British Telecom

aardvaak

My telephone line at home has been broken since last Friday and when reported on Saturday they said they would fix up to Thursday 10th October ie 3 working days.

Is this normal as no line an no internet this being sent on btwifi.

As this is still not fixed they obviously mean 'on' not 'up to'

Repairs on lines previously have'nt taken this long.

Is it still true that bt engineers only work the second part of the week and weekends to earn more overtime clearing backlogs?

Mr_Toad

It depends on what's wrong with the line. It might be something simple or it might be that some major work needs doing.

Who told you the engineers only work the second half of the week? It's complete and utter rubbish!

You can't compare this fault to previous faults as you have no idea what the problem is. A broken wire in a cabinet will only take minutes to fix. A break in a major cable running under a busy street with no spare pairs in it can take a lot longer.

macman

No SLA on a residential line, so 3 working days is pretty good. If you want a faster response, you have to pay for a business line.

Prothet_of_Doom

My phone line stopped working for incoming calls on Monday 23rd of Sept, although the wifi internet via 02 (or sky who have just bought them), still worked fine, and we could still dial out.

I reported it on the Tuesday, via the internet, contacted them by phone on Friday (after the 16:75pm target time had expired), when I was told by an offshore call centre (Indian would be my guess from the accent), that it would definately be fixed by Staurday, and they would call me by 4pm if thee was still, a problem. I phoned on Saturday at 5pm to be told it would DEFINATELY be fixed by Sunday and they would call me, and again I was fobbed off on Sunday, when I was told it would be working on Monday. I did not call monday, but on Tuesday I had to go to the USA, and they phoned me at about 5pm UK time on WEDNESDAY 2nd Oct to tell me it was now working. That call to my mobile cost me £2. Thanks BT. So very effective.
I was thinking of changing broadband supplier, as SKY/o2, are not an organisation I want to give money to, but I'm not going with BT, and will probably change phone supplier at the same time.
If they can't repair a simple line fault in under 8 days, then I'm not impressed.

S0litaire

BT engineers have a few tricks in how they can wire a line up for voice and data.

I had Infinity installed last week and during the install i lost voice/dial tone on my phone but still had data due to a problem with the connection strip in the cabinet took the engineer a few tries to get it right.

As getting a problem fixed quickly I've found out that If you go onto the BT community forum and gripe there with the full details of your problem you'll get a UK based support call in a few hours and fixed in a day or 2.

also make sure you ask for compensation if they say it will take 3 days to fix and takes longer then you can claim for the days that it ran over (they might try to fob you off but stick to your guns) not sure if it's changed but standard compensation was 1 months line rental credited for every day it ran over.


my best was 12 years ago when a problem with my voice ran on for 16 days after that said it would be fixed got a nice check a few weeks later from BT of around £240 after i lodged a claim.

aardvaak

Mr_Toad wrote: »

It depends on what's wrong with the line. It might be something simple or it might be that some major work needs doing.

Who told you the engineers only work the second half of the week? It's complete and utter rubbish!

You can't compare this fault to previous faults as you have no idea what the problem is. A broken wire in a cabinet will only take minutes to fix. A break in a major cable running under a busy street with no spare pairs in it can take a lot longer.

I was told it was a local network fault although my other line without internet access is unaffected - they also said they did'nt need access to the premises

aardvaak

macman wrote: »

No SLA on a residential line, so 3 working days is pretty good. If you want a faster response, you have to pay for a business line.

What is "SLA"?

penrhyn

I'm guessing Service Level Agreement.

Inner_Zone

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

My phone line stopped working for incoming calls on Monday 23rd of Sept, although the wifi internet via 02 (or sky who have just bought them), still worked fine, and we could still dial out.

I reported it on the Tuesday, via the internet, contacted them by phone on Friday (after the 16:75pm target time had expired), when I was told by an offshore call centre (Indian would be my guess from the accent), that it would definately be fixed by Staurday, and they would call me by 4pm if thee was still, a problem. I phoned on Saturday at 5pm to be told it would DEFINATELY be fixed by Sunday and they would call me, and again I was fobbed off on Sunday, when I was told it would be working on Monday. I did not call monday, but on Tuesday I had to go to the USA, and they phoned me at about 5pm UK time on WEDNESDAY 2nd Oct to tell me it was now working. That call to my mobile cost me £2. Thanks BT. So very effective.
I was thinking of changing broadband supplier, as SKY/o2, are not an organisation I want to give money to, but I'm not going with BT, and will probably change phone supplier at the same time.
If they can't repair a simple line fault in under 8 days, then I'm not impressed.

Unless you go cable, BT Openreach will be the people installing and or repairing the line irrespective of whether is BT, Sky, O2, TalkTalk etc.

Prothet_of_Doom

Inner_Zone wrote: »

Unless you go cable, BT Openreach will be the people installing and or repairing the line irrespective of whether is BT, Sky, O2, TalkTalk etc.

There is cable in my street.

ukcarper

Prothet_of_Doom wrote: »

There is cable in my street.

You will be limited to that company for both broadband and phone and might not get better service.