BT, again

is it their fault? A month ago we lost all electricity. Turned out a builder had shorted out the feed to 4 houses with his digger.

Yes. It's a recurring exchange fault. I can live with that, after all s*it happens (and then it goes to work for BT). What I find unacceptable is that this is the same fault, so why do I have to wait 5 days again?

They are just lying incompetents who don't give a s*it about their customers.

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Have you asked them? Have you got a satifactory answer? Presumably not.

So instead of jumping up and down in here, jump up and down on BT. Tell them to reopen the old fault not start a new one. If the "Customer Services" tellie tubbie says they can't do that, ask to speak to some one who can. In the circumstances I wouldn't have accepted the delay in getting Total Care applied to the line.

Spend a bit of time on google and put little snippets of infromation here and there together to find details of your BT regional office, might even be able to get a managers name for the faults section. Failing that dig for the relevant Directors and email them and the CEO.

Public complaints on BT Twitter/Facebook accounts ellicit good (public) responses. If you have those things or know someone who does...

It's been said here before, but after all that you might consider jumping ship to Zen. Your telecoms infrastructure will still be the same, as will the people who mend faults, but you won't have to talk to BT/Openreach ever again!

Zen are good at "encouraging" BT into action, and are a helpful bunch of people who don't leave you hanging on without information and updates. They are also happy to assume a degree of technical competence on your part and talk to you at that level.

Might be slightly cheaper too....

Charles F

Yes, one of the reasons i went with cable phone and broadband. I may occasionally have issues with them, but they do seem to strive to sort them out if you moan, more than can be said for BT, who act as if they are still the monopoly holder of comms in this country, albeit with staff on the other side of the world. Brian

I think the point is often attitude. IE if it were me who had had several faults on the same line I'd raise the issue up the pecking order to try to get to the bottom of it. Certainly this seems to be what Virgin do when I talk to them, but most people I know who are with BT seem to just be sent to the bottom of the queue, and the operator seems to have no discretion or ability to raise the problem up due to its history. I have to say that Talk Talk are much the same from what I hear, but in their case, they also c*ck up the billing as well. Brian

In article , Charles F writes

Zen have no enhanced care options available for their telephone service so the o/p may be no better off at all.

Encouragement is all very good but it smacks of asking favours, TotalCare is a contractual agreement so you can actually put some weight behind 24hr fix obligation.

Don't get me wrong, I'm no fan of BT but until Zen offer some contracted level of enhanced care above that of BT/Openreach's standard care for their phone lines they're no use to me.

Already doing that. I just needed somewhere to vent.

And if it puts someone off BT, so much the better.

Don't fanny about.

email the chief executive: snipped-for-privacy@bt.com

Be polite but to the point and you will probably find your problem is magically escalated.

I've had the misfortune to have to deal with BT in my working life for around 25 years. It is still something I avoid if possible: ineptitude and not basically giving a f*ck seems their modus operandi. Soemtimes, however, it is a necessary evil.

In article , Huge scribeth thus

Simple..

Just go to someone like Zen or Andrews and Arnold ISP's that are very easy to deal with and competent and do kick Openreach to get faults sorted quickly.

BT were given the heave ho here some while ago and much less grief and stress all round.

Even VM who do supply our net feed aren't as bad as what they have become!...

If your BB and or phone service is -that- important can't you just use a mobile?, or for BB a dongle mounted somewhere up high and connected to the router as a back up feed?..

Thank you. I have done just that. We shall see what happens. I don't have a huge amount of confidence.

We spend tens of millions a year at work on telecoms, not a penny of it with BT. And now I know why.

All the network suppliers I get to deal with are incapable of doing the right thing first time. Sadly I don't get to choose them.

To be fair I have dealt with BT commercially for the last 30 years and have always found them very good. The company I work for leases lines from them for controlling remote radio equipment. Whenever we get a fault it is looked at, not necessarily fixed, the same day and we have contact phone numbers and references to check up on progress. The great thing is being able to talk to the engineers who are actually working on the fault, rather than some desk bound person that doesn't have a clue.

Maybe I've just been lucky.

When I've had problems with my home phone lines it has been a different story though. Trying to explain to some idiot with a script that they have water in a joint box somewhere does not get me any where. When they get to look at it days later and it's dried out they report no fault found. It took 2 years before they finally got around to replacing an overhead run along a couple of poles in my road.

Does the contract say anything about what the escalation path is?

The only people I've ever encountered worse than BT were Cable & Hopeless.

Which bit of BT?

That certainly apllies to Customer Service and BT Retail and to lesser extent with Customer Service of BT Business, at least with BT Business you get to talk to some one in this country.

IMHO it does not apply to BT Openreach or BT Broadcast both of which are competent and do care, at least the people on the ground, though I do hear rumblings about the management from time to time.