When BT mess up, they REALLY mess up

I have lived at the current address since last November. My employers arranged the flat for me, and I just pay the landlord as normal.

When my boss told me the address he made a slight typo, doubling the wrong digit.

This was the address I used to make an initial order for a new phone line to be installed. It happens that that incorrect address is also in a slightly different postcode.

When I arrived at the flat and saw the number on the door I made a hasty call to BT to explain the error. They cancelled the original order and set up a new one.

On the newly agreed date (December 6th last year) an engineer duly arrived and installed the new line.

Strangely, I had no paperwork through the door confirming my installation, and I’ve had no paperwork since. Yes that’s right. No paperwork. That means no bill.

This is a problem, because obviously call costs are mounting up. Every time I start the call, I’m asked for my account number, which I cannot give them because I have seen no paperwork. I can only give them the number of the line.

They keep telling me when the next bill is due, but it never turns up. Last time, I had whoever I was speaking to in Mombai check the address with me. They still had the original (and wrong) address. So we changed it. This took 20 minutes by the way.

Very soon, I shall be moving again. This flat is really to large for just one person. My landlord has several properties, so we have tentatively agreed a time scale for me to move into one of his other (and smaller) properties. Getting the landline moved is going to be fun. I don’t think I’ll be able to use the Joint Migration Order (JMO) scheme this time round.

By now, you would have thought they'd have cut me off, or sent threatening letters (probably to the wrong address). But when the stated billing period arrives, I find that miraculously, my call costs have reduced to nothing again. I'm not paying them. My employer isn't paying them. So something is either very wrong with BT's billing platform or someone 5* doors up the road is being very kind and paying them for me.

Update: Having written this article I decided to make one last ditch attempt to get through to them. Apparently recovery have been trying to produce a bill, but are still having problems. They will send me one when they've achieved it. Better still, the person I spoke to today agreed to give me my account number. This means I will be able to use the JMO scheme after all - and BT will be able to send me any bill their platform actually manages to produce.



* In the UK, all the even numbers are on one side of the road and all the odd numbers are the other side. So that mistyped digit putting my address 10 numerics out only puts me five doors out.