BT fault question

ajf

ajf

ajf

Soldato
Joined
30 Oct 2006
Posts
3,067
Location
Worcestershire, UK
The BT line ( No BB installed) at my parents went dead earlier.
They reported to BT who said it was 'common in your area' and 'we might get someone to fix it by Monday'.

That to me does not seem acceptable. Firstly, if it is a common ongoing fault it should already have been logged for an engineer, and secondly,five days to fix it currently anyway?!

Do they not have any legal requirement or duty of care to get a line back up asap?
 
They won't see it as 5 days, they'll see it as 3 working days. If it's a common fault it may just be that it'll actually take several days to get through the list of reported faults until your line gets fixed. The best I'd expect is a slight refund on this months bill for not being able to use the line for several days but you'd have to ask/complain for that, it probably won't get fixed any quicker as frustrating as that may be.
 
Ever heard of a credit crush and recession/depression?

Companies cut back and hence QOS goes down. It's the result of boom and bust.
 
If only someone would invent something exactly like a phone, but maybe make it portable, and then put a radio inside it so it wasn't tied to a physical phone line...
 
Consider yourself lucky it's that quick, they're no more keen when you have expensive fibre optic broadband. 2 weeks I was without my service because the hub died but they insisted on about 4 engineer visits before they agreed and replaced it.
 
Every consumer-oriented communications provider is engaged in a fight to the bottom and as a consequence are all unmitigated garbage.
 
They just don't give a **** because there is no need to and there is nothing you can do about it. You can change to another equally **** company after your contract is up but they will be just as bad in all likelihood.

They lie through their teeth and only fix things when they have a large enough issue. By large enough I mean an issue that is completely breaking a network. If its just issues at peak loading they couldn't care less.

We had VM 100mb broadband that was unusable in the evenings because the exchange was oversubscribed. They wouldn't even admit that there was a fault when I called them for 6 months despite dozens of people in my area complaining on their forums and the staff on their admitting there was an issue.

All the while I was waiting for a fix I was receiving VM pamphlets through the door to get me to sign up for super fast VM cable. So while the network couldn't handle the load of existing customers they were still trying to put more people on it.

When they got around to fixing it they pushed back the fix by 3 months in total. No explanation to why they didn't do it when they said they would, just a "sorry, its supposed to be fixed on x date".

I have had issues with Sky and BT as well. Sky managed to sell me infinity, take over my old line then after a missed installation and numerous phone calls I was informed that they couldn't supply infinity in my area.

Left me without internet for nearly 2 weeks and I work from home as a web developer. Their apology was in the form of £30 credit on my account. This was after they had promised that everything would be fine and that there would be no down time between my old connection being taken over and the new one starting.
 
Thanks for the feedback. Looks like they'll just have to wait :(
Regards the mobile suggestion, yes they do have them, but not ideal when they have family and friends etc who only have the land line number, and they are trying to arrange a funeral....

Different to you and me as the landline is their main number. The mobile for them is just used when they go out.
 
From past experience the people you contact rarely have a scooby what's going on and the line might be back up the following day especially if it's a problem at the exchange.
 
Warning you now...

BT are absolutely SHOCKING.

Genuinely... I moved house tried to move my fibre... should be no problem right? wrong.

literally 15 phone calls later and after a month it's still broken.

Told me to wait 2 weeks we found problem it'll be back on 29th... yesterday goes by nothing. Ring today told oh yes we've found problem you'll have to wait another 2 weeks. Fat chance. Cancelling my direct debit and telling them to swivel.

Googled bt. You get put through to india and maybe people went months without internet till they just had enough and cancelled their broadband and went with another provider.

Up within a week. (obviously you are on about phone but i'm ranting in general... seriously screw them. I can't stand them as a company).
 
3 working days isn't that bad for a consumer fault and IIRC is well within the OFCOM guidelines.

