Changing telephone line providers ( not quite DIY)

[lynd]

Anyone had problems when they tried to change telephone services ?

Or am I the only one?

[Pilbs]

Who you going from/to

[lynd]

Went from BT to One Tel.

Was promised that line rental would be transferred and I would keep all my existing conditions ( 1471, 1571, ex directory and number with hold facilities) .

Have ended up with none of those ( 1571 and number withhold and ex directory are very important because of my job). When I have tried to get them connected I get a call centre in India(?) who tell me that they will call back and explain when the connection will be made. Its hard to explain more than one problem at a time as we do not seem to speak the same English language!

Conversation goes " I was told I would have 1571 / number with hold / ex directory. This is not the case." ( because if I say anymore I am not understood and the call girl / man in India gets confused)

Call centre agrees this was promised and I have not had the connections made. The I am told someone will call me within the next 48 hours and tell me how long before they rectify the problem.

No one calls back.

I have rung them three times now and been told to expect a call from technical services in the next 48 hours. No calls.

Getting fed up. Just wondered if I was having a bad experience or if this was common

[Harry Bloomfield]

lynd used his keyboard to write :

Our move BT to OneTel went smoothly and we kept all the BT facilities. All they do (so far as I am aware) is add the dialing of the prefix for OneTel in at the exchange, so there should be no change in your existing facities with BT.

If something has changed/been lost, then it might be worth asking BT.

[Andy Pandy]

No help I'm afraid but you're definitely not alone.

There was an article about their poor customer services in the Financial Mail by Guy Dresser last Sunday week, since when apparently they have been flooded with calls from disgruntled customers who had simlar issues with the Call Centre and their billing.

It said that Onetel had vowed to help any customer referred by the Financial Mail so that may be your best route.

HTH Andy

[Mr Fizzion]

I think a first question to any company offering services should be "Is your call centre in the UK?".

Is it really worth transferring to one tel? Are they especially cheap?

Mr F.

[Andy Hall]

So why are you surprised? Presumably you changed to this provider to save money on calls?

This is achieved by cutting cost on the part of the supplier and a significant aspect of that is the level and amount of customer facing service.

The outcome is not really surprising.

[Bob Eager]

Surely OneTel provide little saving on the line rental?

Stay with BT, and there are third party services that do unlimited length calls for 0p/min and a connection charge of 2p.

[lynd]

if I was having a bad experience or if this

well ..... actually I went to One tel because of mis information from BT!

I wanted a package for calls that gave me anytime calls for a fixed fee. BT told me they didnt do one.

One tel gave me a call package that was 24/7/365 for calls for a fixed fee of £11.00 a month. Then I had to pay BT a land line charge of £10.99 a month on top.

Then One tel rang me up a few weeks ago and said that I could now pay my landline charge to them instead of BT and that I would keep all my existing conditions ( I had 1571, 1471, ex directory and number with hold) , all that would happen as I understood it was that I got one bill for line and calls from One Tel. This would cost me £9.99 for the line rental and £11.00 for the call package a month. That was to be £21.00 for the package. All the 1571 and such like were, as they had been with BT they said ( free)

In fact as I understood it nothing should actually have happened to my line at all, it was just that legislation now allowed them to rent lines off BT and charge customers for the lines instead of BT having a monopoly.

I hadnt had any trouble with changing the call package from BT to One tel so why should this make a difference?

I agreed because it would give me just one bill instead of two a month and would be easier to follow and track.

Since One Tel is centrica ( British Gas) I couldnt see a problem. I get my electricity from British Gas and have no problems. Its not as if this is an

• unreputable* company in track record.

Anyway, upshot is that I have a letter saying the landline would change on August 1st. It says that 1571 , ex directory etc. would remain. When the changeover happened they all disappeared!

I have no 1571 ( which I do use a lot when I am out) but more importantly I have lost my ex directory and number with hold which in my job are really important. Since my number is now available I could have loads of nutters and fruit cases ( oops , sorry clients) ringing me all hours of the day and night. This is my home line. My home is sacred territory to me. I do not want it invaded by my work.

But , yes, I changed partly for cost but not exclusively so.

