Just over a year ago, I returned from Australia to Ireland, and resolved to treat myself to all of life's little luxuries which just aren't available to you when your house consists of a rucksack. The first of these was easy: I could leave my tooth brush next to the sink over night and be reasonably sure it would be there the next day. The second should have been just as easy: to get broadband.
Unfortunately, nothing in Ireland is easy. I did some research and discovered that BT Ireland offered the best deal. My sister, who lives in London, warned me that BT were a terrible company to have to deal with and had little or no concept of customer service. I blithely ignored this good advice, deciding that BT Ireland was a seperate company trying to break into an incumbent's market, rather than the incumbent, and that therefore surely they must have a better concept of customer service.Boy, was I wrong.
I ordered my broadband on the 13th of July, and was assured by the salesman that there was no need for me to upgrade from my expensive, charged per minute, dial-up to their flat-rate offer, as my broadband would be operational within two weeks. Three weeks later, I emailed them and asked for some hint as to whether they had even received my offer. I was assured that they had, and I could expect to be up and running within 3-4 weeks. Three weeks later, BT rang and said that they could get an engineer out to look at my line in three week's time. I said 'OK, great, so he'll get everything up and running then will he?' 'No', they said, 'He'll just check your line, we'll send out the modem 3 weeks after his visit'. This would have meant a wait of almost three months from the time I ordered to the time I had operational broadband.
Needless to say, I quickly cancelled my order and ordered broadband max from NTL instead. It was installed and operational within three days of my order, and the first three months were free for a 3MB download speed. I was pretty happy with that!
However, three weeks later, I got a letter from BT to tell me that they had cheerfully taken over my phone line from Eircom and that I was now their customer. I rang them immediately to ask 'what the!', but was told that I wasn't able to cancel my order online, and I had to cancel it in writing. This, despite the fact that they had confirmed my cancellation by email and the cancellation was still visible on their 'customer care' website. I wrote and sent a letter of cancellation the same day, and once again thought the matter was closed.
Nope. 2 months later (in mid-November now), they direct debited €122.78 out of my account, without even a little note to explain why. I rang them immediately to complain and was fobbed off, so I rang the bank and asked them to reverse the direct debit, which they couldn't, so I had to settle for merely cancelling it. I then wrote a stinker of a letter, requesting that they refund my money immediately. I got no reply, and so I started to investigate other options, such as Small Claims Court etc.
Then, in January, I got a letter from a debt collection agency telling me that I owed BT a further €58. I was a bit surprised, so I wrote them another letter requesting my money back, and also sent a complaint to their regulator, ComReg.
No replies from anyone, and then, just when I had gotten all of the forms filled out for Small Claims Court at the beginning of may, I got a cheque from them in the post for the princely sum of €115.75. I'm not entirely sure why they kept €7.03, but at this point, I don't really care. I just know that
BT Ireland sucks.
