BT Customer Service: From Broadband to Advisor Reviews

BT is a household name when it comes to broadband, TV and mobile services in the UK. It's time to see how BT Customer Service fares. Are BT Customers well looked after? Ignored? Is your BT Customer Service advisor experience going to be good? According to Ofcom, just 51% of broadband customers with a complaint last year were satisfied with the way it was handled. Let's see if BT customer service does any better

BT Customer Service Number

To contact BT Customer Service, you need to know the right number depending on your issue with BT. However, a good phone number to try would be the general BT customer service number: 0800 800 150 available Monday to Friday: 8am-9pm; Saturday & Sunday: 8am-8pm.

How Do I Speak to BT Customer Services

To speak to BT customer services, you must either call the BT customer service number 0800 800 150 or alternatively use BT Live Chat to talk to a BT customer service advisor.

As always, having a recent bill with you can lead to a better BT customer service experience so that you can provide your BT account details without delay and get to the heart of the customer service issue you are calling about.

If you want to speak to a real life BT customer service advisor, you should avoid calling 0800 443 311 since that is the Automated BT Customer Service number for BT account information purposes only.

BT Customer Service Email

There are several BT customer service email addresses to write to. The one thing they have in common is that they are all focussed on BT customer service complaints. They are not the best option for reporting urgent BT customer service issues. The following BT email addresses are better suited to escalate existing concerns regarding unsatisfactory BT customer service as opposed to raising a new issue.

The turnaround for getting answers from these BT customer service email addresses is longer than other ways of reaching out to BT. The quickest one is the BT customer service manager email where you can expect a response within one working day. However, the BT ad complaints email does not provide responses to complaints sent to it.

Another way of complaining in writing is by tweeting at the BT UK and BT Customer Care twitter accounts from your own twitter account. If you decide to complain to BT over Twitter, you can expect a brief public response acknowledging your complaint and a request to continue communicating over direct message in order to protect your privacy.

BT Broadband Customer Service

BT Broadband customer service has a dedicated number to deal with technical issues: 0800 587 4787. BT customers should be aware that the BT customer service advisor taking your call on that number will only be able to help you with issues relating to Fibre To The Premises connections. This customer service number is for residential customers because BT business customers have separate customer support options.

Additionally since BT broadband uses the Openreach network to deliver its broadband, there is also a dedicated number for that: 0800 023 2023 though there are no opening hours that are posted.

How Do I Chat Online With BT?

In order to chat online with BT, you will need to sign in to your My BT account with your BT ID. Once signed in, you can chat online with a BT customer service advisor.

A BT online chat window will appear in your browser and from there you will be enter your enquiry and you'll also be able to see and reply to messages sent to you by the BT customer service advisor helping you.

BT Account and Bill Services

You can access your BT account to check your latest bills by signing in to My BT. Apart from checking and paying bills, My BT Customer Service features include checking your service status, testing your broadband speeds, tracking orders and checking data usage (if you’re a mobile customer). Some of these features can give you the information you need without having to resort to BT customer services.

A new version of My BT has ironed out the former problems. Thanks BT for working hard to rectify the errors.

Additionally, BT now offers customers the ability to check and pay bills and manage their account, including BT Sport, in a few ways via its My BT app. This cuts down on BT customer service enquiries and means that BT customers can deal with their account with less hassle as well as conveniently sign up for BT TV packages. My BT app gives some cause for optimism, as reviews for it in both the App Store and on Google Play are reasonably positive.

BT Login

To be able to login to My BT and benefit from the customer service features listed above, it is imperative that you have a BT ID and password set up on your BT account. Your BT ID could be the email you gave when you signed up for BT. Additionally, you may be able to restore access to your account by using your BT account number which can be found on your BT bill.

Unable to log in with the new update today. An error message stating no account associated to my ID.

Once you've completed your BT login, you will gain access to convenient ways of reaching BT customer service since you will be within your account. Being logged in to your BT account is also handy when speaking with BT customer service since you can get any relevant details relating to your issue much faster.

