Esat/BT overcharging

muffler

Hope this is the right forum for this.

I have the telephone and internet package with EsatBT for about 2 years. I was originally on the old dial up service but now have broadband. As most of you know there is a discount applied if you have both services with them.

My problem is that I am not receiving the discount and every time a bill comes out I have to contact them and then I am promised credit on to the next bill or a refund by cheque.

I have received several refunds but every bill that comes out is still wrong.

Esat/Bt tell me that I am the only person that this happens to and they put it down to some sort of a glitch in the system which they obviously are no hurry to sort out as this has been going on for nearly 2 years.

Is anyone else having the same problem?

It would be nice to tell them that I am not alone so to speak

govinda

I was an Esat/BT customer for six years, but ended up switching last month - purely because their billing service is a complete disaster. I switched to their Online Billing when it became available and from then on it was a complete disaster. One month I got billed for 23 Esat subscribers calls; the next I got billed for calls but no flat-rate Internet; it was only when I left them that I realised they had never once billed me for the Advantage Plus scheme. They promised in writing to stop debiting my credit card in December because of their constant f(uk-ups but continued charging it anyway. Luckily I had written proof so I had the charge charged-back to them by MasterCard.

I was in constant contact with the Complaints Team and Bill Murphy for about six months trying to resolve this - funny enough, I was also assured that I was the only customer this was happening too ;-) Good riddance to bad rubbish - brilliant service as far as voice/data was concerned but lousy billing and customer service/complaints team, in the end not worth the hassle.

A quick search for Esat or IOL and Billing on the main page of boards will show you are definitely not alone! Best of luck.

damien

Try complaints@esat.com , let us know how it progresses after that.

muffler

damien.m wrote:

Try complaints@esat.com , let us know how it progresses after that.

Been there, done that. in fact the problem persisted for so long that I made a complaint to Comreg last October (on the old dial up "anytime" at the time)

They (EsatBt)then appeared to run like rabbits in the car lights and I got an apology and a cheque which I thought was the end of it as I had then moved on to the free broadband trial.

The problem arose again when I got thew first bill for telephone/broadband in january. 20 something euro overcharged so they told me it would be applied as credit to the next bill. Then in March the actual bill for the 2 months was correct for the first time except that the IOU was not applied.

I was then told that a cheque would issue. Never got it.

My last bill has just literally arrived through the door. It appears cheaper but I still cant see any credit other than the normal discount for the package.

I will give them a call AGAIN and get them to decipher the bill.

Solair

It seems pretty clear that BT Ireland seem to have major billing problems. If everything's working fine and you've no problems with your bill their service is great. If anything goes wrong it tends to go horribly horribly wrong.

I seems like they've inhereited a crappy billing system from the days of Esat Telecom as they've always had these issues.

I wonder if it's worth brining up with their parent company in the UK ? After all they're using and damaging BT's reputation.

They are after all, the product of a merger of at least 3 telcos. Esat, Ocean and IOL so there's quite possibly a horrible cludge of billing and accounting systems in place. Who knows!

Fingers crossed they do something to get their act together soon. I'd say it's quite likely considering BT's promising big spends.

dahamsta

Solair wrote:

It seems pretty clear that BT Ireland seem to have major billing problems. If everything's working fine and you've no problems with your bill their service is great. If anything goes wrong it tends to go horribly horribly wrong.

This is precisely it, and you can see from our parallel discussion that it applies to their sales systems too. It's not just me, or me and muffler and a few isolated cases, every business I've ever dealt with that's done business with Esat/BT, small or large, has had major sales and billing issues. Some of them in the tens of thousands of pounds. If they can't get the business end right...

Service itself isn't bad most of the time, which is why I asked about it before I went with BT. So I gave them the benefit of the doubt. Big mistake. I should've trusted my gut and gone with Netsource or a local operator. They're all as bad as each other, but BT does seem to make a special effort to screw up.

BTW, this isn't a new thing Solair, and if the McCabe guy is anything to go by, nothing will be changing. Perhaps Moloney will crack the whip, but that remains to be seen. And I doubt the parent company gives a flying f*ck as long as the idiot cousins show a profit again next year.

adam

Solair

I guess it's a trade off. Most businesses and consumers are extremely happy with BT Ireland's products purely on a cost and technology basis. They may screw up the billing now and again but it's still a lot better than paying huge prices to eircom for the same service.

For that reason, I reckon that Esat never really had to pay too much attention to their billing system. However, with more entrants to the market, especially Smart, it's likely that they'll get their house in order pretty fast or they'll loose out big time. Even eircom's actually starting to compete a bit more agressively in the voice market with Talktime anytime which represents a huge saving for anyone who does make a lot of calls. Until that launched, Esat's Advantage Plus (now BT Talk plus) was the only product in that niche.

muffler

Just a wee update.

Checked the bill today and I was being charged something just less than €30 for 2 months "talk plus" which should have een €50.

Rang customer uncare and the nice girl there could not explain it. She did say that I was being undercharged which of course I already knew. She trawled through her system and could not offer any explaination.

Then I told her about the €20 I was owed and all of a sudden she was filled with renewed confidence and told me that was the reason why I was being charged less than usual..............at least that was what she thought and could be the only logical explaination for it.

She then assumed that the accounts dept. felt so bad about not sending the refund to me initially that they didn't want me waiting any longer so rather then send a cheque for the refund or apply a detailed credit to the bill it was best just to knock €20 of the 2 monthly charge. No details of any kind were given on the bill or on Bt's own internal billing system as to why I was being charged less.


She did admit that none of this was showing up on the system but the accounts people would log it in the next day or 2.

Anyway i have to agree with other posts that Bt ire. are good value but their billing is ufkcde up big time

(Short story about a seperate issue --- rang customer uncare 1 time to query something on the bill and the guy says he couldn't answer my query as he did not have access to my acount. Amazing)

Solair

Well according to their website I'm connected to their "takl plus" package.

It'd be nice if they could at least get their brandnamed packages typed in properly

vector

>I wonder if it's worth brining up with their parent company in the UK ? After all they're using and damaging BT's reputation.

Excellent point

Solair

Particularly as they're no longer a different brandname, as far as most people are concerned they're dealing with BT. Not Esat or EsatBT.

Big BT logo on the bill, etc etc..

I have noticed my new BT account number's a totally different format to the old one.

Used to be like a random combination of letters and numbers

Now it's like 21-111ZEL-1

I wonder if they're changing to a new billing system?