I did not expect what has happened.

And yes, I am changing back to BT. BT now tell me that they have a package for £25.50 a month which does everything One Tel were claiming to do. But had BT told me that in the first place......

meanwhile I am stuck with One tel, no 1571 and no with hold number and everyone can just get my number at will. Not a good situation.

[John Rumm]

They do, it is called BT Together Option 3

Answer machine?

Dial a 141 prefix before the number you are calling to withold your number on a per call basis until they get it sorted.

[lynd]

I have now been told this. That said , when I swapped my call charges over , BT didnt do an option 3.

importantly I

I did have an answerphone before I had 1571 but I do not have one anymore.

I am just annoyed and frustrated that I had all of these things and am now forced to resort to buying a new answerphone ( and then I have to find a plug to plug it in. None where the phone line is)

Thanks. Its getting it sorted that seems to be the problem and the issue here. One Tel dont seem want to know and dont want to do anything to put it right. They were quick enough to ask for and change the line over, but slow to give me the promised facilities.

[OG]

Didn't happen to me, but someone I know had contacted one of the cable companies to find out the cost of a cable/phone/internet deal. Nothing came of it (his house was set back quite a bit from the road and laying the cable would have been messy and expensive), and he thought no more about it.

Months later, he started getting people coming up to him in the street saying that they'd tried to call and not got a reply - or they had gotten through to someone else - on his number.

Following an investigation by oftel it turned out that the cable company had held his number on record as a potential customer and then moved it into their pool of available numbers. Within a week they had assigned it to someone moving into a new flat.

From that point on, if someone called from a BT line, they got through to my friend, but if they were a cable company subscriber they got through to the other guy.

[John Cartmell]

Since when? BG had a reputation for sending out bills for £0 - 0s - 0d with a nasty reminder to follow - and that must have been over 35 years ago! ;-)

[Frank Erskine]

Bwaaaaahhhh!

[John Rumm]

I have been using it for a couple of years now...

[Michael Mcneil]

I'm with Home Call. They got me when there was this move to allow other operators to control the flow.

I'm not interested in deals and such as I rarely use the phone.

I had no end of trouble with BT when I was trying to get online with them and absolutely no fee help. I wasn't going to pay 50 per minute just to connect to a service I had a CD for. I got 5 CDs from them before I exploded.

So I thought bugger them, I'm off. And as soon as I could I got rid of them as my linesmen too. As it happens I think I am up a few bob on the deal.

Just change your supplier once more. It's as simple as that.

This is the 21st century. We don't have to put up with czjd these days.

[manatbandq]

I had a problem with TalkTalk. I was already signed up for landline calls but they didn't automatically change my telephone calling plan when I signed up for a broadband deal bundled with free evening and weekend calls. One call (answered almost straight away) to customer service and it was fixed in the most efficient and friendly manner possible. I have now changed to them for line rental too. Saves all of =A36/yr but it's convenient to have a single bill and direct debit to deal with.

I wouldn't hesitate to recommend them to others.

MBQ

[Elizabeth]

We also went from BT to Onetel in May and have had endless trouble! We have two lines one for normal and the other for fax and internet. The "normal" line went dead in the middle of a call nearly three weeks ago and we still have not been able to get things sorted out Calling their "customer service" in India is a nightmare. Like the previous poster we were promised a call back and nothing happened-----the excuse is that the line had been transferred back to BT-------at no time did we ask for this, contacting BT ( where we had a most helpful chappy in the UK) they said they did not have the line ! Anyway to cut a long frustrating story short we are transferring that line back to BT ( we hope, if they can find it) and wish we had never tried to save a couple of pounds in line rental

I wouldn't recommend Onetel as a line provider, as an ISP , however they are not too bad! Elizabeth in Renfrewshire, Scotland. Removex to reply

[Owain]

British Gas told me today I'm not eligible for a 'prompt payment' discount on the final bill as I changed supplier.

Oh well then, all the more reason to wait on the red bill, forget to sign the cheque and forget to stamp the envelope then. Careless me, eh.

Owain

[Pete C]

Like 18866:

cheers, Pete.