back to article BT snatches crown: Soars to top of complaints list

BT was the most complained about ISP in the final three months of 2013, communications watchdog Ofcom said today. The one-time national telco raked up the most gripes from broadband subscribers, according to the regulator's latest quarterly report on complaint figures. Ofcom said: For the first time, BT generated the most …

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  1. msknight

    What do you mean..

    "Former" state monopoly? Hah! Sorry ... that is an industry joke in my personal opinion. As in, the monopoly bit.

  2. Longrod_von_Hugendong
    Go

    We use BT...

    Not really much choice where we live, and its works perfectly for 2 years... The only PITA was how long it took to get it working, other than that flawless.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We use BT...

      Biggest complaint we hear from people is how long it takes to get BT to connect anything in the first place. And when it does go wrong...the last time I recall that happening, it was "take a week or two to fix. Unless you pay £XX a month for our enhanced service". It may have changed now, but there was a time when I only half jokingly suggested putting a Pringle can aerial router on my house and the office to provide line of sight 802.11 to my home cable connection.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We use BT...

      One happy customer is a complete irrelevance. It's a bit like "smoking doesn't cause lung cancer, my granny was on 40 a day 'till she was 90 and git run over by a bus". It's the statistics that matter. Only 0.3% of customers complained (over a year) so 99.7% didn't, the point is that complaint rate is higher than other ISPs

  3. dervheid

    maybe

    it's just that we've given up complaining about the rest of them as much because fuck all changes whether you do or not.

    Though I imagine BT are no different in that respect. Different demographic perhaps?

    1. Khaptain Silver badge
      Joke

      Re: maybe

      >it's just that we've given up complaining about the rest of them as much because fuck all changes whether you do or not.

      That's not quite true as far as changes go. There are have been several increases in salaries and bonuses to the top dogs due to reduction in maintenance charges.... Instead of hiring some new technicians/engineers they distributed the cash between them.

  4. Bunbury

    Cause or effect?

    Would be interesting to see what the base change is in that period. e,g, did the things that caused the complaint also cause people to leave the ISP. Or is this people moving to an ISP then not liking it, etc.

  5. Sandpit
    Thumb Down

    Not allowed to complain

    For me the biggest gripe is about BT Openreach wholesale provision that all ISPs are forced to use for FTTC. The service there is terrible and you are not allowed to complain about. All you can do is complain to your ISP (presumably bumping their stats up) while BT wholesale remain unaccountable to the end-customer

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Not allowed to complain

      This. Check ThinkBroardband blogs on occasion. There is a little spat going on between the ISPs and Openreach/BT right not as there are problems but no one is picking up the responsibility (seems to be on the Openreach backhaul).

    2. Don Dumb
      Thumb Up

      Re: Not allowed to complain

      @Sandpit

      Was talking to a friend the other day. Her (elderly) mum has lost phone connection. BT kept saying "it will be fixed tomorrow" and then wasn't. She found out that the fix was Openreach doing some digging but also found a phone number for Openreach.

      After talking to Openreach to try and find out what was going on the Openreach help desk rep asked which ISP she was from. When my friend said "no I'm the customer who wants to be reconnected" the rep went very quiet and clearly terrified said "but we aren't allowed to talk to customers!" - What a way to run a service - shield the people who can do anything from the customer, so nothing gets done.

  6. reddiesel

    FAIL

    my landline number has been offline for almost 2 weeks now, whilst the BB works fine, both are with BT. constant calls to them to sort out, failed promises to return calls no-one understanding the problem, repeating the same issue to every call center staff member. I wish I could get out of the contract to be honest,

    1. rhydian

      Re: FAIL

      Rule 1 of sorting out BT line faults: If it affects voice, get that sorted first, and don't mention BB at all.

      Voice faults are prioritised.

      1. Captain Scarlet

        Re: FAIL

        Not sure this applied with BT Infinity anymore as they are now seperated, but certainly the best advise for ADSL users.

