If you have any choice about it, stay FAR away from BT, the UK's premier phone company or whatever they call themselves these days. They provide something like 95% of the UK's phone network though, so it's not exactly easy to go elsewhere, but if you can - do.
3 years ago, I moved into my current house. Because of an existing contract or whatever, I had to go with them for both phone and internet, so I called up and got it installed. They wanted £125 for a reconnection fee, refused to let me put my name on the account (I had to have my landlord as the account name because I don't own the property. Er, yeah. Never heard of that before but I was in a rush at the time and just agreed to it). I had all sorts of problems trying to sort out the phone and internet and once I got it, I've been bombarded with calls from them ever since.
So now I'm moving out of this house and into a new one. Because most of the broadband services here in the UK seem to rely on a BT landline, I needed to get one activated in the new place. I called them and told them to switch the account I have to the new address but nooo, they won't let me do that. Firstly because my name's not on the account and secondly because they won't cancel the account with an internet package attached to it before the 12 month cycle of the broadband (it's not 12 month minimum contract, it's 12 months for each billing cycle. Though they bill me quarterly. But no, that's different apparently. Argh) and they wanted £180 for that, plus continuation of the phone line and internet until November plus line rental fines plus this plus that and plus the other. Pffft, not likely.
I agreed a deal with my landlord that I could move the account to the new address but keep his name on it (oh yeah, that was another thing - they "never, ever" change names on accounts. Wtf) until the billing cycle has completed and I could then cancel the account and start a new one. I phone BT and tell them this, fully aware that the new house has a BT line in it, and the previous people living there used their services. I am firmly told that not only is there no BT line in the property, but there has never been and they want £125 to connect one and a further £75 call out charge to get an engineer to come and fit a box. They then start asking for bank details and tell me they will take the payment tomorrow or some crap. Thinking the previous people had probably cancelled the line, I agreed and asked them what my cancellation rights were in case, you know, I should find out they were fobbing me off like they tried with Jem and several other people I have spoken to as well. I was told I'd get charged a cancellation fee and the money would be taken anyway. Yeah, not having that, thank you very much.
I went to the new house (needs decorating before I move in properly - I have the old/current place for another month yet, so there's no hurry) and plugged a phone into the supposedly non-existent BT line. Ooh look, dial tone. Ooh look, I can ring numbers. I can even ring my mobile and find out what the line's number is. Unfortunately, when I tried that, it came up "anonymous number" which means the previous inhabitants had had the line withheld or whatever. I rang the operator ("Welcome to BT" - hmmm, that seems to tell me I have a BT line here) and asked them to tell me my number. "Sorry, can't do that." What a surprise. But I did work out how to remove the caller ID blocker thingy so I rang my mobile again and got hold of the number.
BT's customer services are closed until 8am tomorrow morning, but at 8.01 they're getting a very angry call from me. Apparently they pull this a lot, I only had to Google "BT connection fee" to get a whole load of results from people who had this happen to them. I mean, it happened to a family member of mine who have been using their phone line for 20 years before having their house flooded last summer and having to move elsewhere for a couple of months. BT were trying to get them to pay for a line which they claimed was neither connected nor existent in the first place.
If BT have the cheek to take the £125 and further call-out charge from me despite the fact that I have an ACTIVE LINE, they can go to hell. It's only because they're almost a monopoly that they can do this, people have relatively no choice but to go with them. I know I don't, or I'll be paying them whatever amount of money they choose to fine me for cancelling before November or whatever. They are a seriously bad company, who can't seem to do anything fairly.
(Note: For prices in US dollars, just double the prices marked in pounds (£))
Update: They got an angry call from me, told me the line had nothing to do with them and hung up on me. Twice. The third time, I kept getting busy tones and then "sorry, our offices are currently closed". Do NOT go near BT. They do this because they can and because people are duped by it so easily. Don't fall for it and don't keep letting them do this to people. I am not paying them to reconnect a line I know belongs to them and if they take me to court over it then so be it. I refuse to let them win.
I'm sure everyone has had the pleasure of speaking to a tech support hotline. You know the sort, outsourced call centre, expensive number, person on the other end who has no idea what they're doing... Yeah. I avoid them wherever possible.
This weekend, I was dealing with a relative's troublesome internet - ever since moving house, they had been unable to get online even though the ISP promised they had changed the phone number and address and whatnot over a month ago. I fiddled all the usual settings, routers, firewalls, passwords, etc., but to no avail. I had little other choice than to ring them up to ask what was up. I was a bit unsure about one of the settings, as it was set to PPPoA on this router but my own one uses a PPPoE connection so I wondered whether this was correct. I'd tried both but they hadn't worked, but there were also other fiddly bits I might have forgotten. Sooo, I decided to brave the call centre and ask them.
Support guy (with thick accent): Hello, you are through to [ISP] support, my name is [name], how may I help you today.
