BT, do they know what they are doing????

[beast5680]

here,s the scenario,
Missus has taken on the role of assistant parish clerk where we live and as such needs a seperate phone line for council business, nothing unusual so far, rings BT to get estimate of cost man comes round and says we need a new line put in as the old one cant be split ?
he says they will quote and let us know
we,ve heard nothing as yet apart from a garbled answer phone message from an indian gentleman who appeared to be calling from a broom cupboard in delhi :-. to say the order/quote was delayed subject to something i didnt catch and we would be rung again on the 22nd july :roll:
missus flew out to iceland this morning leaving instructions that if i recieve the quote to forward onto the clerk for approval
I came home from collecting the kids from school and a quick run into town to find 2 polish guys digging like their lives depended on it across my front lawn laying a conduit for a cable, they have a job order for the work from bt :shock:

hows that work then???? we have enquired about cost heard nowt and now they,re in laying cables is this normal operating procedure?

[Yoshi]

BT are complete morons.

Bettyblue22 is having problems with them at the moment.
She is supposed to get 200 free sms messages through the land line as part of her calling plan.  She sends about 10 messages a week using the BT phone and gets charged for them all.  So we go for the phone marathon with BT who say she has used all of her allowance which is why she is being charged.  Now obviously we say we only use it for about 10 a week and they come back and tell us their new digital monitoring service which keeps the records of when you use your phone is completely faultless and never goes wrong. 

Obviously it does go wrong but they wont admit it!!! 

Do what we did, if you dont get any joy with BT, call ofcom and complain about it.

[wormster]

Why not just get a cheapo tesco pay as you go mobile and use that, then if/when your other half stopps doing the parish work it can be handed onto the next person, no need to deal with the numptys at BT.

[Disco Matt]

We've not had any trouble with BT, but I dread the day when we have a problem. Our broadband went off overnight a couple of weeks ago, I was bracing for the attempt to make a fellow in Delhi understand the problem and sort it out when it slunk back the following morning!

[Jimbo]

Strictly speaking you're dealing with Openreach - they are the bit of BT who are responsible for getting the copper from the exchange to your front door, and they foot the bill even if the existing cable to your property (overhead or underground) doesn't have capacity for another line.

I had a second line installed (doing a trial thing for work, they offered - I accepted, 8mb broadband and free calls for a year, can't be bad  :D). The first Openreach man turned up, looked in the manhole at the existing cable feeding the house, said sorry, can't do anything, not enough pairs, you need a new cable/duct laying.

Two days later, contractors arrived, dug up the lawn, laid new duct.
Next day, second Openreach guy appears, pulls new cable into new duct, re-terminates existing line onto new (better) cable, and provides second line.

Job done - all the 'civils' costs (duct laying etc,etc) is covered by Openreach.

Couldn't fault the Openreach guys - polite, neat and tidy workers.........and they knew that I work for the opposition !!

[beast5680]

the two guys digging the trench were polish very polite and work like trojans, the ground here is clay baked hard now and very difficult to dig by hand which they were doing but they have tidied up after themselves which was good

[carbore]

Quite often no, they cocked up my home connection when I moved so I was off line for about 2 months. However the individual engineers are allways fine and know what they are doing. Its also offcoms fault, they split BT and insisted that Openrach who do the lines cut all system/process ties with BT so they had to developa new sysstem and put chineese walls in so that other providers got the same service unfortunately its a lowest common denominator approach.

Dont worry about the gys wiht spades, they may just be upping the provsion in your areas based on seeing what your enquiry raised, and thats a good thing.

Another alternative is Vonage.co.uk  (broadband but not like skype) , you can set up a local number as the dial in number and it uses a box that plus into your router (ora wi fi phone) You get a propper phone number, cheep calls and can do things like re direct it to a mobile if un answered, has voicemail and will email you the message, I use one for a Business that I have on the back burner and it works really well (she could re direct ti to another councilr/council offices if on holiday for example)

[Skibum346]

.........and they knew that I work for the opposition !!

Which opposition Jimbo...?

Skibum

[Jimbo]

.........and they knew that I work for the opposition !!

Which opposition Jimbo...?

Skibum

Well not strictly the opposition, and definitely not a cable co, but it's got Cable in the company name.......... ;) ;)

[Skibum346]

.........and they knew that I work for the opposition !!

Which opposition Jimbo...?

Skibum

Well not strictly the opposition, and definitely not a cable co, but it's got Cable in the company name.......... ;) ;)

Aha!

Are you ex Mercury like me though...?!

Mercury/C&W for 13 years!

Skibum

[Jimbo]

.........and they knew that I work for the opposition !!

Which opposition Jimbo...?

Skibum

Well not strictly the opposition, and definitely not a cable co, but it's got Cable in the company name.......... ;) ;)

Aha!

Are you ex Mercury like me though...?!

Mercury/C&W for 13 years!

Skibum

Yep, ex-Mercury (and TR before that !), 22 years this August !

[LiftedDisco]

Surely if the cable comes via poles, there is no need for conduit...  [-X

Sorry, truly sorry but couldn't resist... :off topic:

I think I'll get my coat...

[beast5680]

even better today :-. they left a phone message saying they couldnt complete for 2 days as there was a fault further down the line, they leave a phone number if there is any queries, i try it no answer so i go out to my daughters last assembly at 2 this afternoon and return at 3:45 to find an engineer just  finishing fitting the cable through the conduit and testing the line :shock: it all works he says you just need to plug in a phone and off he goes :?
I ring the number from the earlier message(now i get through) and say to the woman "could you explain how your engineer has fitted a phone line to my house without me ordering it?"
she says" can i have your order number please"
"No" i reply "i,ve not ordered anything therefore no order number"
we then enter a long discussion about how they have managed to dig a trench across my garden and install a phone line without an order confirming i want same phone line
"so what if i now say i dont wish to proceed as your too expensive then" i ask" am i to assume you will come and restore my lawn to its former trenchless state"
she doesnt really come up with an answer for this
so it turns out after all this because we had 1 engineer come to look at the job *with a view to pricing it up* they assume we,re going ahead and having it anyway :-.

i cant decide whether they are efficient or incompetent

[clbarclay]

Sorry, truly sorry but couldn't resist... :off topic:

I think I'll get my coat...

Here you go