BT - 2 months to install a landline

Bogof_Babe

My mum moved into a care home in mid-December, where the residents can have a phone with its own number in their rooms. She requested this straight away, the week before she arrived. They (BT) gave her a date of 19th January as the earliest they could install it, but said they'd let her know if there were any cancellations.

19th January came and went, without an engineer arriving, nor any information. On contacting them, we were told "oh sorry, we are short of resources", and that the next time they could schedule it for is 16th February .

The residents are not supposed to use the office phone, and the one and only payphone is in a very public area, so this is very annoying. Mum is far too old to get to grips with a mobile, and anyway she likes long chats (but not long enough to merit a contract moby!). She is recently widowed and living in a new town 130 miles from her old home, with only my sister to visit her, and she works. The phone was to be her lifeline. I haven't even managed to speak to her myself for a fortnight.

Come on BT, get your act together.

Astaroth

Installing new lines was the bugbear of BT when I worked for them. Going back a few years but at the time both the fee and contract for installing a new line was fixed outside of BT - it was also a legal requirement for them to fit a line if someone asked for one. All other telephone providers could charge what they wanted, decide if they wanted the job or not, put any minimum contract terms in they wanted etc.

Whilst working there one of BTs competitors was running a "promotion" telling people to get BT to fit their line and they would then refund both the installation cost and the 6 months line rental you are tied into - made particularly high note in BT after BT had to pay over £300,000 to wire up a very remote building in the scottish highlands only to get the installation fee (something like £60 if memory serves me correct) and 6 months line rental as the person had already signed up to actually have their service from another company.

Unfortunately with the storms of the last week fixing the lines of existing customers is probably seen as a higher priority over taking on new customers.