Why I ran screaming from BT into the open arms of Virgin

A year ago, I moved into a pretty cottage in the grounds of a hotel. It was lovely, if impractical. I called BT a month before moving in and informed them of my new address. They said I had to renew my contract or I'd have to pay a humongous cancellation fee. Despite having had consistently awful service from them since I joined, I had to stay with them as the deposit for the house had bruised my bank balance.

Anyway, they assured me that service would arrive on the day I moved in. This, of course, was not the case. I moved in to the property to find that neither the phone nor the internet was working. I called BT - on a mobile, at an extortionate rate - and told them the line wasn't working. They told me it was, and hung up. Literally hung up on me. This went on for two months: Husband or I would call the so-called 'customer services' department; they would tell us there was nothing wrong with the line and hang up on us. Eventually we managed to get through to a nice man named Gary, who listened to what we had to say and said he would send an engineer. Obviously it was one of those "between 8am and 6pm" things, so Husband took the day off to wait at home.

The engineer didn't arrive. We called BT to ask why. They told us that our line was working, so the engineer had been cancelled. We told them the line wasn't working. They hung up. This went on for another few days, until we got through to someone who listened to us and arranged for another engineer. Husband took another day off. The engineer arrived. He was very nice. Sure enough, there was a fault with the line. He fixed it. Service appeared.

Then we received a bill for the two months during which we had had no service. We called BT. They hung up. We called back. I lost my temper slightly. They told us the line had been working the whole time. We told them it hadn't. Eventually, after a long and complicated process of talking to the engineer and getting him to talk to them, they realised that they were being stupid - yet again - and told us we didn't have to pay for no service. Great.

Then we moved again. We do that a lot, we like to have a change of scenery. I called BT and told them I wanted to change provider. They said I couldn't. I was too tired to argue. They transferred our (still slow, still patchy, still disappearing-internet-every-five-minutes) service over to our new address. Again, it took weeks to arrive, then it was there.

Some time later, I went online to find an 'important notice from BT' coming up instead of my homepage. Husband called them. They said they had cut our service because we hadn't paid the bill. We told them they hadn't sent us a bill. They said they had. We checked the bill online: £7 for calls. Fair enough, we hardly use the phone. £23 for phone and broadband. Fair enough. But the bill came to £183, which obviously is not the sum of 7 and 23. We clicked the 'breakdown' link. It told us the bill was for 'excess broadband usage'. This made very little sense. I work from home online. Husband spends a lot of time online. We therefore have unlimited broadband.

We called BT. They could not seem to understand the concept of 'unlimited'. The first guy hung up. The second guy didn't see what we were saying. Husband, trying very hard not to scream, patiently took him through the steps. "If something is unlimited", he explained, "then there is no limit on it. Therefore you cannot use an 'excess amount' of it. Therefore you cannot bill us for excess usage of our unlimited broadband." The man seemed puzzled. Husband gave up.

A little while later, after a cup of tea and some calm, Husband called back and got a very rude man named Sanjeev, who shouted at him. Husband did not appreciate being shouted at by Sanjeev, particularly considering that we had not shouted, despite the complete lack of cerebral activity among BT employees. Eventually Husband got the message across. Sanjeev informed us that BT had switched us to the basic package. We had not asked for this. Husband told Sanjeev that we had not asked for this. Sanjeev shouted. Husband hung up.

We called back. We tried to reason with two more BT employees, until we both wanted to strangle the phone with its own windy cord. We gave up.

Frustrated and desperate, I called Virgin. I was very surprised that someone picked up after two rings; with BT, we always had to wait at least half an hour. The lady was very nice. I explained that I would like to become a customer. She took me through the options. I told her it was very important to me that we have unlimited broadband. "All our broadband is unlimited", she replied, sounding puzzled that anyone would expect anything inferior. I picked a package I liked. She said my self-installation kit would be with me in 48 hours. I made a cup of tea.

Around 40 hours later, snow fell. Heavily. Trains were cancelled, the city was thrown into a frenzy. I expected delays in delivery. But my trusty Virgin package arrived. I followed the steps and encountered a technical hitch. I called Virgin. A nice lady named Claire answered after three rings. She helped me work out what was happening, then said something was wrong. It took a couple of days, but they worked out what it was, and today they called me to tell me that my service had been activated. I checked. It was working. I spoke to five different employees at Virgin, and all of them answered promptly, listened to what I was saying, responded and acted quickly and effectively. I have lost count of the number of BT employees to whom I have spoken - or attempted to speak - and all except one shouted, were rude, refused to listen to me and then hung up.

Thus I sent BT a letter. I'm leaving them. They are awful. Anyone who's shopping around: don't go to BT, go to Virgin. They're nicer.

And it's not just me. For more BT horror stories, check out the BT Community Forums.