        1. James 100

          Re: FAIL

          Still applies: "Infinity" is just VDSL2 instead of ADSL2+. If there's a problem with the wire (like being cut, loose, wet etc) it'll screw up both voice and broadband - and a voice fault is much easier to get BT to fix.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: FAIL

      Unplug everything from the walls, plug in a test phone to the "test" socket. Call them (on second line), say you have a voice fault. They will test. If the phone does not call, is still silent etc, tell them under no uncertain terms that "nothing happens/it is silent" and "I have nothing connected but a working test phone in the test socket."

      Then it leaves it down to them with their engineers. Had 2 friends have similar happen to you, and it was faulty wires on the posts/cabinets.

  7. Oh Homer
    Childcatcher

    State owned

    My only complaint is that, now it's no longer state owned, BT has basically given up serving rural areas.

    At least nationalised industries aren't profit-oriented, and thus people like me might actually have stood a chance of getting decent broadband some time before we die of old age.

    1. rhydian

      Re: State owned

      Even when BT were the state owned GPO rural areas got awful service, here's a few examples:

      1: During the seriously bleak winters of yesteryear the GPO would get a lot of line fault reports. These faults weren't caused by the winter weather, it was simply that small village exchanges had less capacity than the number of subscribers, meaning that when it got busy (people phoning remote farms to check each other were OK) the exchanges couldn't service every customer (that one was told to me by an ex GPO engineer)

      2: Most rural lines were some variant of shared service, either old fashioned party lines (where you could hear your neighbour's conversations) or some variant of DACS (digital pair splitting).

      3: If you were lucky enough to have your own line then you might not have even got a copper one. The GPO loved experimenting with "stuff" other than copper for phone lines. Highlights include aluminium (still around causing havoc with ADSL) and copper coated steel (which had an annoying habit of rusting through).

  8. Malcolm 2
    Unhappy

    No real beef other than the irritating woman and 20,000 layers of options (Ok, I exaggerate)

    The few times that I have had reason to contact BT customer support, once you are through to a human I have found the service to be very good (admittedly it is BT Business support). It is that irritating woman and the seemingly never ending layers of options that wind me up.

    1. msknight

      Re: No real beef other than the irritating woman and 20,000 layers of options (Ok, I exaggerate)

      Think yourself lucky. If you're residential, you end up in India and then you might as well be calling Dell.

    2. rhydian

      Re: No real beef other than the irritating woman and 20,000 layers of options (Ok, I exaggerate)

      The Business arm of telcos always seem to be based in the UK (ususally in the North/North West of England I find)

    3. Chris Whatmore

      Re: No real beef other than the irritating woman and 20,000 layers of options (Ok, I exaggerate)

      Try this, it's genius.

      http://www.pleasepress1.com

      1. gazthejourno (Written by Reg staff)

        Re: Re: No real beef other than the irritating woman and 20,000 layers of options (Ok, I exaggerate)

        As covered by our august organ not so long ago: The Call Centre Crusader.

  9. Fiddler on the roof

    Crap Service is the Norm

    Very few companies do good customer service now, I think they just dont care. They say they care but for me anyone who plays you a message saying your call is important to us whilst they waste your time is full of crap. I dont normally complain to companies because its usually a waste of time, I think some companies are just too big to be efficient.

    1. JDX Gold badge

      Re: Crap Service is the Norm

      Amazon, FirstDirect are notable exceptions

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Crap Service is the Norm

        > Amazon, FirstDirect are notable exceptions

        Amazon were a notable exception - until they started using Yodel. That was enough for me to stop using them.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Yodel

          "Amazon were a notable exception - until they started using Yodel. That was enough for me to stop using them"

          Sometimes a 2nd chance is handy.

          I was one of many who got seeeeeeriously peeved with Yodel deliveries a year or two ago (Amazon and others).

