Incandescent…

…with rage!!

The year has gotten off to a shaky start. We still have no phone or broadband at home (I am yet again sitting in a coffee shop availing myself of their generous free service) and at the risk of boring the gentle reader I simply have to vent!

Regular ‘Imperceptibles’ will be aware by now of my recent battles with British Telecom (BT) to get this fault – which first appeared almost a month ago – resolved. I posted at some length on the subject here and here.

BT had decided before we went to Canada that the fault was internal to our premises and that a visit was thus required. I was not at that point able make an appointment for such a visit on a date after our return because BT would not take bookings that far ahead.

I therefore endeavored to set up the appointment whilst we were in Canada. I failed! The BT website – which had at one stage offered me a helpful link to create such an appointment – no longer did so, the fault having been ‘parked’ in a manner that did not allow it. Lacking any other practical means of communicating with BT – and struggling as ever to make any sense of their ludicrously unhelpful website – I finally emailed them using their online form. On this form I specified that they should communicate with me by email.

I heard nothing!

On our return to the UK I discovered that they had actually tried to reach me – by calling my mobile phone! They had left a voicemail. Now – I had specifically directed them not to do this because Vodafone – my mobile provider – are only slightly less unhelpful than BT. Whereas they were quite happy to inform me – in Canada – that I had been sent a voicemail message, they would only let me listen to it had I set my account up in a particular way before we left the UK! 

Doh!

The upshot of all this was that BT would not attend on the one day that one of us – the Kickass Canada Girl as it happened – was going to be at home – and I had instead to take time off work to be in residence this morning between the hours of 8:00am and 1:00pm.

Hours passed. No engineer appeared. Finally the clock struck one! In a state of considerable annoyance I called BT. Having been told repeatedly by a recorded message just how busy they were (I – of course – had nothing at all to do) I was eventually put through to someone on the subcontinent (how ironic that BT can connect customer service calls to the far side of the globe but they can’t give me a phone line in the Home Counties!).

BT Customer Services were unable to advise as to the missing engineer but promised to contact BT Openreach (the service component of our national carrier) and to call me back. When they did so they told me that Openreach had done some further testing and had decided that the fault was – after all – not within our premises and that an appointment would thus not be required.

Soooo…! BT had decided not to visit me, but didn’t think it worthwhile to let me know. I had sat around for 5 hours – with no broadband – for absolutely no reason!! A day’s leave had been wasted and it was now too late to drive into London to go to the office.

Even worse – since the fault did not require a visit after all it could in fact have been resolved at any point during the previous month!!!

The phone and broadband still do not work and we now face another weekend without before BT’s new deadline to fix of Monday next. I’m not holding my breath!

I am finding it difficult to convey exactly how furious I am at this demonstration of incompetence on such an epic level! BT’s perversity is almost heroic!! I asked the BT Customer Service lady how I might complain about Openreach’s disdainful level of service (or lack thereof!). She told me that I could not communicate with them directly because they are not ‘customer facing’. That’s right. The people who come to one’s residence to deal with installations and faults are not ‘customer facing’!! Just what sort of business are these people running?!

It is a vain hope, I know, that someone involved with British Telecom or Openreach might one day just idly Google the terms ‘Openreach’ and ‘incompetence’ and find a reference to this blog – but the thought that someone might accidentally do so makes me feel just the tiniest bit better.

Thank you for listening!