BT - Who to complain to?

codger

When we moved into our new-build property, it was fully connected and merely required line activation. BT was advised of our impending move three weeks ahead of the date and acknowledged same.

The line was meant to be activated by a visiting BT engineer on the afternoon we moved in. Instead, we received a message from BT on our mobile phone to say no visit was necessary, the line had been activated "remotely".

For the next three days we had no dial tone. We used our mobiles to (expensively) complain to BT. BT said on each occasion it would check the line. It did. On each occasion it said the line was working perfectly.

The phone did ring out on several occasions as friends tried to get through to us but we couldn't hear them nor they us. By accident, we dialled 1571 (instead of 1471) to see if we could recall the last number which called us. To our astonishment we listened to three recorded messages from people we don't know to someone we've never heard of. The calls were timed / dated seven days before we occupied the property / before BT even activated the line / our new number.

On the fourth day an engineer came out. He started off by warning us the fault could well be the builder's, something to do with all the new sockets etc. BT was not responsible for faults inside the property.

He couldn't explain why we had 1571 messages. He was unable to make the phone work.

Next day he turned up with another engineer, a "senior" engineer. His visit was a revelation for the following titbits of information:

1) When BT tell you they have checked the line and found it to be working, that's not necessarily the case. The equipment used to test the line remotely is pretty primitive. BT cannot actually tell, beyond doubt, if a line is OK or not. The only way to be sure is for an engineer to make an on-site visit.

2) A subscriber's private 1591 recorded messages can be misrouted / mis-accessed. So calls to a different number were being archived against our number. But he didn't know why.

This senior engineer now spent four hours checking every socket in the house to see if they were faulty. They weren't. (But this was only after I'd promised to pay for the check -- I would've billed our builder). No charge was made though because the sockets were OK.

Finally the engineer vanished and came back an hour later. A fault had been found some distance away in a BT "cabinet", whatever that is -- cocktails? The "cabinet fault" was due to corrosion (too many spilled cocktails, then).

He was extremely sorry, the fault had never had anything to do with us and no, the line had always been faulty despite BT's repeated assurances to us that it was working OK.

Doh.