BT Total Care?

Jul 01, 2014 42 Replies

BT is so bad that I went to the only other choice for landline - wait for it! - TalkCrap! Fortunately I've had little reason to to contact CS (sic) and the connection is pretty stable.

The last one here, to put a line in my neighbour's house, was good (I let him in and looked after him - he gave me 2 NTE plates :-) ) He'd been trained by the army in fibre technology - got a job with Openreach

- on wire!

A&A staff don't pull their punches do they?

I expect A&A are more susceptible to this because they often supply DSL with Out Going Barred lines.

I have experience of this with other specialist ADSL suppliers and the OGB can be implemented in different ways

1) No dialtone. Just 50V DC and incoming calls

2) NU tone. So same as the above really

3) Dialtone. As above, but in addition non chargeable calls can be made. (I think that is called soft dialtone)

You can see that with 2) and especially 1) incorrect assumption can be drawn by the inexperienced.

And yes I have come across true naked ADSL with no "battery" connection but never as an intended configuration.

snipped-for-privacy@gowanhill.com scribbled...

Them's the nobs. One did me too. Installed a new line next door and knocked my cable and broke it.

"Nightjar scribbled...

You know that, I know that, but DL won't accept it.

Though of course the fact that you (and I) realised that is showing our age...

Its not showing your age *that* much... After Infocom was bought by Activision they kept it going until the early 90's

You can still download the Colossal Cave Adventure from various places, and it still runs in either a terminal window under Linux or a Command Window under BillyOS. You can even get hold of the source code and recompile it to run on whatever you like.

It's only a 360 kilobyte download. Go on, you know you want to...

But, you get them regardless of who you buy the retail bit through...

The main problem most have with BT are the poxy call centres and getting through the layers of useless customer interface. Going with a different carrier does away with that, but still retains the far better and more useful Openreach people.

Remembering playing a text based MUD on Prestel is ageing though.

Never tried that, but I still remember the excitement of getting my first Scot Adams adventure cartridge (Pirate's cove) for my VIC-20 one Christmas - must have been '82/83 something like that.

In article , tony sayer writes

Fine, but the buggers have no enhanced care levels on offer for the lines so are useless for a SOHO business operation that needs those features.

They are bullish about their enhanced support for broadband failures but have admitted to me that they don't apply to falling tree (or Kelly) related failures.

Until they offer enhanced care levels for the line itself I can't see how they can call themselves a true business provider. A shame as you pay a 54quid pa penalty if you take FTTC from them without line rental.

Hopefully they will see sense at some point.

It was called SHADES and came out in the mid 1980s. It had a nice community feel; a bit like uk.d-i-y without the trolls and idiots. Probably a similar number of regulars too - only eight could play the game at any one time and there were only eight versions of the game running simultaneously. Players could meet in a social area though and, as it allowed for instant chat, there was a weekly quiz night. Prestel shut it down very suddenly for reasons that very firmly were not discussed. I have always presumed there was an early case of online grooming.

So you have to hope that your provider will bash BT over its head when you get a line fault. Some do, many don't.

Not just SOHO, households as well. If the net was off for the normal sort residential "Standardcare" time scale, ie anything from four days to a week, I'd be hung drawn and quartered. £4/month inc VAT for a next or even same day, daytime, repair *every* day of the year is very good value IMHO. Our line is pretty good, get a fault maybe every 18 months on average, old ali cable...

Are there any preselect (no LLU here) providers that have a line service level the same as BT's Total Care (or better) with Caller ID and a rental

At Total Care service levels or just Standardcare?

Cheap calls I get via VOIP. I don't use BT to make calls, the line is used for some incoming calls but most are to ex BT numbers ported to the VOIP provider.

In article , fred scribeth thus

Well the few times we've had any problems on the services we use they've got Openreach to act very quickly:)..

Without all the Indian grief;!..

Depends on what you pay for...

In article , tony sayer writes

Good points both although I'd prefer if it was a contractual obligation to fix within 24hrs, as with Totalcare rather than goodwill.

I'm going to try and raise the issue with the higher ups at Zen as I think it really is something that would enhance their service.

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