EE for digital Voice and then EE failed 3 times to switch me so I stayed with BT - I have had a number of letters saying Digital Voice was coming but not one required or asked me to do anything. If you cannot see that as bullying - threating cut off the broadband - which is not directly relevant to Digital Voice in that I can have BB with or without DV then clearly you had a rosier view of this email. I believe most people with either see this as a scam or feel threatened by it - but glad you are more positive than me

[mike963]

Yes I should have included the subject - make it clearer why I perceived it as threat

When I phoned BT - talked to 3 different people and I now believe that I will be getting an engineer to switch me at some point in time (this also happened in March but the engineers failed to turn up 3 times) I won't be fibre to the premises as this is not available. Also not sure I actually need an engineer - maybe someone on this forum does ?

I have been told some many incorrect things on  my calls with BT about Digital Voice that I don't know what to believe but certainly some advisors see it as a way of getting you on a new contract for 24 months - sigh !   

[WSH]

@mike963 

“…I have been trying to switch to Digital Voice since March then the urgency is somewhat misplaced. During March I was told I had to switch to EE for digital Voice and then EE failed 3 times to switch me…” 

Well, if you’re going to leave pertinent information out, how do you expect people to understand the context?  Under the circumstances, yes, the letter does seem somewhat misplaced.

[chrisjp]

The problem really lies with BT's customer "service" people who seem to be woefully badly trained and appear to say anything either to end the call or use it as a sales pitch to sell the customer a more expensive service and pocket the commission.
The CS people need to be trained to be able to explain the issue with Shared Metallic path and why it can't continue beyond the end of 2026. And then go on to explain the customer's options: either transfer their broadband to BT or get their broadband provider to provide a telephone service.
It's pretty clear that most, if not all, CS reps are completely unable to do this.

[iniltous]

This seems to me to be one of the type of posts where  the only real point of it  is to complain , rather than to try and understand the issue, the vast majority of migrations to DV are  straightforward and are completed without issue , there are edge cases that make that straightforward migration much more difficult, this is almost certainly not a straight forward migration, however there is little engagement to try and figure out what is making the migration more complex than the majority of migrations.

SMPF has been covered without any confirmation from the OP that they are a SMPF customer, so presumably it’s not that and must be something else ….another possibility is the OP is on exchange based ADSL broadband , and although initially thought that this could easily deliver DV (much like VDSL/ FTTC) once customer is supplied with a suitable router , seemingly this isn’t the case , there was a recent case where the customer had exchange based ADSL , without access to  FTTC or FTTP  , the solution to get them off PSTN while maintaining telephony and broadband , was to my mind a little odd , in that it  was to remove ADSL from the existing line , effectively leaving a PSTN telephony only line , subsequently to be converted to PDPL , and a second new line installed at the address as an ADSL  only service , maintaining both services albeit on separate copper pairs .

Maybe this is the case here , we’ll probably never know.