          Maybe someone in charge at Yodel realised that they had to fix it or die.

          In the last few weeks I've had a handful of "free next day delivery" orders from eBuyer. All via Yodel (their choice not mine), all on time. I'm rather amazed.

          Can a leopard really change its spots?

          Wrt First Direct: Quite. A few weeks back I actually had to wait for more than fifteen seconds for the phone to be answered. I wondered if there'd been a calamity in Leeds or wherever the other one is.

          1. Goldmember

            Re: Yodel

            "Can a leopard really change its spots?"

            No. Not in Yodel's case anyway. I ordered something through Amazon marketplace a couple of months ago (i.e. not direct from Amazon), and the seller chose to send it with Yodel. The driver came at lunch time, and as I wasn't in, he threw the package over the side gate, in the pissing rain, where it lay in a puddle for 5 hours until I got home. To be fair, he did put a note through the door telling me he'd thrown the package over my 7 foot fence, so at least I knew where to find what was left of it.

            Amazon, however, have sent all their Prime stuff to me with "local" couriers for the past few months (no major delivery companies), and I've been much happier with that service. I don't even bother with marketplace items any more.

            1. JDX Gold badge

              Re: Yodel

              And you do realise that your local Yodel delivery boy isn't Yodel, or that one parcel is meaningless statistically?

              I hope you make sure to send Amazon proper complaints every time something like this happens because that's the only way they would realise if one delivery company really is consistently below par. It costs them money after all.

        2. JDX Gold badge

          Re: Crap Service is the Norm

          Yodel is not part of Amazon customer service. Customer service are the people who fix the problems Yodel introduce.

    2. Someone Else Silver badge
      Coat

      @ Fiddler Re: Crap Service is the Norm

      Very few companies do good customer service now, I think they just dont care.

      Agree with the first part, but not necessarily with the second part. I believe that they do care to a degree, but proper customer service costs money, and the fat-ass, corporatist mentality holds that any money spent on anything else is money not being put into my bonus.

      1. Richard Cranium

        Re: @ Fiddler Crap Service is the Norm

        Some businesses have realised that a small % of customers demand a disproportionately large amount of support effort. One of the most cost effective ways to reduce the cost of your support operation is to give those awkward customers the worst possible experience so they defect to your competitor - a double success, you save costs while at the same time increasing your competitor's costs.

        As customers we bring this upon ourselves to some extent. We seek out the cheapest service then expect the highest standards. As ISPs go I believe Zen Internet is highly regarded for taking ownership of support problems and getting them fixed - but they're also towards the higher end of the price range.

        And, as a customer, the best solution is invariably NOT to go for the biggest or the "household name" provider. To a small provider every customer matters, they are less likely to offshore their helpdesk, less likely to put support calls into an interminable mess of phone menus and call queues, less likely to rely on script following minimum wage help-desk staff.

        Phone menus and call queues mean they value their own time more than yours. Compare your hourly rate with that of a minimum wage offshore call centre worker: they're saving pennies and costing you pounds. When you're choosing a supplier and you get put into a call queue for pre-sales enquiries what does that tell you? If pre-sales was OK then try routing your next pre-sales call to their help desk instead - less well resourced? What does that tell you?

        In my business we have neither phone menus nor call queues. If the line is busy you get answerphone. When a customer leaves a message we call them back, usually within minutes and to the evident surprise of new customers, more used to answerphones being used as a black hole. I have customers who can be a serious PITA, in reality some of them understand that and the time we spend helping them is not wasted. We rely heavily on recommendations/referrals from existing customers for new customers. If a customer leaves for a cheaper provider they come back when they let them down.

        It's widely acknowleged that First Direct have got this right - so why is that tried and tested way of getting the reputation of "best phone support" not widely replicated?

  10. scrishton

    Picture the scene...

