Connected?

Since before Christmas, my broadband connection has been pretty flaky, occasionally cutting out completely and so on. I reported it to BT at the time, and they did fuck-all. (Imagine my surprise at that one)

Last weekend, it suddenly got much, much worse – no connection at all for most of Saturday and the router descending into an endless cycle of attempting to reconnect. Sunday started in the same vein, so I called BT’s fault department again. Twice. (The first person tried to transfer the call, fucked it up, and disconnected instead. Slow handclaps)

They ended up escalating it to the ‘second tier’, who would investigate and call me the following day. As that was a Monday, I asked them to make my mobile my primary contact, as I’d be at work, not available on the home number. You’d think that would be pretty easy/sensible, but it took them three attempts.

Yesterday, I got the first call. Yes, the line’s fucked, but they can’t tell where. It could be inside the house (we’ll gloss over the fact that when there is a line, the connection is fine, and all the in-house equipment works well with no issues) or on the line itself. So they’ll need to send an engineer.

How’s tomorrow?

No, I’m at work. How’s about a weekend?

We don’t do engineer visits for this kind of thing on a weekend.

OK, so I’ve got to take time off from work in order for this to be checked at BT’s convenience. Who do I invoice for my time?

Oh, we don’t do that. We won’t pay for your time. You also need to be aware that if the problem turns out to be with your equipment, or something like corrosion of BT equipment, you’ll be charged £130

So this could be an expensive proposition.  (And how much do we want to bet, fellow cynics, that the issue is ‘corrosion’, and thus makes me liable?)

I asked at that point for a call back from a supervisor, because I wasn’t happy with the entire thing. They promised to call me back between 12 noon and 1pm.

The call didn’t happen. I got home, and found a message on the landline at 4pm saying “I tried calling you back, but you weren’t available”. No shit, you fucking moron, I was at work – as it said on the fucking ticket.  I called them back, and we’re now in the land of official complaints. Again.

On a more positive note, a random check on BT’s page last night showed that my exchange should be getting Fibre (and BT Infinity) this month. Which may just make things worth sticking with BT…