hackbash

OK, more customer service-related whinging. I have a BT landline so I can get broadband, which doesn’t come from BT.

The line’s intermittently noisy. Sometimes it’s unusable. When it’s bad, the broadband’s slow, when it’s not bad the broadband flies.

When it’s bad, it’s almost cured by disconnecting the broadband modem. Almost, but not quite.

I know the fault is exacerbated, but not caused by, the broadband. It happened with my old ADSL connection, so I know it’s not my ADSL 2 provider’s fault. I did the testing for a wireless router group test from home, so I can rule out a router or filter problem.

BT can’t detect a fault on the line. The most recent of the four or five times I’ve reported it, BT told me that an engineer could visit, but that if said engineer couldn’t detect a fault I’d have to pay a callout fee - currently a minimum of £116.

1) It’s an on/off fault. What happens if it’s off when the engineer arrives? Apparently I pay for the callout, and when it next goes wrong I resurrect the fault and they send another engineer. See point 1.

If I’m ever lucky enough for engineer and fault to coincide, I’ll get all the money back. It’s like a rollover week on the lottery.

2) I fear that a BT engineer would turn up, unplug the router, hear that it dramatically improved (but didn’t cure) the problem, and pronounce it a broadband issue before lightening my wallet.

3) £116?? I got an engineer out to fix my boiler for £46 the other month. Maybe I should have asked him to check the phone line?

Make someone happy

Anyway, over the weekend we discovered that the line wasn’t ringing for incoming calls. After a bit of investigation, I was delighted to find that here was a real, live, reproducible fault that couldn’t possibly be anything to do with my equipment. I was thrilled that a BT engineer would be coming out, charge-free, to fix it for me, because I could ask them to check and fix the noise while they were at it. Sadly, BT rang that morning to let me know it was something they could, and would, fix from the exchange. To be fair, their service was excellent and the ringing fault was fixed.

I’m back to square one, though, with a noisy line. Do I call out the engineer and take the risk? Do I sign up to BT broadband so that it’s all BT’s services and equipment and they have to take responsibility for the fault?

I don’t want BT broadband, and this brings me to the point, I suppose, of these two posts. Monopolies are bad, we know, and without competition I’d have no choice over who I bought landlines, mobile phones and broadband from. In fact, we’d probably all be a few years behind. You know: when you could describe 8MB broadband as ’super-fast’ without incurring the wrath of people like me.

But when it’s easy to switch between mobile phone providers, power companies and the like, seemingly none of them gives a shit about customer retention and hence customer care.

I’d except BT from this. But with broadband companies dependent on a BT landline, resolving a fault is always going to involve two sets of people, neither of whom are prepared to take full responsibility.

Tags: ADSL, BT, customer service, faults, phone line, rental