Complaint being sent to BT

"On 31st January we had a phone call from our Daughter to my mobile. She asked what was wrong with the phone, because it wasn't working.

I hadn't been aware the phone was out of order, so I phoned BT again. When I got through, I was informed my phone number was changed. I then explained how my phone number (the changed one!!!) was registered with the Ambulance Service (paramedics), the Doctor's Surgery, the Community Nursing Centre and three hospitals because I am a very high risk patient. I'm homebound aswell and regularly have visits from Nurses, phlebotomists and my GP. On August 9th last year my life was saved by paramedics in my home. They managed this because everything they needed to know was automically at hand when my registered phone number called them. It took A&E a further 6 hours to stop my body from shuting down, and this ought to show why I WOULD NOT HAVE REQUESTED FOR MY NUMBER TO BE CHANGED.

For almost a week my phone had been out without my knowledge and this distressed my wife - remember she was watching me die six months ago and know's the importance of our landline.

I've been assured my phone number, the changed one - (01---) 6------ would be restored to me.

Your customer service advisor promised me it was being treated with urgency, but it's still not restored.

I've not even been informed what the new number is. Does it sound possible that BT, one of the worlds biggest Tele-communication companies can change my number without authorisation, and not even tell me what the new number is? Well it's happened, and I'm not buying into the old and tired excuse of your computer system being got to grips with. A company is only as good as the staff it employs. (Are you listening Mr Richard Branson?)

You really ought to reference the recorded call's over the last couple of weeks and listen to the conversations I've had with your staff. Starting with the original call, about January 22nd, you'll hear no request for a number change and from your staff lots of lies, waffle, false assurances and false apologies.

Today's date is 3rd February. "



Response will be updated here:

I do not want to cause offense and i agree with you totally companies should not change your number especially if it registered with an hospital but could you tell me are you with Virgin or Bt?

Have you signed up to Virgin Media including telephone, by any chance? And might they have switched you over to their own telephone line?
We are just trying to work out what Richard Branson has got to do with British Telecom.
If nothing at all, try BT's CEO ben.verwaayen@bt.com and his PA will phone you within minutes.

That what i was thinking has could you imagine Richard Branson owning Bt?

According to his previous post here:

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...55&postcount=9

He was with Virgin, then moved to Sky.

Read it.

Aaah. Say no more. A lesson to us all really. Don't waste your time and money phoning "Customer Services". Even if you can speak to someone not a lot happens. "Formal Complaints" need to be sent in writing (typewritten) to the CEO at the registered office, also Customer Service and Billing at their addresses if different, with copies to the others.

It could actually be a fault where somneone elses phone line has been switched with yours by mistake. It's not unknown!

It's cool somebody brought up the Virgin Issue. The Reference about Richard Branson and his staff does relate to those ridiculous Issues I had with Virgin ... and it was off topic and confusing ... Sorry.

I have moved to SKY and things aren't as bad as they were with Virgin, but they're not as smooth as I'd like either.

I feel myself going off topic again so I'll just link to somebody with the same problem as me ..

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question...AAwmBj0&show=7

Thinking of option 3 here as a solution (just keeping SKY TV) :- http://www.tiscali.co.uk/products/nm...code=UK-119256

Back on topic, the phone I'm with is BT (as required for SKY set-up) - and the original post in this thread is an Email I sent yesterday to BT.

The number change came about because I asked for 'Anonymous calls to be barred'. Somehow, the foreign sounding Customer Services Advisor thought I wanted my number cancelled. Perhaps it's my accent, which is London (not Farmer), but more likelier to be because BT employ people who can't understand any spoken English that deviates from their Language Learning Course. Pathetic choice's for Customer Service Advisors, anyhow, unless they receive alot of calls from Birmingham, Bradford, Luton an so on. .... That's why my number was changed.

Here's the response I got today from BT:

Dear Mr ????????,

Thank you for your e-mail dated 3/2/08 about the telephone number.

I am sorry to hear of the difficulties that has been caused to you in regards to the change of telephone number. I do understand the inconvenience caused to you due to the change of telephone number.

I have requested the telephone number to be changed back to 01### ######. The number change would be with effect from 11/02/2008. I do understand that the time which is taking to revert back to old number is high, I do apologise for that.

If you should have any further queries please do not hesitate to contact us again via e-mail.

Thank you for contacting BT.

