Profits plunge 40% as BT coughs up £225m to avoid court battle BT's profits plunged 42 per cent to £418m for the first quarter, as the former state monopoly paid off £225m in settlements in relation to the accounting scandal in Italy. The biz coughed up the cash rather than go to court with Deutsche Telekom and Orange, after it wrote down the value of its Italian unit by £530m in January …
I wonder if that includes the way they handle their own customers? A few years ago I ordered a broadband package online, including prepayment of the first year at a reduced price, and got an "all ok" confirmation email. I phoned then two weeks later to ask how my order was going. "What order? We don't have any order." So I did it all again, including up-front payment for the year. They installed the line ok and it worked. And then they started taking Direct Debit payments from my account - because they'd lost my prepayment... You couldn't make it up...
Incompetent shambling morons right up to the top of the company. I wouldn't touch them again with a bargepole.
They just need to concentrate on giving a good service rather than getting involved in shite.
1 - Don't overpay (and then increase non-related charges) for football rights
2 - Don't play the same game as other broadband providers with stupid deals
3 - Retain current customers instead of hitting them with increases then offering a cheaper introductory offer to steal from another.
Just be a good company and money will come in.
Doubt this will ever happen though.
I think customers get bored after a while. These promotions are a good way of getting a cheap deal if you can be bothered with all the fiddling around. At least these days ISPs don't provide Email addresses so you don't need to stay just to keep your emial address. I've had deals for unlimited broadband and line rental for less than 10 a month, after cashback.
Since you admit to being a shareholder, I therefore hold you and those like you responsible for the madness and havoc which BT has wreaked on our nation's communications infrastructure for a generation.
If you're disappointed with BT, stop encouraging their bad behaviour by taking their dividends, and sell your bloody shares.
@Blitheringeejit - Not got a UK pension or other managed UK focused investment then? if you have then you are almost certainly also a BT shareholder! :)
FYI, the behaviour of BT you are intimating is a direct consequence of politically motivated Government and regulatory (ie. Ofcom) interference. Unfortunately, we have had a few changes of governments and regulator over the decades and none seem to have made a difference to the daftness that originates from these bodies..
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> We will continue to simplify and streamline the business
We're going to lay off most of our staff
> and rationalise our costs as demonstrated by our ongoing performance transformation programme.
We're going to cut so hard it harms our long-term business at the expense of this quarter’s CEO bonus.
> Our businesses are leaders in their core segments
We're a monopoly so suck it up
> and as we drive the business forward I am confident in the outlook for our company.
The hollowed out corpse will be flogged off to Verizon or AT&T
Given that I'm currently having a MASSIVE row where BTOpenreach won't supply an Ethernet line to me, because I've bought it through Virgin, because BTO previously strung my workplace along for THREE YEARS without doing a damned thing about the line.
Originally, they delayed, until Virgin stepped up and put the line in in three months. Then suddenly I had BTO people turning up unannounced on-site. Before finally telling me that "there's no room at the exchange".
This time round, we had no choice but to use BTO ducting as nothing else goes where we need it, and BTO have again dragged their feet for six bloody months doing nothing, I suspect purely because it's a Virgin line.
I'm on the verge of complaint to Ofcom because of it, because BTO - in six months - couldn't check if the duct was clear. Let alone put anything in it. Let alone provide a service. Let alone maintain that service.
When they can't do that for lines costings 10's of thousands a year, what the hell do they do for the little guy?
(P.S. the ducting is all in place... apparently it's "silted". And it needs a special machine. And then another special machine. And each machine takes 6 weeks to order. Strange that they didn't order it six months ago when their guy said the duct was clear, isn't it?)
I specified for this order - and I will specify for all future orders - that BTO's involvement needs to be kept to a minimum, or none at all. Because they are a complete anti-competitive shower of shite that cares nothing about actually providing connections (and we're paying for the damn installation charge!).
> and BTO have again dragged their feet for six bloody months doing nothing, I suspect purely because it's a Virgin line.
Why haven't Virgin complained to Ofcom, BTO's behaviour would seem to be a clear breach of their Ofcom defined obligations to independent ISPs.
>I specified for this order - and I will specify for all future orders - that BTO's involvement needs to be kept to a minimum, or none at all.
Perhaps more useful will be to record all the things that BTO say and do about the ducts and so on all future orders you can include a checklist of inspections, necessary equipment etc. that BTO have to sign off on ie. the local depot has the equipment (and staff trained to use it) for the inspection and clearing of ducts...
I assume the client's location isn't suited to the establishment of a rooftop line of sight link...
"Perhaps more useful will be to record all the things that BTO say and do about the ducts and so on"
My rule of thumb when dealing with Telcos: "record _everything_"
Virgin business are just as bad as BT. When our BT ethernet circuit started going intermittent (faulty BT line card at the interconnect into Virgin), they'd take 2 days to get BT onsite to fix it, due to spending an inordinate amount of time diagnosing all the other parts thanks to BT's charges "if it wasn't a BT problem"
Things weren't helped when the virgin techs started replugging the card whilst waiting for BT - who would show up to "no fault found", despite being told what had been done.
Needless to say Virgin didn't get their contract renewed and BT are toxic too.
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