Well, it seems I was premature in my triumph at escaping the clutches of BT as my broadband provider. Having switched from BT to Zen on the 10th October, I was surprised to see a credit card charge coming through from BT Openworld dated 14th October.
I rummaged about on the BT web pages for an appropriate phone number, and found it spectacularly byzantine. Or possibly labyrinthine.
I found myself going round in circles (I made many telephone visits to India), and effectively discovered that the only operatives with any knowledge or gumption were those at the phone number for closing Broadband accounts. As far as I can tell, the problems include:
- a claim that it was the fault of my new ISP not telling BT to close my account
- a myriad of different broadband schemes on offer from BT
- the fact my broadband package was not paid through my phone bill
- most of the operatives oversees have virtually no knowledge or understanding of the systems discussed
In the end, and after about 2 hours on the phone, I reached a fellow who very quickly stopped future payments and refunded the 14th October payment. Well, we shall see!
The best telephone number I was given was 0800 111 4567, which merely told me operators were there 8am-8pm Monday to Saturday, then disconnected me. This happened repeatedly between 8am and 8.30am. Maybe they'd all been on the lash last night and hadn't made it in. Or maybe they were just wondering why no calls were coming through!
A final note - this seems entirely in keepng with the rubbish nature of BT helplines.