BT down as thousands of customers slam 'annoying' issues with service

Thousands of BT customers have been left without access to their emails and internet this morning due to a major outage.

Over 5,000 complaints were logged on Downdetector from as early as 5am, with the majority of users reporting issues accessing their emails and some struggling with broadband connectivity.

Frustrated customers have taken to social media to contact the broadband provider, with many claiming they haven't received any acknowledgement of the system crashing, the Mirror reports.

One wrote to BT: "Email servers are down and there is no response on your chat. What is going on?" Another questioned them: "Why is BT Mail down and nothing appearing on your website to acknowledge?"

A third added: "Hi. Pls can you explain why when your email service is down there isn’t a pinned message on here to tell us what the problem is and when we might expect it to be fixed?"

Another user replied to another customer who claimed they couldn't access their emails: "Annoying, isn't it?! Got onto emails fine this morning, then got a message saying 'please wait for the messages to load' or something, then the DNS server error message. Can't find a way to sort it either. Deleted cookies, flushed DNS... nothing is working. Servers must be down."

Downdetector said the most reported issues concerned emails, with over 92% saying they were having difficulty accessing their BT email, then broadband (7%) and lastly the company's website (1%).

In October last year, UK's advertising watchdog cracked down on six major broadband providers, including BT, EE, and Virgin Media, for failing to clearly inform customers about mid-contract price hikes.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that the companies had misled consumers by burying important information about price increases in small print on their websites, rather than displaying it prominently alongside headline prices.