    I went to the garage to fill my car with petrol. They said they could supply up to 17 gallons. I thought that would be enough for my needs, getting to work and back, so I started filling up. But the petrol trickled out really slowly and I was only able to get three and a half pints. When I went to pay they charged me for the full 17 gallons, because they had after all said it was 'up to' 17 gallons. I pointed out that there seemed to be some sort of blockage in the pump's hose. They said they would fix that, but it would take three to four days.

    The following week the same thing happened again. When I tried to complain they went on about how they had the fastest and most reliable petrol pumps in the country. They charged me for the full 17 gallons again, even though they had only supplied three and a half pints. It would take three to four days to fix the problem.

    After two months of this continuing problem, I decided it would be better to go to a different garage. But the original garage said that I still had a contract with them, and I would have to pay for the petrol they would have charged me for for the next four months. And I would have to pay a further £40 to leave their garage. I said that I considered that any contract was already void because they had consistently failed to deliver the amount of petrol I was paying for, but they said that they had still delivered some petrol, and that they had the fastest pumps in the country which could deliver 'up to' 17 gallons.

    By a strange coincidence, exactly the same thing is happening with my EE Broadband.

    1. Infidellic_

      When was the last time you filled up your petrol tank in gallons!?!?!

      1. Captain Hogwash

        When was the last time you split hairs or missed the point?

      2. scrishton

        Seventeen litres wouldn't have got me to work and back.

    2. JDX Gold badge

      How does such a flawed analogy get so many upvotes? You don't pay for "gallons" of data, you pay for access to a pipe which can dispense X gallons/minutes. In a petrol station this would be like paying per minute for as much fuel as you could get out of the pump.

  11. Infidellic_

    I haven't had problems...

    ...with TalkTalk despite them always being near the bottom of the table. But then again I haven't had to call them to assess their customer service, my connection has just worked fine for the last 3 years. Back in the past the worst customer service I had was explaining to Virgin Media's Indian CS team that a gardener had cut the cable entering our house, they were determined to go through their script asking about lights on the router, switching it off and on etc - incapable of grasping that yes I definitely did need an engineer. That took hours (literally) to arrange and tens of minutes at most for the engineer to fix.

    1. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
      Flame

      Re: I haven't had problems...

      Yupp thats virgin media service alright... although its now liberty media or something (look forward to another name change in 9 months...)

      "Hello... my internet supplied through a set top box has failed, can you book me an engineer to install one of your super fail hubs as you dont do set top boxes anymore?"

      "what colour lights are flashing?"

      "No I just need an engineer to install a super hub"

      "How long have the lights not been flashing?"

      "Are you listening to me?"

      "Have you tried rebooting your computer?"

      "Its not the computer, its the settop box, and it any case I use Linux,not windows so I dont need to reboot all the time"

      "Ahh sorry sir, we dont support linux, I'll have to pass this call over to another desk"

      <musuk>

      "Hello... my internet supplied through a set top box has failed, can you book me an engineer to install one of your super fail hubs as you dont do set top boxes anymore?"

      "what colour lights are flashing?"

      Repeat until madness sets in...........

      1. BenBell

        Re: I haven't had problems...

        Funny you mention that, in a previous life I had a virgin fibre connection and genuinely got told by a CS agent that their proadband was only compatible with Windows and MAC, not linux - at which point they cancelled my contract and still tried to bill me for my remaining 9 months of contract. When i refused to pay it (i offered to pay if reconnected and was refused) - they sent a debt collector to my door and threatened small claims court. I told them to try it and I never heard from them again... although they have screwed my credit record and "lost" all record of my phonecalls

      2. JDX Gold badge

        Re: I haven't had problems...

        Isn't it a bit embarrassing for a Linux user to be contacting support in the first place?

  12. Desk Jockey

    Which BT?

    It would have been helpful if this article had made clear which part of BT Ofcom were referring to. Technically there are at least two different companies with BT in the name that are heavily involved in broadband provision, let's call them BT Retail and BT Wholesale.