Unfortunately as every ISP and telecoms provider is tending to compete primarily on price (as that is about all most consumers look at when deciding which to go with), service isn't going to get better.

If it's "common in your area", it's possible that BT have a lot of faults and are fixing them in order of which they're either reported or a logicial order (start at point X fix them, go to point Y fix all them), or a common part broken, or even given the rain the other day water damage has hit a bunch of lines at some point.

If you complain you may get some money off your bill above the pro rata rate.
 
It wouldnt be so bad if you got £10 a day compensation for everyday the fault wasnt fixed but they changed their t&s a while abck and you will only get refunded your line rental on a pro rata basis.

For the 60 days we were off under the old scheme we would have got £600. as it was we got just over £20.

We spent over £120 of mobile data while the phone line was done and luckily its wasnty more as EE did there 100Gb for £10 simcard during the middile of it which saved up a fortune.

So no phone line or internet for almost 9 weeks and £100 out of pocket for it as well.

They were a total joke. AGree a fault was there, sent a engineer to inspect. Found break 635m from porperty in the road.

Referred to surveyor to pruice up replacing cable with overhead. That was a no go cause of electric posts. A few weeks had passed by then.

Tried to get the to pay for our £120 of mobile data but they werent having any of it, they just kept referring us to the 47p a day compensation.

Then organised contractors to dig up the road. Expected completion 2 weeks.

Thats came and went and they hadnt started.

Chased and chased, result was BT said contractor had l;et them down for digging up the road and they were trying to source a new contractor etc.

Tried to get them to pay for the mobile data at least but they werent having any of it and insisted they would only pay the 47p a day compensation as per their terms.
 
CREATIVE!11 said:
Warning you now...

BT are absolutely SHOCKING.

Genuinely... I moved house tried to move my fibre... should be no problem right? wrong.

literally 15 phone calls later and after a month it's still broken.

Told me to wait 2 weeks we found problem it'll be back on 29th... yesterday goes by nothing. Ring today told oh yes we've found problem you'll have to wait another 2 weeks. Fat chance. Cancelling my direct debit and telling them to swivel.

Googled bt. You get put through to india and maybe people went months without internet till they just had enough and cancelled their broadband and went with another provider.

Up within a week. (obviously you are on about phone but i'm ranting in general... seriously screw them. I can't stand them as a company).
Click to expand...

I'm going through this now. Unfortunately for me the re-arranging my services was the easy bit. It all got technical when the technician popped round to fit the fibre socket to my master socket to discover some 1965 phone wiring! This is amazing stuff that cannot handle 80mbit/s :( my phone line is an underground one too and I've no idea how it gets from where it enters my new house to the master socket. Fun times ahead for me based on what you're all saying!

As for the OP. When my line went dead I didn't even speak to anyone. I run a line check thing online. It stated there was an issue and it'd be fixed in x amount of days. I think it ended up being fixed two days prior to this. Maybe I got lucky that time round.
 
I wonder if this is just a coincidence but BT are on notice that I'm moving to another provider... ever since then my connection has been absolutely shocking. Intermittent connectivity and massively reduced download speeds. :confused:
 
Kenai said:
Consider yourself lucky it's that quick, they're no more keen when you have expensive fibre optic broadband. 2 weeks I was without my service because the hub died but they insisted on about 4 engineer visits before they agreed and replaced it.
Click to expand...

Ouch, and I was annoyed with Virgin because it took them 3 days to have the replacement hub sent to me....which was actually 2 days because I insisted rather than wait for delivery they actually send it out with an engineer who can also set it up.
 
My Gran who is 98 has an emergency alarm around her neck in case she falls or something bad happens this uses the phone line and BT are aware that this line should be a priority for them to repair if it becomes unusable.

First time the line was broken it took them 2 weeks.

Second time took them 3 weeks.


In the end I was going out to the physical break and connecting the wires myself and wrapping it up in insulation tape.

Completely ridiculous service.
 
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