BT Customer Service Reviews

To get a sense of how customers generally feel about BT customer service, we reviewed online customer reviews on leading UK business review and feedback sites. With a score of 1.3 / 5 stars, BT customer service quality does not look promising.

BT customer service stats don’t look greatOf almost 6,000 reviewers, a shocking 90% gave BT the worst rating of Bad. Less than 5% recorded a positive experience with BT, which does leave us thinking this is more than just a handful of angry customers kicking up a stink.

A closer look at the content of these reviews tells us that there are all sorts of reasons to be dissatisfied with BT customer service - reviewers cite everything from rising prices and mischarges to bad customer service interactions and engineers missing appointments. To give you a better idea, we’ll go through these recurring complaints categorically.

Another common complaint seems to be that BT customer service is not sufficiently proactive in communicating with you - even if they plan to cut your service due to late payment:

I was outside of home and needed to make calls, but found out via automated message that my phone was cut… My wife was driving using phone as navigation when hers was abruptly cut

This particular BT customer was late having cancelled their direct debit in order to take more control over his payments - he suspected BT customer service were continually overcharging him and wanted to keep an eye out. It’s an important lesson for those thinking of taking this route: do remember to make your payment as BT customer service is quite happy to cut you off without a word of warning if you forget!

BT customer services also get a lot of flak for the way its team approaches calls, with people left feeling that no matter what they called for they are being pushed (and often misled) into a sale.

I declined but despite having no new equipment this conversation somehow tied me into an 18-month contract. Spoke to numerous people and they used every trick in the book to make me pay a penalty or stay with them.

It seems that however tempting BT’s offers are initially, customers can’t expect to keep their bills down for too long. Its contracts, it says, are subject to annual price rises based on inflation, and when a contract ends it is automatically renewed at an increased price (which you should be able to see in writing as you choose your deal in the beginning).

How good is BT customer service?

Every year, Ofcom collects data on how companies like BT deal with complaints, giving us a handy indication of how much care the main players are handling their customers with. The most recent report found that, while BT customers had marginally less than the average reason to complain, just 47% of those that did complain were satisfied with the result provided by BT customer services. This is below the average of 49%, which is already low - only TalkTalk performs worse in this category.

Though the percentage of BT customers with a reason to complain was slightly below the average, the number of complaints about BT customer service received by Ofcom per 100,000 customers was well above. The average in this category was 58, while BT complaints stood at 79 - behind only TalkTalk (again) and Plusnet. So what is BT customer service doing to leave their customers unhappy?

Absolutely dreadful company if you have any sort of problem to solve. Raised an issue nearly 2 weeks ago and nothing since despite over 6 calls to various 0800 numbers.

This apparent lack of concern for issues being faced by its customers seems to be characteristic of BT customer service complaints handling teams, which isn’t at all encouraging. Paired with the problem of BT engineers either failing to turn up for appointments or failing to resolve the issue they were called out to deal with, you have the main sources of BT customer annoyance.

Beware of BT, signed up for their internet and they have managed to not only cancel my old internet but also the new one isn’t working. Their excuse is brilliant: ‘the engineer ran out of time.

Issues with BT engineers are common - another reviewer tells of two occasions on which an engineer failed to turn up and on the third time of asking the engineer arriving but failing to resolve the issue. This would not be so worrying (it could be the fault of Openreach, which is a separate entity) if customers weren’t also reporting a total lack of urgency or concern on the part of BT customer service teams in dealing with customers’ complaints about it. Regardless of your provider, problems can arise - to us, the care with which companies respond to these problems is what separates the good from the bad.

It’s safe to say the general impression of BT customer service isn't a great one. There are certainly some positives to report - opinions of the My BT app are good, and this is hugely important nowadays with the increasing demand for easy access to bills and accounts. BT would also point to certain data put out by Ofcom (below average call waiting times, for example) which paint an improving picture for its customer services.