We Still Really Love BT
So, this morning I woke up early and took Leela off to her first day of work over at the hospital. I then returned home at about 8.30, and rang BT straight away to sort out my ADSL. There was no queue, I got straight through to an advisor, and they instantly knew what my problem was and resolved it to my satisfaction within 5 minutes.
Ok, seriously though, when I got back from dropping Leela off, I did ring BT, and I did get straight through to an advisor. But then it was 8.30, who the hell else is going to be ringing BT that early. However, the person I spoke to told me that it was nothing to do with them, and that I should contact my ISP to contact BT Wholesale directly.
The plot thickened, but very very slowly. I was kicked between BT and Plusnet for 5 hours. Yes, that's right, it didn't get sorted out until 13:30. Plusnet were telling me that my ADSL was cancelled on the 25th due to a PSTN cease (cease of phone line) that was submitted on the 14th and was therefore nothing to do with them, but BT were telling me that plusnet had requested an ADSL cease on 15/07 which was therefore nothing to do with them. The plusnet people were always on the ball and always gave me the same message, but with BT none of the operators had a clue what I was talking about, and they kept putting me through to departments they shouldn't - most notably BT Wholesale and BT Repairs, neither of whom are supposed to talk to customers. Special mention to the nice friendly chaps in BT Repairs, who were very sympathetic and gave me lots of support before putting me through to BT Broadband. Who were, unfortunately, as useless as the rest, telling me to contact my ISP.
Maybe by now you're getting as bored as I was by the whole thing. I must have heard that bloody pier gint tune in its entirety at least 30 times - I started counting, but I gave up when I found it more exciting to clean my keyboard with a cotton wool bud and nail varnish remover, key by key, all 5 tiny little surfaces. Got through half a keyboard at a time, I did, but then I ran out of keyboards.
Long story short, at 13:04, a customer services person finally put me through to 'BT Customer Options Broadband' (how many broadband divisions does this company have?):
BT Lady: So are you with AOL?
Me: No, plusnet.
BT Lady: Errr, AOL?
Me: No, plusnet.
BT Lady: Errr...
Me: Errr?
BT Lady: Errr, I think I see what has happened.
Basically, my order for a phone line went through to BT on 06/07. However, the AOL ADSL cancellation from the previous tennent went through on... yes, 06/07. So they missed each other in the system, didn't flag up an error, and both were initiated. Only the activation on the 13th was over the top of the existing one, so the cancellation on the 15th cancelled both. Happy happy joy!
The nice lady has now contacted someone in BT Wholesale for me, who is going to push the order through within a couple of days. Apparently. However, for some unknown reason I feel the need to finish with:
Watch this space.
Comments
Just a couple of things... firstly, given the number of times you had to listen to it, I would have thought you would have know it's "Pier Gynt"! And secondly, I would like to refute your claim that people from Sevenoaks do not do [[http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/fwcml/tonbridge.htm#kilimanjaro|"these things"]]. (Can't remember how much mark-up, if any, I'm allowed... so here's hoping.)
That's lame as f***. BT activate 100,000's of ADSL lines every day. No problem to push you up the list.
Also it really sucks that the right people didn't have access to the right information. Sounds like the sort of thing some of my co-workers try to sort out!.
Good luck getting it sorted.
Andrew (not the other one): I knew I hadn't spelt it right, but I couldn't spell check it as I was writing it, I didn't have access to the internet! But thank you. I have also had angry emails from people from Sevenoaks telling me that they have done things on my list, but I told them that I didn't really care :)
Mark: Yeah! Now they're saying 'Monday'. Think it's time to ring them up again...
Get used to it...
It's the Plusnet Way
I was seriously thinking about switching from pipex to somewhere else for my new house. Now I know that my new house should preferably be in Sweden, as they don't have BT there.
DavidH: Oddly enough this time, it's not plusnets fault in any way at all! I must admit, I was surprised.
Andrew: Well, BT aren't totally incompetent - out of the 5 ADSL lines I have attempted to set up, only 3 have had installation problems, only one of those I abandoned completely, and none of them would have cost more than £160 to sort out...
Friday night and still waiting. going to be another offline weekend.
You see... it's all retribution for you not giving me your referral!
I love BT too. I'm just trying to get a frigging phone line activated: they had me wait two wooks for an appointment, then cancelled it and sent me a text message saying they'd done the job remotely... only they hadn't and now I have to wait another week and a half for a new appointment! Grr.
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