Blog Marketing Fail - How not to email people

As anyone who has read my profile will know, I work in viral marketing. I am therefore sympathetic to others who do the same. I also started out in online marketing with no previous experience, and am therefore also sympathetic to those who are just finding their feet in the business. But when I receive an email like the one that landed in my inbox today, some of that sympathy dissipates. It went like this:

'Hey Blogger - My name is David

I have been searching the Internet for blogs that match our criteria and I wanted to invite you to become a paid blogger at Blog Distributor. (Please understand that I do not send this invitation to every blogger I come across, nor is this a guaranteed acceptance as we can't do a true review of the blog until it reaches our blog analysts').

...

Our system is set up so that bloggers can make more money with us than with any other blog-for-pay firm. In short, we are the middle man between you and the advertiser. We match the correct blogs with the correct advertisers, who pay us to do so. And then we pay you, the blogger on behalf of the advertiser. You only take the advertisements that you want and are comfortable with. In no way does this alter the owersship of your blog. You simply get paid to write postings on your blog that you choose to write. You do what you want, when you want. You decide what content to accept or decline.

...

I know some people might be worried, getting some random e-mail, so please do write me if you have any questions or concerns. Also do a search for us on Yahoo or Google and look for reviews.'

***

There is so much wrong with this.

Firstly, my name is not 'Blogger'. My name is Scarlett. This is really, really easy to work out by looking at the URL of this blog. If you found me through another one of my blogs, then you must have gone to the 'About Me' section to find my email address, where you will have also found my name. Use it. If for some reason you find using someone's name too difficult, a simple 'Hi' will do.

Secondly, what do you mean by 'searching the Internet for blogs that match our criteria'? What are these mysterious criteria that I have unwittingly fulfilled? Oh! But perhaps I haven't fulfilled them: '(Please understand that I do not send this invitation to every blogger I come across, nor is this a guaranteed acceptance as we can't do a true review of the blog until it reaches our blog analysts')' Why are you contacting me if you don't know whether you want me to use your service? Why should I go to the trouble of clicking through to your website and filling in the tedious form for each of my seventeen blogs at your demand, when you're not even sure if you want me? Contrary to what you may believe, I do have better things to do with my evening - which you would have known if you'd read my 'About Me' page, from which you picked up my email address.

Thirdly, grammar and spelling. They make a difference. "...until it reaches our blog analysts' " ~ your blog analysts' what? Eyes? Ears? Attention? 'In no way does this alter the owersship of your blog.' Ownership. I know it's a big long word, but that's what spellcheck is for. It reflects very badly on a company if you can't spell in your initial email.

Fourthly, empty claims. '...bloggers can make more money with us than with any other blog-for-pay firm.' Based on what statistics, exactly? How do you know how much other companies pay me to blog?

***

Anyway, being a patient person, I decided to sign up and have a look around. I followed the link to the Blog Distributor website, and clicked on the bit that said Blog Distributor's Rules. They all looked pretty straightforward, until I got to point 16:

'We will not accept postings with notes indicating the posting was paid for or is a sponsored posting (or any other language that communicates this point). If a note exists elsewhere on your blog that speaks of paid or sponsored listings, that's ok, it just cannot be on or near the posting done for Blog Distributor, and the postings that you create for Blog Distributor cannot be in a "Paid" section of your blog.'

For me as a blogger, disclosure is very, very important. If I'm being paid for a post, I'll tell you. I might not write it in huge flashing lights at the top of the post, but there will be a 'Sponsored Post' link, or something similar. Why? Because I value my readers, few though they may be.

Also, I'm pretty sure that it is in fact illegal to not disclose that you're being paid for a post. I emailed David to tell him this. To his credit, he responded very quickly. At ten o'clock at night. His reply?

'We don't have any problem with bloggers disclosing that the postings and sponsored or they receive money for them, as long it's not actually WITHIN the blog posting. That's all. Google looks for blogs that disclose they get paid in the actual blog posting and removes their PageRank in a snap of a finger, so, that's why we don't do disclosure in post. Disclosure is more than fine any other place (and as you said, needed).'

Sorry mate. Personally, I think it's pretty misleading to hide my disclosure somewhere else on the site just for the sake of my Google Page Rank. So no, I won't be signing up.

To be fair, it's difficult when you're sending out hundreds of emails to all different people. I know this. I do it frequently. And yes, I always email each one individually, and use their name if I can find it. Am I perfect? No. Have I made mistakes in the past? Yes, of course. And undoubtedly I will do so again. But this isn't just a simple mistake: it's a complete mess that doesn't take into account the blogger's existence, integrity or relationship with their audience.

And just for the record, this post isn't being paid for and in no way necessarily represents the views of the other people who work at any of my companies.

The Open University promotes new courses with Cleopatra: Beauty or Brains?