How easy should it be to get a DSL/Broadband upgrade with your telephone company? Well there can be complications when switching providers but if you are staying with the same telephone company and internet provider, I’m sure you would agree that it should be fairly easy, correct?
Well, when it comes down to BT (British Telecom) things get difficult. I have had 5, yes 5 failed Broadband Upgrades in the past week.
31-MAR-2010 – UPGRADE #1 – Order placed, Upgrade date given as 09-APR-2010
10-APR-2010 – UPGRADE #2 – Still no upgrade, phone BT, told that it will happen before midnight on 10th
11-APR-2010 – UPGRADE #3 – Still no upgrade, phone BT, told that don’t know why it failed, will happen by midnight on 12th
12-APR-2010 – UPGRADE #4 – Still no upgrade, will happen on Tuesday 13th by midnight
14-APR-2010 – UPGRADE #5 – Still no upgrade, will 100% happen on Thursday 15th WITHOUT FAIL
16-APR-2010 – Upgrade still failed!
So, now on UPGRADE #6 for 20th April 2010.
Do you honestly think anyone at BT know what on earth they’re doing? Do you honestly think they care?
I live 5 mins walk from the exchange. BT if you can’t get a dozy engineer to get off their backside and upgrade my line, just give me the relevant cables, I’ll go down to the exchange and do the work myself.
Complete and utter ineptitude on BT’s part! Part of the problem is obviously whenever I call BT I get routed to the call centre in India and for obvious reasons, nobody in India have a single clue as to what might be the problem. Likewise they can’t get to talk to the people on the ground on BT’s network who are actually doing the work. Just call up the telephone exchange, I’ll give you the number if you can’t find the number in your own system!
I’m really not holding my breath with BT, if this is how they treat a loyal customer for 15 years then I’m moving away from BT. You’ve had your chance at resolving and providing compensation!
Some high up BT people in the past have explained the truth about their servicing to me – basically, the call centres have only one of a couple actions, and only one general ‘tech needed’ one.
After that, the usual techs they send round then cannot enter the exchange and have nothing but automated contact with it – although they often claim to be going to the exchange to do some fixes and in reality just go have a break somewhere.
It’s pure luck as to when you get someone competant. The tech who finally fixed our line (9th time lucky) was one we’ve had on our other line years ago (and then again was about the 10th and fixed it in about an hour or two). He freely admits the truth that our telephone cable between the box and our set of houses is wrecked somehow, but is powerless to get anything done about it (the box gets 4MB, we get 1, and it’s only 200 feet away). The techs they usually send round are just messing about – they know that there’s problems here, know they lack the skills to fix it, and so just blind you before implementing a temporary fix to con you into thinking it’s solved until they can leave or alternatively accuse you of having problems with your internal wiring and then try to slink off saying they’ll be nice and not charge you.
By: Michael on April 16, 2010
at 5:23 pm
Thanks Michael, I do agree with what you’re saying, this unfortunately been my experience. BT aren’t alone, a lot of large companies are like this in the IT space which is just unfortunate. Almost like they grow too big for their own good, and fail to properly be able to provide services to its customers.
I keep adding 1571 to my phone line, says it will happen within the next week, it happens, I now have 1571, two weeks later, it disappears, re-add it, takes another week, I get 1571 again, two weeks later it disappears. Almost someone tinkering.
Good news is I finally got my line upgrade, so far so good, @BTCare on Twitter seem to be on the pulse much more than BT’s Call Centre
By: Dave Burrows on April 20, 2010
at 6:30 am