It’s a shame that it took this long to really get the line upgrade, but I shouldn’t grumble now and am happy that I’m already seeing a speed increase since running the BT Speedtester (prior to that after upgrade it was still showing 2 mbps down and 348 kbps up).

Thanks to Stuart @BTCare for calling and increasing the communication and telling me exactly what BT were now seeing when the new upgrade would take place and monitoring the upgrade

Hoepfully the next 10 days should see the speed stabilise more and get the full max out of the line.

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!

I’ve been thinking how the iPhone has already changed my life, what I’m doing more on a daily basis. e.g.

• Checking Internet News Sites more
• Reading RSS feeds anywhere I want
• Catching up on what my friends are doing on Facebook more
• Sharing my thoughts and experiences with eveyrone via Twitter and this website
• Being able to post news stories whilst away from a computer
• Being able to take a quick photo and within seconds have it arrive in a friends inbox

For today, the iPhone has been a life saver with my BT Internet Broadband going down for a second time in a month, so I was still able to stay connected using the iPhone’s 3G connection.

The iPhone for me at the moment is a great gadget, but I’m sure something new is just around the corner, maybe from Apple or from another manufacturer.   However, it’s not a great gadget for everyone.  iPhone is plagued with problems like any gadget device, e.g. single-tasking third party apps, being locked down (unless you jail break) and there’s more problems that I won’t touch upon as this isn’t a slate the iPhone article.

So…..if the iPhone isn’t the ultimate gadget, what can we call it?  Well, for me it’s the Gadget You Can’t Be Without.  It’s simply a gadget you want to have with you all the time, no matter where you are.  Whether you want to be connected or unconnected to the outside world.

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Let’s hope something gets rectified soon…

Running commentary on the entire problem is available here.

Suggest anyone experiencing problems call BT Billing and request the same. Maybe enough BT customers that complain will actually get noticed and something might actually get fixed…

Running commentary on the entire problem is available here.

Why am I still not filled with confidence? Let’s see if I get another call back in 2 hours with a status update…?

Running commentary on the entire problem is available here.

Now another person has called BT with the exact same fault, and BT again say “There is no fault with our network” in a heavy indian accent. So obviously nobody at BT is going to investigate their network issues or strive to improve their rock bottom customer care.

I have now received a call back and transferred to complaints and have been on hold for 10 mins and nobody is there. I guess they’re dealing with many other customer complaints about their really poor quality of service….!

Running commentary on the entire problem is available here.

Speak to the same guy “Richard” again at BT (in India), he states the web browsing problem is fixed, and yet, surprise surprise, it’s not. Just a recap from this blog post that the problem is sporadic internet browsing problems. One moment I can get to Google or BT Yahoo websites, the next second I can’t. If I ping the sites I can see timeouts or even DNS resolution errors.

After 20 mins on the phone with him doing diagnostics and telling him that 3 other people I’ve spoken to in various parts of the country this morning are still experiencing the same problem he says “Oh but I think it’s a problem with your router”. I ask him “how did he come to that conclusion?”. He says “Because we don’t know how to configure Netgear routers, we are only trained in BT Home Hub”.

Aha, we’re getting further again. Let’s back track….because BT don’t know how to configure a router, the router is at fault? WOW, it’s a shame my 20 years of IT knowledge in configuring routers and IP gear never taught me that. I’ll remember that one next time I have a problem with a piece of tech gear!

So the call continues….I say “But as I just told you 3 times already, other people in the country are having the exact same problem STILL. Do you really want me to tell you a 4th time that this is not a local problem at my internet exchange or a router problem?”. As always he keeps replying “Yes I am very sorry for you sir, please accept my apologies”. He says this like every 15 seconds. I say “You are clearly not listening to me. Do you understand English? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”, he says “Yes sir, I am very sorry for you sir, please accept my apologies”.

You know what this feels like? It feels like picking up one of those dolls / figurines when you were a kid that had a button to press and you pressed it and it said the same old message every single time you pressed it.

I asked to speak to a supervisor, richard says “I’m sorry sir but I don’t have a supervisor”. I said “I manage a Global Call Center so I know you have a supervisor”, richard says “I’m sorry sir I don’t”, I say “Transfer me to your manager now”, Richard says “I’m sorry sir, I do not have a Manager, but I can transfer you to complaints”, I said “Do it please”.

After waiting 2 mins on the phone Richard at BT then comes back and says “let me run one more test with you” so we go through the router test again” and he says “okay sir I will now transfer you to complaints”. 2 mins later Richard comes back “Hello sir, I’m sorry but our complaints department are not open for another 30 mins”.

Complete and utter sham! BT won’t even investigate a customers reference to them still having problems to a fault that they claimed is fixed!

Running commentary on the entire problem is available here.

So enough is enough after two weeks of sporadic internet connection problems which come and go as quickly as the wind changes, I check their status page and they state

No Webpages
We are currently investigating a problem which may mean you are unable to view web pages. Please bear with us as we endeavour to resolve this problem as quickly as possible. Meanwhile we apologise for any inconvenience.

They also go on in my local area to say that there are problems connecting to the internet and it will be fixed in 2 hours. 2 hours came and went, and now 10 hours later still no news. So I do the thing that any sane person would do and call BT up (okay, where’s my hard hat?)

Within 4 mins my call gets answered by a heavy Indian speaking male that I’m having great difficulty in understanding. Yes, it’s that 4 second delay for your brain to work out what he’s saying. Please don’t take this as racism, I find it very difficult to understand people with thick heavy accents, like some people have problems understanding people with thick Gordie accents or Welsh accents.

Anyway…..the call starts off asking me what the problem is, I state what the website says and immediately the Indian call center guy says (whilst reading the status page) “yes, it will be fixed in two hours sir”, I reply, “that’s what you said at 10am!”, he says, “yes sir it will take 2 hours”, I reply “Let me guess, you’re in India?”, he replies, “Yes sir”, I reply, “Do you know what time it is in England?”, he says “10 o’clock”. I replied “No, it was 10 o’clock 10 hours ago, it’s now 8 o’clock (in the evening!)”.

Here’s where the conversation takes a turn…

The BT Indian call center guy then replies “It will take 24 hours”. I reply…”What? you said 2 hours, now you say 24 hours?”. He replies, “Yes sir”, I reply “so why 24 hours now?”, he replies “because that is the maximum amount of time it will take to fix a fault”.

Aha! We’re getting somewhere. So I then reply “so suddenly you jump from a 2 hour fix to a 24 hour fix time, and that’s a difference of 22 hours!”, he replies “yes sir, it will take 24 hours. If you would like a status update you can call back our automated status line” to which I reply “yes and that says 2 HOURS!”.

I then say “but this problem has been going on for two weeks, so you want me to wait another 24 hours in the hope that you can fix it in another 24 hours making it 360 hours to fix the problem as opposed to 336 hours?”, he replied “yes sir”. At that point I realised yet again I’m just wasting my breath and say “okay so I was going to upgrade to your faster package but now you’ve just angered me even more and I’m going to move to another internet service provider”, he replies “Dear Mr David” (oh and he doesn’t know what my surname is!!!”), “we would be sorry to lose you as a customer and appreciate your loyalty, goodbye sir” and hangs up the phone.

As you can see this ineptitude of the BT Call Center guy was getting no where fast, and that someone in India just really doesn’t care about the level of service they’re providing. Likewise BT also doesn’t seem to care that I’ve been a loyal customer for the last 12 years! So I’m going to be shortly changing to a new ISP and new phone company at this rate.

If anyone at BT reads this, you have my number and you can call me at anytime, but somehow I believe you won’t!

Running commentary on the entire problem is available here.