Verification Code sent to mobile not arriving.

[RobinP]

In case anyone else has/had this problem:

Attempting to log into MyBT and receive the 'Verify your Account' message (I got 'Your Accounts not recognised')

Filled in the 'Your email or username' box, ditto the 'Password' box & send

copy and paste the verification code emailed to my email account (The one not recognised)

Get the 'fill in the required mobile mobile phone' box then it's  'Sending verification code to mobile'

Code never, and I mean Never, arrives...... Repeat, until eventually I rang help line.

Very helpful and pleasant young lady answers and after approx' 20 mins and consultations with others it's established that many others are having this problem and the technical staff are working on it and will definitely be sorted by Monday, today being Wednesday. On the bright side, can still access my email, the one on my unrecognised account 😉 Hope this helps.

Update, I see it's been sent to Bills>Bills & Packages ?? Why? Thought it would be of a helpful nature, informative, and has nowt to do with 'Billing'

[RobinP · Accepted solution]

Ah Ha! Solved my own dilema and, although I have absolutly NO recollection of causing the problem, am prepared to eat humble pie in case the same thing has happened to others.

Seeing as I didn't receive ANY verification codes sent to my mobile from BT and could therefore not verify them, I checked to see if BT had been inadvertantly blocked in text messages. Mea culpa! It had, I tried to contact BT technical to cancel my fault ticket, alas outside office hours ;-(

[Nannie-1]

Verification codes for mobiles are still not arriving as at 10 May 2026.  Phoned customer support and they say that the issue has not yet been sorted.  I was therefore unable to access MyBT account.

[RobinP]

Have you checked that you've not inadvertently blocked BT texts, I had, unblocked & bingo, all the codes came flooding through.

[MarmadukeTheEighth]

I've checked that and I have not blocked BT.  How can I get in touch with these clowns if I can't log in to my account??? I need to report that I'm getting one third of the Broadband speed I pay an extortionate amount for. 

[Kimberlin]

@MarmadukeTheEighth  You can chat online:

https://www.bt.com/help/contact-bt/technical-support/full-fibre

[MarmadukeTheEighth]

I spent over six hours on chat yesterday.  The agent had me reboot the router and the OpenReach white box a number of times, go on video to show him where my hub and extenders were, do speed tests before and after, you name it, he took me through, often more than once.  I had no lunch and and at 7:15pm I had to give up; he wanted to pass me on to 'his manager' but I explained that I hadn't eaten for hours, had little to drink and my phone and laptop batteries had run down to almost zero.  He was doing everything under the sun; getting me in effect to be a stand-in for an engineer.  I assume one of the top KPIs is to ensure BT engineers are NEVER logged to visit the property.

Here's the situation prompting me to seek BT help.  I pay for top tier fibre, £90-odd pounds a month.  Speeds on our two laptops are ridiculously low, circa under 100Mps, often lower.  Far below the guarantee 700Mps.  And we get regular dropouts on both.  Yes, I know, they only guarantee that speed from the fibre to the hub.  But we do not have a large house, only a ground floor (4 rooms) and upper (3), we are two retired people with no one in the house using a lot of bandwidth, playing games, etc.  and we never stream.  We just use our laptops now and again every day, most often not both together.   I use my laptop in the room right next to where the hub sits and where the fibre enters the building, so my laptop is only seven paces away from the modem.  But my download speed is NEVER more than the guaranteed 700Mps.  At this very moment it is 560.  My wife uses her laptop in the kitchen which is only twenty paces from the room where the hub sits, and speeds on either laptop plummet to under 100, usually much lower.  My point to the BT agent was that even though the fibre to hub speed is above 700, they are in breach of contract as their hub and extender disks are not fit for purpose as they barely cover our laptops (both newish) either in the next room or a room down the hall.  I was asked by the agent to put my laptop right next to the hub and try it there.  Download speeds were well below the 700Mps guarantee level, in fact about one third of that!   

In short, I demanded further investigation and an engineer visit, but they would not do the latter.  I told them I was not prepared to stay on the line for any longer as I was exhausted and their 'manager' was probably only going to take me through all the same tests and procedures that I'd already endured.  BT are a disgrace in my opinion, and as far as I'm concerned their obligation to provide even adequate speeds has not been met.  They are in breach of their 'guarantees' as well as their contract, which I am now treating as terminated due to continued breaches and the fact that their hub and extenders are not fit for purpoose. 

PS: I received the BT SMS authentications to log into my account over and hour after requesting them!  Far too late to use.  So I still cannot log in to my account, which I now need to do in order to track my complaint reference. 

