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BT’s Week Response to Dead Phone Lines - 18/10/10 and 22/10/10

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I know we have had some problems with our network in the past couple of weeks and I would like to apologise for them and assure all our loyal customers that our staff worked very diligently to solve them.

Surprisingly my home phone line is still with BT for reasons which are too difficult to go into here. However the line stopped working on the 30^th of September. I searched in vain for the number to call (it is 0800 800 150 – if you ever need it). So I reported it on the web – it all went very smoothly and I got a text back confirming the fault was logged and they hoped for a fix by the 5^th of October- a week later. I thought that this must be under promise and over deliver – so being a good customer and not quite believing how legendarily bad their service could be I waited until the 6^th to phone. Eventually I found the magic number by Googling it on someone else’s site and began the process of phoning the number.

So I had my number to call, 0800 800 150, and dialled it. The system that answered first asked me for my phone number and then the system went away and checked it and agreed “yes it was broken”. So then there were another 3 levels of “press 1 for a fault, press 2 for a telex fault etc”. Eventually I got through this (6 minutes into the call by now) and the voice announced that they were exceptionally busy but my call was important to them (the 4^th great lie) and I was moving up the queue. Eventually by minute 12 I was speaking to a guy in India (or someone whose grasp of English was not great). He first asked me for my phone number and when I pointed out that I had given it to the system 12 minutes previously he chose not to understand. We then went through all my details – who was I etc etc-  and he finally agreed – yes there was a fault and he would phone Openreach about it and did I mind holding? I said OK and was treated to 10 minutes of silence. Eventually he came back and said he would carry on trying. I asked what to do if he failed to do anything but there was no answer- back to holding for another 6 minutes. Eventually he said he had got through to Openreach. Openreach had said they had been busy and would try and look at the fault tomorrow. So after over a week since the fault had been reported and logged and  no one had even looked at the fault because they had been busy. Would I care to phone back tomorrow and they would let me know if they had chosen to look at the fault. A thirty minute phone call for nothing.

So I am no nearer resolving the fault and get to face the prospect of going through the 0800 800 150 experience again and again.

The fundamental problem here is that OpenReach have a monopoly on the last mile and can do whatever they like. I know they are probably all very nice people but if they have no competition for an analogue land line then the service will always be rubbish.

Good news. BT texted me to let me know the fault had been resolved. Apparently although the line had been working since about the 8^th of October it was not working properly. It was now fixed. Great thanks BT