BT Broadband, an absolute joke!

warehouse

So my broadband went down on Saturday, and I called BT, who couln't fix it remotely.

An Engineer was scheduled for Tuesday, so my wife stayed in. She turned up, did tests all over the place, said it was the router/modem and ordered us a new one. When I got home I checked the line and it was completley dead. Great, now no phone and no broadband. Now 3 days since fault reported.

Called them up Tuesday night and some bloke in Bombay proceeded to tell me that his line test showed that the fault might be in my house and that a false engineer call would mean I'd be charged. Thanks.

No news Wednesday, no calls, no info. So I called up and the nice bloke in Bombay, (who was still hugely apoloetic), who told me that I'd definately get a visit Thursday or a call with a fix.

I am on a course in London this week, but took Thursday off and had to catch up today, (Friday). Midday, no news so I called the sub continent again. Sorry Sir, but reported faults are fixed up to 3 working days later. "THE FAULT WAS REPORTED SATURDAY", I calmly explained. Bombay Bill told me I'd reported the fault Tuesday night, ( a deliberate wind up?). I put the phone down and called the 03301234151 number, getting through to a nice lady up North somewhere. She explained that somebody would call me today, but I wouldn't get a visit, (if required), until tomorrow. I explained nicely that I'd seriously ****ed up my day to be home, and no visit would mean a call to Virgin tonight, (I have no contract with BT, checked today, so I can dump them anytime for no cost, and live in a cabled street). She promised she'd try everything.

6.15pm an engineer calls and says he might be able to get here tonight, I told him he'd better, (no I'm not proud I lost my temper at that point, but 1 minute dealing with this s**t is too long, let alone days). He turned up at 6.25, tried to blame my handset, then did a line test and luckily, (for him), the intermittent fault was there. It was 38 meters from the phone point, exactly at the point that the drop wire passes through a neighbours tree and appears to be rubbing on the wire. Hallelulya, they've identified the fault. How long to fix it?

Got a call this morning that following the Engineers visit last night we'll have it fixed today for sure said the cheery BT lady!

However, the Engineer who visitied yesterday was on leave today, and rather than somebody pick up the slack, they've already allocated all of todays work to other Engineers, meaning my fault is at the back of the queue again. Does anybody at BT have any common sense? It's 6 days today.

When the cheery lady phoned me back with the good news, she wasn't so cheery anymore. I was still on my course so gave her a bit of slack and said please sort it asap. Unfortunately, when I got home I thought "bo**ocks to this" and called them up again and let it go with both barrels, and I mean really let go to the point where I thought they'd hang up on me. A supervisor called me a while back saying they would pull out all the stops to get somebody here tomorrow, (Saturday, yeah sure you will), I wasn't particularly pleasant to her either.

Her indoors has now told me to "sort out cable and dump these clowns asap". She is one wise lady.
　
Please please, if you're considering changing to BT then read the above again, and DON'T. Tomorrow will be 1 week since the fault was reported and I am no nearer to broadband or a phone working again. Consider this when the kids are on holiday and want to social network wth their friends, to them it's like having limbs amputated, it's awful. BT are fine when things work, but dare to have a problem and you are seriously in trouble. An utter joke of a company. Technical support, (a good measure of any broadband provider), is diabolical.

You know and I know there will be no engineer this weekend. BTW, the router ordered on Tuesday still hasn't turned up either, not that it's the problem anyway.
　
　

BT_company_representative

Hi Warehouse

Sorry to hear about the week you have had with this fault. I can have this looked at for you if the engineer hasn't arrived today.

Send an email to the email address in my public profile and we can investigate for you further. Please include your account information a link to this thread.

Cheers

Stuart

pimento

What on earth did we all do before the internet?

kwikbreaks

pimento wrote: »

What on earth did we all do before the internet?

Moaned about the weather instead.

warehouse

pimento wrote: »

What on earth did we all do before the internet?

Time moves on, kids don't play with hoops and sticks anymore. Find me a 13 year old who doesn't use texts and social networking to organise their lives and I'll show you a 13 year old who lives in a shed . My kids spend more time out of the house than I ever did, so the balance is fine.

Anyway, it's FIXED! Exactly 1 week after the fault was reported. 7 days without the internet was like losing a limb for the kids social networking nonsense, and I felt like I was cut off from the world and no online poker, shocker .
The engineer who came today was a very nice guy, I talked to him about BT and he told me how understaffed the engineering part is, about 80 short in North West London alone. They have impossible targets, have trackers on the vans and big pressure to perform, overtime is almost compulsory to keep up with the work and stress is high. It's not a nice place to work right now

He called someone in with a cherry picker and they replaced the drop wire to the pole. The old wire was rubbed to bare wires, so not surprised it was so bad and intermittent. Can't fault the techies, they were first class. If only the visit last Tuesday had spotted the problem none of this cr*p would have happened. The thing is, it was the broken promises about engineers and then sending one who identified the fault yet the next day nothing. Tuesday at home, Thursday at home and Saturday at home. It's massive incompetence and i feel I must warn others what things are like at BT if things break.

Now the line is good again, time to see which internet provider is best value! Strangely enough the engineer told me that I have BT infinity available which would have been what I'd gone for, except it's BT and I won't take the risk anymore.

punksluck

I feel your pain. I've had very similar problems for past 12 months with either my connection being constantly dropped or no connection at all. BT also sold me a package where I could get a freeview box that would record TV onto the hard drive. After many hours of trying to get the thing to record I was then informed that my broadband connection wasn't fast enough for me to use this service!! Why on earth did they get me sign up to it if they knew It couldn't run properly on my rubbish BT connection?

The government need to step in and dismantle this shambolic company and sell it to the Japanese. Now they really know how to run a telecommunications business!

Mr_Oink

Three days - how lucky are you! It took me 4 days just to get IDNET to report my bloody fault. 11 days on they still have not fixed it - so don't slate BT just yet - the big money 'gold' standard ISP's are just as bad. If you want a joke then IDNET is comedy, it's just not funny comedy.

IvanDrago

BT has been awesome for me compared to o2 and AOL.

im moving soon though so lets see how they handle that!

warehouse

Update:

Due to being totally underwhelmed with BT's efforts to fix my line and the shambolic way I was dealt with, and then finding out the contract had finished, I've been looking around.

With BT I had low end broadband with limits, (I was regularly nagged), plus basic phone package which was costing me £32.50 per month.

With Virgin, I get 20mb broadband down a cable, and a phone package with free weekend calls for £31 per month, (first 3 months just £10). If you sign up via quidco you get £65 cashback on top.

So I just ordered Virgin, (no brainer), and it will be installed in 2 weeks! If I don't like them after 1 year then at least the copper line is fixed now . I also called BT last night and got £20 credit for the trouble this week.

kwikbreaks

The VM phone can be expensive. If you use your landline much you may want to look at VOIP (this is what I use).

If you want caller-id there is a chance it may not be available but if it is the cost is an extra £2.

uglysnoop

Help!!! just registered on here to ask for advise have managed to register but can't find where I click to start a thread?????
Added complication of being a Technophobe, so i have done well to get thus far. Anyone help????