    I don't subscribe to BT, but they p*ss me off all the same. That is because BT Wholesale (Openreach) wrecks my line on a regular basis and I have to hassle my ISP when then has to hassle BT and pass back all their pointless questions before several days/weeks later they send an engineer to fix whatever stupid thing the previous engineer had done. It almost tempts me to go with BT Retail in the vague hope that as they are sort of related to BT Wholesale, they might be able to fix the problem faster and at least I can just clearly blame BT rather than the ISP who has not done anything to wreck the line.

    If the Ofcom findings include BT Wholesale then that is not a surprise as no doubt a large number of complaints is being generated by ISPs. If it is BT Retail, this just shows how crap they are and that using them to beat up Wholesale is pointless.

    1. rhydian

      Re: Which BT?

      BT retail get no special treatment from BT Wholesale or Openreach otherwise their competitors and Ofcom would be on them like a tonne of bricks.

      My advice is to always concentrate on a voice fault (if present on a line) rather than a broadband one as a line HAS to work for voice whereas broadband is a "best effort" service.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Which BT?

        I would not be so sure about that... It seems some problems never seem to effect BT, even if it is on the Openreach backbone. :/

        1. rhydian

          Re: Which BT?

          If you can get proof then Ofcom would probably like a word.

          But it could be down to the LLU operators oversubscribing their backhaul links

  13. Derek Thomas
    Unhappy

    Noooooooo

    I have both BT and EE, I'm doomed. (reaches for two tin cans and a ball of string)

    1. scrishton

      Re: Noooooooo

      Perhaps that's it... I measured the 'ping' on my line at 3500mS the other day. Assuming the local BT exchange is on optical fibre, the delay from them to the interweb at the speed of light is insignificant. And the distance to the exchange and back at the speed of sound down string would be about 3500mS. Perhaps the new 'fibre' network they've been telling us about is sisal or jute. Are they spinning us a yarn?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Noooooooo

        Contracts with BT have always come with strings attached.

  14. Elmer Phud
    Boffin

    Service complaints?

    Was it raining a bit about that time?

    (ex BT BBand helldesk -- nowt like a bit of weather to bugger things up)

  15. Avatar of They
    FAIL

    BT for me,

    Moving house after 5 years poor service. (One call centre staff member thought I was odd to want to keep my email address after migrating to take over payment from the wife. I mean, why would I not want to lose complete contact with everyone I know just because I decide to start paying the bill.)

    Phone call, 40 minutes on hold to arrange being a new customer, engineer booked.

    Day of engineer nothing happened.

    Phoned them up and I quote. "Sorry, you were raised as a new customer with a new account but no product was assigned to you. So no engineer was booked to visit."

    Brilliant.

    I would like to know why you would be a BT customer with no actual product, in what instance would that be possible???

    Now with Virgin (Who are not much better)

    1. Refugee from Windows

      Re: BT for me,

      I'm like you, have a BT customer number, but they never got round to activating the phone line. After 3 months of being passed from pillar to post I actually got my money back off them. So you can be a customer without getting anything.

  16. Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse

    Bollocks statistics...

    I'm not with BT so am not commenting on their service per se. My gripe is with how you can have 0.32 or complaints per 1000 customers?

    Can we not just have have some common sense rounding up?

    1. Havin_it
      Trollface

      Re: Bollocks statistics...

      Okay. 32 complaints per 100,000 customers. Is that better?

      Serious note: I was kinda surprised the percentages were so low. I guess this informs us of the passive-aggressive character of the British consumer: mostly we won't lodge a formal complaint, though we will complain bitterly on forums, TrustPilot etc where it does us little good but at least warns the next poor sap.

      I'd like to see how these metrics stack up against how much smack is talked about each company on review sites.

  17. This post has been deleted by its author

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    BT has some very smart and helpful employees...

    ...but BT also puts an ocean of idiots between you and them.

