[Possum]

Some of you may remember the rant I posted at the beginning of April about BT's so called customer service. We were moving to our new home and they couldn't even get our address right when we asked them to transfer the phone line and Broadband.

True to form, they made a complete pig's ear of the whole process (and that is probably an insult to most of the pigs that I know). Although there was a functioning phone line when we arrived (April 17th), the promised Broadband was not working. It wasn't working the next day either, so we phoned up Bangalore to find out what the problem was. They said that the engineers in the UK had cancelled our "order" for Broadband, although they didn't know why. They would place another order but this would take 5 days to be received by the engineers as they didn't work weekends!

This was the start of increasingly frustrating daily phone calls to BT (sometimes lasting 2 hours) to try and get some sense out of them. After 10 days they realised that they had routed our phone line from an exchange that was 11 miles away, rather than the one up the road. Their solution to this was to cut off our phone line for the next 2 days.

Eventually a nice young engineer arrived from Taunton with his ladder. It took him 5 minutes to climb up the telegraph pole outside the house, reconnect the phone line and confirm that it was routed to the local exchange. He said that there was now no technical reason why our Broadband shouldn't work. If the Openreach centre in Taunton received an job number from Bangalore today, our internet could be activated within hours. Hooray!

Sadly, after nice engineer left, nothing further happened except for more daily phone calls to Bangalore. Eventually we wrote to the CEO of BT in London. Only then did something begin to happen. However, it still took another 5 days before our internet was connected. To this day, no-one has given us a decent explanation as to why this all happened.

It was the most stressful aspect of the whole move and OH is now seriously considering moving to France. The worst thing was that I couldn't log on to TAS to find out if anyone knew of a solution to problem. I really missed you all. However, I'm connected now and it looks like I've got a lot of catching up to do.

[Bionic]

Oh Possum, that sounds just dreadful. 

We had to wait for 3 weeks for our BT phone line and broadband but since we got it everything has been ok.

I had thought that being out in the wilds of Wales broadband connection would be slower but its no worse than it was before in Hampshire.

Hopefully everything will be fine for you from now on.

Sally

[FiB]

Commiserations.  We had a year long wrangle and at the end of it we got up to 500Kbs (half a Mb) at which poitnt they said - thats it thats the best we can do.   Meanwhile they keep sending me leaflets about super fast broadband....   ....Nevermind, worse things happen at sea etc etc.

[Possum]

You're quite right FiB, worse things do happen at sea. I should probably just get over it, but it just makes me so cross when large organisations treat their customers with such contempt.

I was constantly being fobbed off with excuses, half truths and even lies (like the engineers don't work at weekends). I don't mind so much if a mistake has been made, but if the people who have made it have no interest in putting it right, I get a bit upset. If it were me, I would be bending over backwards to make amends and maintain my reputation. But perhaps I'm just being a bit old fashioned.........

[little blue]

BT can be absolutley useless in our experience ...
... and we've fallen out with Talktalk this weekend as well!!

[Possum]

Is there any telecoms company that gives consistently good service? (Please don't suggest Sky)

[tizaala]

Makes no difference who you go to, they all have to use the same exchanges and cables provided by BT.

[Berkshire Boy]

Possum whats your problem with sky ?  We are with them and never had any problems since leaving BT about 6 years ago.

[FiB]

... Ive got a feeling that switching can be a problem once you are a complainer too - I'm sure they know!!!  I went a 'which broadband' kind of website - ended up getting a callback from talk talk.... super enthusiastic salesperson - went on some sort of database and then quickly backtracked and said oh sorry we arent able to provide a service in your area!!!!!!  Or maybe they have some ethics and wont say they are providing broadband (and charging for it more to the point) when it is not, unlike BT who have no such qualms!  I am constantly trying to put it into perspective - but it is hard when you are paying nearly £40 a month for  (including line rental etc) something that is crap!

[Berkshire Boy]

Our broadband is only about 1/2Mb but will do for now. We get ours free through Orange so can't moan really.

[Possum]

I'm with you FiB. If I was a technical sort of person I would be tempted to set up my own company to see if you could make a profit and provide a good service. Surely it must be possible???

Berkshire Boy - Just a personal reason about BSkyB. I don't really want to put any more money into the Murdoch coffers. (I'm not sure that I'm meant to say that on a public blog, but there we are, I've said it anyway)

[robert waddell]

possum it is the UK  it is still free speech  you have not said anything derogatory    they did have the politicians and the fuzz under there control    if they can hack into communications then others will be doing the same it is just they are not out in the open  YET 

[Possum]

You're right Robert - I'm probably being over-sensitive. However, when I think about all the stuff that has come out of the Leveson Enquiry I start to get a bit paranoid!