I had an outage last year of landline and broadband, as we do not have mobile reception accept if the broadband is working it was quite serious as we live really really rural so we could not call emergency services, or contact BT/OR but had to drive out of the village and park up to report the outage. We then had to wait several days for an engineer to attend before a service was restored, it was crackly and we did have to keep asking people to repeat what they said, but at least we could make the call.
we had many more outages mainly with the broadband, especially when there were leaves or rain on the line, or both.
This year we had another outage, of both landline and broadband, I spoke with the BT agent who looked back at our history, and asked if I had received compensation for the outage last year, I said no, he said he would look into it as he said that he would have to get it authorised as it was above the maximum amount he could authorise, he said I should receive it by April 2023! He then mentioned I was again entitled to additional compensation for the outage earlier this year and I should receive it by April/May.
I called BT today after trying to raise a complaint via the web portal, just kept going round and round, nowhere could I find a chat window to begin a complaint as it said I could, so I called the phone number 0333 etc. I then spoke with an agent who said that they commiserate but could not see further than December last year, so she said she would pass me over to technical support.
Technical support said they also could not look passed December, so that compensation is out off the account now, and her take on my outage this year was my broadband was slow, then when I pressed she the said she saw I was without broadband for 3 days only in February 2023, but she did not fully look as I have slow days, and dropped connections, 175 in January according to the agent I spoke with in January/February and that was on just one day, and he stated that as I had to wait nearly a week for the engineer to arrive, and in the meantime OR engineers had 2 joints open the day before which they were not going to complete before the engineer was scheduled to arrive the next day, I called BT and said it was pointless for them to come as there was no landline to test. The engineers fixing the joints attended to 4 houses nearby, but neglected to attend our property, so I had to call to arrange another engineer to attend and they could not attend until the following Tuesday 6 days later, so I was again with no phone and no broadband, quietest week we have had since we moved here.
Now I was informed by the agent in January about the compensation payments, so I kept an eye out on my band statements, until finally today I decided to call BT to find out about why I had not received any payment, Well the agent said she could not see what I knew the reality, but offered £50 as a good will gesture, I was getting very frustrated, I said is this on top of the compensation for the outage last year, and this year, she said categorically no, I was now very frustrated and said I could not go on with this phone call.
So I looked on the offcom website which said I should be able to raise a complaint first with my provider, then listed a load of compensation charges that could be applied, and if they were the provider failed to pay within 30 days, but that I would be asked how I wanted the compensation to be paid, which could be in the post, a credit to my BT account. As I mentioned earlier, I then went back to the BT portal to look for the place to raise a complaint, but my complaint was for the landline and broadband, but how do you do this, call twice, call once, I lost the will to continue so I signed up to the BT Community Portal to see if any one had some links or helpful advice so I can get a copy of all the failures, dropped connection data, phone line outages, and recordings of my calls with all the BT agents on my account so I can raise this with OffCom, my local MP and maybe the small claims court.
Any help would be welcome, thank you all for reading
