WHAT would happen to the car industry if any maker gave customer service quite as badly as BT does?

If it’s anything like the experience we’ve been forced to put up with for the last few weeks, I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be a car industry at all.

The problem with BT is it’s just too big. And inept. One hand doesn’t know what the other’s doing most of the time and getting different departments to talk to each other is like asking Koreans to cross the border and kiss and make up.

The thing is, BT knows you need it more than it needs you. Yes, there are alternatives, but there are only a handful and they’re either prohibitively expensive or can’t cater for your location.

If you want broadband from another provider, for example, you need a BT line – which means being forced to tackle the rigmoral of this infuriating company’s layers of ‘customer service’. If ever there was a case for false advertising it was in that department’s name…

USELESS

So what’s my beef? Well, in short in the past month we’ve been lied to by salesmen, sold a service on a promise that never materialised, had targets missed, lost business, been hung up on three times, put through to the wrong department five times and spent more than five hours on hold.

We’ve even had the help of one of the firm’s ‘managers’. She’s tried her best – even giving us her mobile phone number in case we needed to get in touch. It says a lot, though, when the manager of a telecommunications firm needs to give out a mobile number for you to reach them.

Oh, and we’ve tried calling her. But it’s always on voicemail. Understandable really as it’s more than likely to be an infuriated customer rather than mum ringing for a chat.

If you were selling a car and gave your customer a similar experience you’d be ruined. Just imagine the poor word of mouth that’d rapidly build up to rip your company apart.

But with BT it doesn’t seem to matter. It gets away with it. I’ve even taken to moaning on Twitter, but that doesn’t seem to help – just an autobot Twitter drone gets in touch with a mealy-mouthed offer of help.

Just imagine if Ford or Vauxhall were so big that they had the same share of the car market as BT does of the phone world. Would they get away with the same levels of service? Would government’s allow them to? Probably not.

I know what many people will think when they read this – ‘Why not use someone else’? Well, we rang around when we decided to move to find alternatives. They were either double the price or their installation time was even more disastrous than that offered by BT. Until rivals can at least match BT’s offers then there’s really little hope for any of us.

I tried calling BT’s press office for a comment, but they didn’t return my call. Tragic, but so very true.