    1. James 100

      Re: BT has some very smart and helpful employees...

      Absolutely true ... I had a fault which, after SIX engineer visits to test my line, was finally escalated to someone with a clue, who found and fixed two router faults on the backhaul path. (PCHIP errors - a packet processor fault - on an Alcatel router, and a 10GbE port throwing errors on the MPLS core network.) Needless to say, four of the six engineers just shrugged and tried to close the ticket since they don't test end-to-end connectivity to the ISP, one confirmed my diagnosis but couldn't help, and one tried moving me to another FTTC cabinet port to rule that out.

      I'm just glad I have A&A for an ISP: I can't imagine many having the tenacity or knowledge to keep chasing BT for almost two months over a core network fault BT refuse to look for!

  19. Sebby

    Yeah

    I've been enjoying BT for nearly two years now without issue. Admittedly I could do without the extortionate costs of a "Business" package and the associated static IP address, and I'd really like it if they did IPv6 natively, but I find that the trick to a happy BT experience is simply to replace their crap equipment with stuff you own, and never, ever to call up customer services, under any circumstances whatsoever. :)

  20. We're all in it together

    How to gauge BT

    Take a look at their Facebook PR. Backfires every time with lots of customers moaning about service. Sums it up really.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've just set the wheels in motion to ditch BT and their Infinity 2 package after they failed to not only fix constant IP changes and dropped connections but also for constant lies from their Indian call centres and messing with my profile dropping me from 80/20 to 40/10 when specifically asked not too.

    The final straw was them banning customers, myself included, from their forums for posting legitimate questions that they locked down with the same irrelevant answer than did not answer the question (look up PPP LCP on their forums!). Their forum are a total Dictatorship where you can post anything you want as long as it does not pose to be something difficult for BT to answer, if it is expect it to be locked down and should you have the audacity to post further difficult questions prepared to be banned.

    Infinity, named after how long you will wait to get a problem solved by BT!

  22. Nightgaunt

    Incompetent Dictatorship

    I've just set the wheels in motion to ditch BT and their Infinity 2 package after they failed to not only fix constant IP changes and dropped connections but also for constant lies from their Indian call centres and messing with my profile dropping me from 80/20 to 40/10 when specifically asked not to. Just this evening I've been informed that the MAC code I've been provided by BT is invalid, go figure!

    The final straw for me was them banning customers, myself included, from their forums for posting legitimate questions that they locked down with the same irrelevant answer that did not answer the question (look up PPP LCP on their forums!). Their forum is a total Dictatorship where you can post anything you want as long as it does not pose to be something difficult for BT to answer, if it is expect it to be locked down and should you have the audacity to post further difficult questions prepared to be banned.

    Infinity, named after how long you will wait to get a problem solved by BT!

  23. Mattjimf

    Beware of faulty routers

    I had major issues with getting a replacement home hub from BT, existing one was dishing out 169 ip addresses to wifi devices, cue three hubs being sent out to an address we had never had an account, my wife had lived there while a student, and being charged for them sending each one out to the wrong address. Then when it came to moving house, we're going to charge the standard £120 installation charge, Sky were charging £40 and were cheaper and offered a better calling package.

    Last time I had to call Sky, I was told how long the queue was and they offered to ring me back.

  24. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Two kinds of complaint

    The figures state, but don't measure, the fact that there are complaints about service, and there are complaints about complaints handling.

    it's the second one that needs to be watched most.

    Things will go wrong in any organisation. Often it's something small and easily managed.

    What matters is what they do about it.

    And too often it's a sequence of 1.) delay, 2.) fob off , then 3.) ignore

    So it starts with a script reader who can't cope with anything that isn't covered by the obvious. And asking you to repeat irrelevant steps.

    Then it's bouncing you between departements that say they'll do something even if it's only to call back and then don't.

    And then it's not answering at all.

