BT Retards

ubersonic

ubersonic

ubersonic

Soldato
Joined
26 May 2009
Posts
22,152
I have just had my definition of incompetence realigned...

here is a basic time-line for events:

1: Friday, the company in the building next to us have a fault with one of their phone lines
2: Friday, BT send out an engineer at 4pm, they are working on the line till after people leave at 5pm
3: Today, the neighbouring company's phone line works, however one of they other lines doesn't, and now one of our lines cannot dial out or receive calls and another can dial out but cannot receive calls.

We called BT at 9am and explained the situation, and that we carry out emergency call outs for the police and fire service, and for the local authority. They told us they will send somebody out but it could take up until 6pm tomorrow.

I cannot believe this, up to two days until we can receive our calls because they buggered up the phone lines and didnt even test they worked before ****ing off home, what happens if the is a gas leak in a school boiler room? or if the air conditioning fails in the police CCTV control centre? or the fire brigade data centre? (both would result in a loss of service) what are they supposed to do write to us????
 
Does your company have an Service Level Agreement in place with BT? What does it say regarding response times?

If not you should seriously be looking into one considering reliable telephony seems to be a core requirement to you business!
 
These type of things should be expected from BT by now, they have been supplying a sub standard service for a very long time albeit broadband or phones :(
 
Beerbaron said:
These type of things should be expected from BT by now, they have been supplying a sub standard service for a very long time albeit broadband or phones :(
Click to expand...
I'd expect it on a domestic connection. In fact the last time I lost my internet connection it took:
2 weeks
11 phone calls to my ISP
5 sides of scribbled A4 notes
3 Engineer visits to my house
1 new master socket & cable to outdoor junction box
2 Engineer visits to the exchange

to realise that when moving some equipment round in the exchange they'd plugged my line back into the wrong socket. Muppets!

The thing is this all comes down to cost. For my cheap phone and internet access I know it could be a complete pain if it goes wrong and am willing to accept that.

When running business that relies on BT phone lines and where downtime is not acceptable you have to protect yourself and pay the extra to get a guaranteed level service.
 
ubersonic said:
I cannot believe this, up to two days until we can receive our calls because they buggered up the phone lines and didnt even test they worked before ****ing off home, what happens if the is a gas leak in a school boiler room? or if the air conditioning fails in the police CCTV control centre? or the fire brigade data centre? (both would result in a loss of service) what are they supposed to do write to us????
Click to expand...


Sorry, just so I've read that right you do this sort of work and rely on a couple of PSTN lines with no SLA?

Whilst BT have cocked up the lack of any sort of DR plans in place or resilient connections is pretty stupid, and if you're doing this in an official capacity I'd be very curious to know just what would happen if one of the situations above arises and you're unreachable... I can imagine the ramifications might cost substantially more than a proper communications solution would have.

To start with I'd be looking into "BT Critical Care" (6hr SLA on PSTN circuit faults) and TBH you should really look at something like ISDN which is a business service with fairly decent SLA / service guarantees from BT.

EDIT:

Just so it doesn't read that I'm having a little rant at you here is a useful suggestion: why don't you see if BT can divert your numbers to a mobile or something until they fix the fault? That would at least mean you are reachable by phone.
 
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You can have the numbers diverted to a mobile for free whilst the line is down. You might not even be waiting so long, I had a complete loss of service at home and they said it would be five working days for an engineer, but they actually showed up after two.
 
BT are a pain, we have loads of offices with multiple lines, one being BT at each and they are utterly useless. I have had some good experiences where they have responded well. Even if you're a business customer the standard response time for BT is 24 hours or something like this before anything can be done.
 
BT aren't that bad really. We have ~2500 total care lines at work and they are actually quite prompt in dealing with our faults. If you think BT are bad.. try dealing with Eircom :)
 
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