This is ridiculous. BT locked one (only one) of my email addresses forcing me to change the password*. Unauthorised access they claimed. It's not the first time, it happens when there is an infestation of spam incoming usually after BT have re-set their spam detection and before they have got around to making it actually work. Luckily that I now could do on-line without the six weeks plus delay (yes, really) to regain access the last time it happened. BUT, as part of the process they insisted on a mobile number to send a passcode which, without warning, then congratulated me for setting up 2FA. Well, I thought, that's not something I wanted but I can live with it for the rare occasions I log-in to access my account profile.
But a few days later what do I find? All of a sudden I'm being asked to receive a passcode to gain access to BT webmail for any and all of my eleven email accounts - yes, every time, one after another... All with passcodes sent to a mobile number where coverage is poor and signal can take 1-2 minutes to establish and then drop out again at random. Did I ask for this? NO! Do I want it? NO!
So I go to my account to try to turn it off. To log-in I now have to enter a passcode, sent to my mobile. When I get to the section to change 2FA arrangements and click the link the first thing it does is to send me a passcode - to my email. In order to log-in to my email it insists to send me another passcode to my mobile. Then when I retrieve and enter the passcode sent to my email the system then gives me an option to change the mobile number - nothing else - and to do so, yes, you guessed it, it wants to send me a passcode!
I wasn't pre-advised of this 2FA, I didn't ask for it and I don't want it. Am I happy - NO!
So what will happen now when I try to download email I don't know, but I don't do that until I have first accessed it and cleaned it up via web-mail. Will it fail due to 2FA? I don't know and I don't have time to find out right now.
All this hassle on top of trying to renew the broadband (system won't permit on-line) for over two months and eight wasted phone calls (probably around 6 hours on the phone inc. wait time), many broken promises (or were they just fibs to fob me off?), complaints ignored and still zero success. Additionally BT want more money because of their delays and because their figures are more than on-line. Regardless they can't process an order. For an account which has existed since the early days of dial-up. 30+ years?
Now it seems I have to spend more time on the phone to get this 2FA turned off.
Customer service? I don't think so BT, not by a long chalk!
Oh, and I'm a stakeholder for what it's worth, since privatisation... I'm questioning why.
* So far changing the password appears to have made no difference - I'm still getting a lot of the same style of spam as I was before they locked the account claiming 'unauthorised access'. I'm not surprised, I've seen the same before.