Me: Hi, I'm just having a bit of an issue connecting to your service. I've checked all the settings on my end and they are all correct, so I was wondering if you could help.
Him: Ok ma'am. Can you open up the Internet Explorer.1
Me: ... um, ok.
Him: Go to white box at the top. Delete text. Type [router IP].
Me: Ok, I've already done that and I've checked all the settings there, they are all fine. There was one thing I was a bit unsure about though - do you use the PPPoA setting or PPPoE?
Him: *Long pause* No, you take CD out. Type in the Internet Explorer.
Me: CD? No, I asked about connection types. Is it PPP-
Him: *Interrupting* Ma'am, no CD. Take CD out.
Me: ...
Him: No CD.
Me: I'm not using a CD, I-
Him: *Interrupting* Type in the Internet Explorer, [router IP].
Me: ... yeah.
Him: Type in the Internet-
Me: I've done that.
Him: What do you see.
Me: I've already logged in. I checked-
Him: *Interrupting again* Type in the Internet Explorer-
Me: I'VE. DONE. THAT.
Him: What do you see.
Me: It is showing me the settings.2
Him: You type username, password, it is [username] and [password].
Me: Yeah.
It carried on like that for several minutes, him just ignoring everything I was saying. He asked me to confirm the phone number on the account, put me on hold, then came back.
Him: Ma'am you reboot now.
Me: What?
Him: You reboot, it work now.
Me: I rebooted before, it didn't help.
Him: No, you reboot, it work now.
Me: ...
Him: You reboot?
Me: Yeah yeah, it rebooted.3
Him: It work now.
Me: No.
Him: Reboot.
Me: Again?
Him: Reboot, it work.
Me: I'm trying it on another computer right now, this one doesn't work either.
Him: Reboot please ma'am.
Me: I don't see how that's going to help.
Him: It should work, you reboot.
Me: Yeah well, it's not working.
Him: Reboot the Internet Explorer, it work now.
Me: No, it really doesn't.
Him: Reboot, it work when you reboot.
Me: Yeah. Doesn't though.
Him: Reboot again, til it work.
Me: *Hangs up*
And guess what? 10 minutes later, everything worked. And no, I didn't reboot. A reboot won't fix a connection issue unless it was a problem with the computer, and it wasn't. Stupid ISP hadn't switched the phone number over and had the cheek to try and make me think they 'magically' fixed things by trying to buy time by making me reboot. Yeah, I don't think so somehow.
——
And what if I don't want to use Internet Explorer? ^
Humouring him now ^
It hadn't. ^
One of the questions I am asked most is "will you write a tutorial on how to install PHPAskIt?". My answer to this is always no because people need to learn to read. Included in the PHPAskIt zip file is a file called readme.txt. Now I don't know about you, but when I'm unsure of how to install something, the first thing I do is to look at the readme file (if there is one). When a file is called "READ ME" it usually signifies that it should be read, no?
So why am I bombarded time and time again with this question when I clearly explain how to install the script in the readme file? That, I cannot tell you. But what I do know is the internet population appears to be getting stupider. People use known insecure scripts such as Wak's Ask&Answer and CuteNews because "nothing's ever happened to me" and "I like that script"; people take images they have absolutely no permission to use (and they know this) and make website layouts out of them; and as Jem regularly points out with her Pants Awards, there is no shortage of people giving out stupid advice in the form of tutorials.
I came across a site the other day which combined the aforementioned issues. The site owner had been asked "please can you write a tutorial on how to install and use PHPAskIt" and had done just that. They wrote exactly what I wrote in the readme file, just worded slightly differently. I'd link the tutorial but the site's gone on hiatus (how convenient). What was the point of that? So imagine my delight when I found yet another one of these tutorials. I kid you not, this one is even worse than the other one, and assumes the visitor can't read or something (um, redundant much?).
The tutorial basically follows this format:
- Download the script!
- Upload everything then go to install.php! Yay! Done!
- It will say delete so and so files, delete these files: import directory, upgrade.php, install.php
PLEASE LINK ME IF YOU USED THIS TUT!1!!
"So and so files"?! So basically you're assuming your visitor hasn't read what's on their screen (it tells them which files to delete) or that the message is too confusing (um, you just wrote it out again, word for word. The point?) or something and that your tutorial is the answer to all that? Get over yourself.
Oh yes, and while I'm in a rant mood... I've noticed someone is commenting around the place using my URL. This person appears to go by the name of "Nancy" and uses my site (or the link to PHPAskIt) as their URL. Thanks for the extra hits and everything, "Nancy", but this site actually belongs to me and I'd appreciate it if you could stop doing that.
If you came here from one of "Nancy"'s comments, sorry to disappoint and all, but my name's Amelie and I've never heard of anyone called Nancy.
Pssst: If you have received a comment from "Nancy" using my details, please contact me as I'd love to see who on earth is doing this. :)