[Kimberlin]

@MarmadukeTheEighth  I think unfortunately, there are so many variables that might affect your download speeds to your laptops. It seems clear from your post you are only ever connected via WiFi? No one here knows how old yours and your partner's laptops are, to be fair, 'newish' means little, they could be 5 years old or 6 months old. Are the laptop onboard WiFi drivers are regularly updated etc. The WiFi discs might not be up to the job as you've already alluded. The walls in your home might cut down the signal. The frequencies the WiFi is transmitting to your laptops could be congested. Which WiFi frequency do you usually connect to? 2.4ghz or 5ghz band?

I assume that you have connected either one of your laptops directly to the router via a suitable Ethernet cable? preferably a minimum Cat6 cable. Clearly then if the speeds into your laptops exceed the poor speeds you are receiving on WiFi, then it would indicate that the WiFi is potentially the problem.

For clarity, which package are you actually on with BT? £90 a month seems far in excess of what most people would pay. How long have you been a BT customer? Do you renegotiate your package every two years at the end of each contract period? Are you on the rolling 30 day contract? All I'm saying is, many customers who frequent the forum believe for some reason, that loyalty counts for something when it does not. At present, many brand new customers on Fibre to the Premises on broadband only on a 900mbps package without any addons, will be paying around £32 a month for the first year. Do you have a landline? If so, do you need use it, do you need it?

I hope you get your problems sorted, it's really frustrating when things don't go right and worse when you're paying a significant amount of money for a service you don't believe you are getting full use of.

[MarmadukeTheEighth]

Many thanks.

Laptop ages: Mine 1 yr.  My wife's 3 yrs.

WiFi drivers:  I take all MicroSoft updates immediately. I don't know how to separately check the WiFi drivers, I can't see that specifically in Device Drivers?  My wife's laptop is an Apple, I need to ask her how/when she updates.

Walls: Our house is not a period house, it dates to 2012 so walls between rooms are the usual timber frame plus plasterboard.

Direct Laptop Connection: BT asked me to do that but my HP laptop doesn't seem to have the correct socket for the cable. 

Package: 'Full Fibre 900 with BT Halo 3' plus landline.  We've been a customer for seven years in this house.  Yes, I try to negotiate each two years, but they are not amenable.  Yes, I know loyalty counts for nothing and I almost moved to Virgin this time.  It was only the fact we have an extender at the far end of the house so that we can pickup the internet apps for our solar energy system and I was worried about a switchover causing problems with that.  Maybe I have to jump and see...  Yes, we use our landline two or three times a day.

Thanks for the response.

BTW, the previous home owner installed a CAT system, thank God.  I don't know if it is CAT5 or CAT6.  I have a very important desktop at the end of the house furthest from the room where the hub sits and reception on the desktop is zero, so I connected to the CAT system, and fibre signal is easily 900Mps sometimes 1+Gps. 

[Kimberlin]

@MarmadukeTheEighth  As your Wife's laptop is an Apple, she doesn't have to worry about updates other than the usual iOS updates.

Your laptop, Microsoft won't always update your drivers with the latest manufacturer specific drivers. HP like other manufacturers, have their own update support websites. This is the HP site:

https://support.hp.com/gb-en/help/hp-support-assistant

In order to connect an Ethernet cable to your laptop, which I assume doesn't have the old type ethernet socket, you will need to buy an adapter that either plugs into a USB A or USB C port on the laptop. Freely available for sale on Amazon etc. I bought one for my own 2 year old laptop, adapter plugs in, ethernet cable end plugs into adapter.

Halo3 is considered a very expensive addon which may or may not be suitable for your own requirements. Anecdotally, it seems it's difficult to offload when attempting to speak with 'Guides' on the phone. If you don't want it, be firm and tell them you no longer want it. Be careful though when you do it. If you are already committed on a contract, you might have to suck it up and see it out until you are on the 30 day rolling contract.

900mbps for many households, is complete overkill. If you are not heavily streaming, downloading huge files etc, you can get by easily on 150mbps. I am on 500mbps, but I have over 30 WiFi devices connected simultaneously most of the time and 500mbps is more than adequate.

Appreciate you state you use the landline, but you can of course if your mobiles are so equipped, use WiFi calling. You don't need a mobile signal to make calls, your mobile makes and receives calls via WiFi through the router. This is how the rest of us manage without a landline. It completely negates the need for a landline which are little more than spam traps anyway. I do appreciate however that some folks just can't do without the landline citing a multitude of reasons.

I think you need to sit down and properly evaluate what you need and what you don't.