    1. Colin Bull 1
      FAIL

      Re: Two kinds of complaint

      I would partly agree with this. Although this thread has been hijacked by complaints about Openreach, as BT Retail are Openreach's largest customer they will get more problems with the appalling network company service.

      The organisation at the root of the problem is shielded from any complaint by a hapless ISP and the consumer cannot make a direct complaint about someone they have no direct contact with.

      I have had 2 excessive outages in the last 12 months. The first caused by an engineer dropping a bundle of cables in a manhole took 9 days to fix. Of course I had to plug another phone in, face plate off etc, etc, this is going to cost you £125 if it is your fault.

      Whilst chasing my provider I was never told what the fault was. It was only 5 days into fault I found there were 100 other customers with same problem AND I INFORMED my carrier what the problem was. 9 days to fix a fault they caused, they knew about, they had a man in the hole when it happened. How can this be ?

      Second fault at least 37 days. It might have been fixed yesterday but I have not got the heart to check, because if it is not fixed I will not be able to contain my desire to beat to death anything in the vicinity. My provider, Phone Coop, is an apologist for Openreach. For the 10th time of calling them at 16.55 to find out why the latest promise of fixing it that day had not happened, I am told yes, but they could still turn up till half past 6. Like f88k. Through all this you never see any thing in writing. You never see the Openreach website to check what has been promised yourself.

      So you complain to your provider. They might complain to Openreach. Do they complain to Ofcom. Now and again. Do Ofcom do anything. Yes.

      For the past 10 years at least Ofcom or the previous incarnation have mouthed platitudes and sat on their hands. They admit there is a problem They do sweet FA

      About 8 or 9 years ago Ofcom had given a deadline to stop the misuse of 0845 numbers. That was canned at the last minute because of alleged problems with alarm lines. The fix was easy. Just mandate all 0845 calls be free until the alarm companies could sort it out. So the fix was delayed and is now a bigger problem with more mobile phones. You complain to the 0845 number and they say ' it is a local call' and 10 minutes later after you have gone of the boil you tell the fxxxkwit IT IS NOT a local call. SO Ofcom have DONE NOTHING ABOUT THIS PROBLEM.

      In December 2013 Ofcom reported Openreach's install and repair times were a disaster. What have they done? The have said they will give Openreach until 2016 to sort the problem . 2 YEARS.

      Again they have effectively DONE NOTHING ABOUT THIS PROBLEM.

      There is an Openreach web page that details of the SLG if new provision is not done in 12 days. This is the new 21st century network. Why cannot they do it in a week.

      Where is the SLG for repairs. After 10 years why has this not happened. Why can the consumer not see the Openreach website for progress for their own line.

      There is an easy fix for this problem.

      GET RID OF OFCOM for TELECOMMS regulation and install a regulator that has not got its head up BT's arse.

      Just got to go and take my valium ....

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    It never changes

    Anoymous as formerly BT Sales Drone, in a previous incarnation.

    As regards complaint handling, like most places, these days, you'll never get to speak to a complaints department. You have to make your complaint to the first person you speak to (who will probably never look at or deal with this complaint again, but will probably get complained at by their superiors if taking the time to actually properly note down your issue affects their call stats) who most likely has no ability or authority to investigate. It'll then disappear into the maze of customer service. And maybe get sorted, maybe. The retail/wholesale/openreach split is like a thorn in the side throughout (especially as a lot of the time, in my experience, retail got the same kind of crap excuses about service problems as all the other ISP's did. If there was any preferential treatment there, I never spotted it. Frankly, they were almost more annoying as they had to strive to be seen visibly not to be favouring us.)

  26. PeterM42
    FAIL

    BT =

    Bunch of Tossers

    end!

    1. Mike Shepherd

      Re: BT =

      I agree that, in this case, a more considered analysis would be pointless. After more than 30 years, it is a great relief to abandon all direct contact with BT. My ISP will deal with BT Openreach, a transfer of sustained pain for which I feel some guilt.

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