Yours faithfully,

Anoop Nair

I would tell Anoop where he/she could stick their phone line!

Anoop appears to write a version of English alien to me (in the east of England) too.

Give them a call and explain the situation ie your poor health and the need to use the line as a life line over the phone. Ask them to see if the 'Welfare Team' can become involved. There are times when the normal lead times can be reduced and you may be able to get the number back sooner.

Just an observation, but you do realise that Hospitals, GP's etc usually have anonymous numbers when calling out, and may not be able to get through to you?

You're right, but they don't phone me. It's about when I phone them. When my registered Caller ID is picked up by their system ... the response is quick & automatic. Their changing of my number has recklessly changed my Caller ID.

The bottom line is I didn't know for a week that they'd changed it. If we phoned them in that time, the response would have been slower than normal because of cross-referencing, queues and whatever else delay's Paramedics.

I hope you never need to, but should you ever call an ambulance in an emergency, you'll find alot of time is spent repeating your name, the address and 50 other questions. In some incidence's the Police might arrive first to see if it's safe for ambulance staff, or a paramedic in a car may turn up to see if you warrant an ambulance trip to a hospital.

If they had to phone me, both my wife and I have mobile phones.

That's a good point though skaterdies.

I was in the same boat. The first that I knew was when my OH said that her sister had just phoned her on the mobile to say she couldn't get through on our landline. When I phoned my mobile the number that came up was totally different to my normal one. To cut a long story short it appears to be connected to my changing from BT to Sky Talk for my call charges. BT & Sky both deny changing the number without my approval and they are still investigating (and have been for nearly 3 months). Very frustrating!

Did you transfer to Sky for line rental? If so it IS Sky's fault. When transferring your line from one service provider to another, the service provider (in this case SKY) have to request to retain the telephone number and Sky have obviously not done this. As you are now with Sky for your line rental, your only point of contact is with them (if anyone has to contact BT, it is Sky on a company to company basis) and even if the adviser suggests that you contact BT, I would advise against this as you are no longer a BT customer and therefore BT cannot do anything in regards to your line, ALL of this must be done via Sky.

If you are only with Sky for your calls, give BT a call and they should be able to renumber free of charge, or at least check if your old number is available. It might not be the solution you are looking for, but then life never is. In saying that 3 months is along time and you might now be quite content with your new telephone number in which case you'll probably have a less stressful day.

That's also what the Sky T&C's say:
"You authorise us and BSkyB Ltd to act on your behalf in all dealings with BT, Thus plc ("Thus") or any other network operator in connection with the provision of Sky Talk to you and you consent to BT, Thus or any other network operator receiving and using your Data for the administration of your Sky Talk account, and providing us or any of our agents with your Data and other relevant information to enable Sky Talk to be provided to you."

But, they also say:

Sky Talk is not available to:
(a) customers who do not pay for their Sky TV subscription by direct debit or continuous credit card payment mandate;
(b) customers registered with BT's Light User scheme; or
(c) customers with outgoing call barring or any other incompatible product on their telephone line.

There was another post in this forum with a similar problem about "incompatible product on the line". I think maybe Sky have a new number assigned to get around (b) or (c) above, otherwise they'd lose the sale of the TV subscription.

The old family house number got changed by a disgruntled girlfriend of my brothers.

It is very easily done.

My mother got quite a bit of compensation for the inconvenience.

It certainly shouldn't be. Normally the account number needs to be quoted so BT Retail can be sure that they are dealing with someone who should be dealing with the account and not some random.

This was last century!

Rules and regs were the same then as they are now!

With an attitude like that, heath problems or not, I'd say that you deserve any inconvnience that BT can throw your way.

The same sorta thing happened to me, basicly Talktalk slammed me and nicked my number when I moved back to BT. Whats worse is that Talktalk expects me to pay a bill from them!

This recently happened to a relative of mine.
She wanted to change their account from the name of her husband ( who is in a care home ) to her own name. She also wanted to change tariff, due to pricing changes.
She knew about this number change only when people were unable to call her using the number which they have had for 25 years; and when calls from the lady concerned appeared to come from a new number. She had not been told that she would be getting a new number.
During the change of account-holder and tarriff, BT had asked whether she wanted a new number and she had declined. BT had also said that she couldn't be listed in the phone book using her initials and surname ( no title ), although the book has plenty of entries in that format.
Apparently it will take about a week to get her own number back.