BT phone line down !! 29 September 2006 at 12:20PM in Phones & TV 26 replies 1.7K views

Rhino666

Early Tuesday morning some idiot in a white van reversed into our telegraph pole and drove off. The pole was damaged but not broken and 5 houses in the road have lost their telephone lines. At least one of my neighbours phoned BT straight away and I phoned them on Tuesday evening. I spoke to the BT engineer who turned up the next day and he said that the pole would be replaced, even though the damage was minor and it is not broken. Here we are on Friday and nothing has been done.

This is a major inconvenience to me because I use the line for broadband and service orders on websites I run. BT have been completely useless - when I tried phoning them, spoke to someone in India who mentioned October 5th !!

Does anyone know what, if anything I can do about this and what compensation I will be able to claim.

Thanks

Mr Angry from Coventry

hammy_the_hammer

fortunately it is a decision for the BT engineer to make about the condition of the pole .....not members of the public.
ring back and ask them if they can clarify what's happening

gt94sss2

Rhino666 wrote:

Does anyone know what, if anything I can do about this and what compensation I will be able to claim.

BT will refund money under its Customer Service Guarantee. Normally this is just for the line rental, unless you can prove you have suffered an 'Actual Financial Loss'

You can also go to BT's website and monitor the status of the fault, arrange for SMS updates and for any calls to your landline to be divered to a mobile. (you also get more compensaion under the Customer Service Guarantee if you do this!)

Regards
Sunil

ahrimaniac

Compensation from BT for what? It's not their fault some prat has knocked their property over, is it? They'll fix it and won't pass on the charge to you, but why on earth should you get compensation from them?

That's like getting run over and sueing Honda instead of the driver.

withabix

Yup, BT are not liable to compensate you for anything. Why should they be? They didn't reverse into the pole.

Incidentally, is your line registered as a business line or a domestic line with BT?

From my experience dealing with BT regularly over temporary line installations for construction sites, October 5th would be about right for pole replacement - just over a week.

Think yourself lucky that you're not in the Outer Hebrides. When I ordered phone lines for a site there, BT advised that a pole would be required and that this would be installed in 12 WEEKS.

Obviously, if you're not happy with BT's service response, you could always change to a different supplier...cable (if available), satellite etc.

Dagobert

The [post=912699]Compensation Scheme[/post] has been replaced by a daily line rental rebate.

BT has no obligation to fix a fault within a certain time, regardless who caused the fault.

I have had to wait weeks for repairs and I know of fault resolutions that took months.

My 2 telephone lines are out of service on a regular basis, mainly caused by the dismal state of the local BT network:
2004: 130 days out of service, 2005: 72 days out of service, 2006: 127 days out of service

Rhino666

Thanks for the replies.

The BT guys turned up this morning at 8.00 and did a great job, replacing the pole and getting us all connected by 1.00 pm. I had to lend them my jumpleads to get the van going again though :-)

Compensation is obviously not for the damage that is oh so obviously not BT's fault. Compensation is for the unreasonable delay in restoring my phone and broadband connection. I can do without the phone but rely heavily on the broadband, as do my website customers.

.....and to the responders who defend BT's third world service and cannot identify with my expectation of a better response, I hope you are as relaxed about this issue when you are personally affected by it !!

gt94sss2

Rhino666 wrote:

.....and to the responders who defend BT's third world service and cannot identify with my expectation of a better response, I hope you are as relaxed about this issue when you are personally affected by it !!

Tuesday to Saturday seems quite good for a pole to be replaced on an ordinary domestic line with their normal customer service guarantee

BT do offer 'enhanced customer care' options - with much shorter/guaranteed response times and higher compensation but you have to pay for those options.

Also business lines will get higher priority than residential lines...

Regards
Sunil

Rhino666

Hi Sunil

Pole replacement is a more major issue, even though it only took 2 hours but surely provision of a temporary telephone connection should be possible until the pole has been replaced.

Dagobert

Rhino666 wrote:

.....and to the responders who ... cannot identify with my expectation of a better response, I hope you are as relaxed about this issue when you are personally affected by it !!

not relaxed, just resigned

See my figures above: believe me I get the screaming abdabs everytime. I work, bank and shop over the internet and have no mobile phone reception, and such bad line quality as a result of the many patches that I at best get 19.2 kbps dial-up* speed.


* ADSL out of reach

Dagobert

gt94sss2 wrote:

'enhanced customer care' options - with much shorter/guaranteed response times

In my case that would be a waste of money. The long response times have been caused by lack of man-power and/or the requirements for traffic lights, which BT has to apply for 7-10 days in advance and which will only be granted if there are no road-works within a 5m radius.