The BT customer experience - still an epic failure

As an ex-BT customer I have experienced the pain of their customer service first hand that lead to it appearing in an article in the telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk) being named "worst customer service provider". The study by Internet market research firm www.onepoll.com named and shamed BT as the worst offender. My own lack of epic customer experience leading to me cancelling all my BT services many years ago to avoid having to waste time on hold or in calls where I would result in a call for more than thirty minutes without any resolution.  It is a real missed opportunity for BT (www.bt.com) who have some great broadband and television services but support these with useless customer service channels.

My recent return to this customer nightmare was the result of one of my email accounts being a btinternet one. This seemingly causes BT some problem when I have no service with them meaning they notified me that they would be cancelling the account with 4 weeks notice. A trifle harsh but I guess all in the small print I previously ignored. Resolution?  Sign up to premium email account at £1.60 per month to keep your account. With so many email options offering free services the prospect of entering a contract once more with BT filled me with dread but in the short term poses few choices. So sign up online and ignore the realities of dealing with BT. Not that simple. Online form = epic fail. So head for the phone number customer support, after one hour 20 minutes on hold finally get through to spend 40 minutes persuading the customer service rep to let me pay for the service. Not having any account and not being a BT customer clearly a challenge. In the course of this how many times did the words "cancel the whole thing" flag in my mind?  Plenty. Eventually convincing them they could deviate from the call sheet with some OFCOM references and paying for the privilege. Epic fail. When will BT wake up and invest in better customer service that matches up to their products.