Forget Brexit, ignore Trump, write off today: BT's gonna make us all 'realise the potential of tomorrow' These truly are strange times. BT is plotting a return to the High Street, unleashing hundreds of tech troubleshooters onto the unsuspecting public - and onshoring all of its call centres to Britain quicker than scheduled. New broom Philip Jansen - who took over as CEO from Salesforce bound Gavin Patterson on 1 January - …
The 900-strong team of “tech experts “ will be dispatched to people’s homes to help them install or fix their digital stuff
Let's hope they're more helpful then many of BT's current engineers who are only interested in closing* your support call with as little work as possible.
* Note: I didn't say anything about them fixing your problem.
BT's current engineers who are only interested in closing* your support call
Yeah! As in our last "engineer" visit: "okay if I just use your toilet mate?" = "Customer had left phone unplugged at wall socket. Please raise a charge".
Er no, our master socket is definitely not where you claim it is.
Let's hope they're more helpful then many of BT's current engineers
Ah yes. *All* the BT engineers that have come to the house to either install a new line or fix issues with the current one have been abysmally ignorant on anything other than physically hooking up the line.
The last one even forgot that he was supposed to install the VDSL breakout box (which actually wasn't needed since my modem did that). And then didn't know anything about how to configure the router..
Hi! I'm from the BT tech assist roving team of quasi expert wifi guys who are dispatched from your local high street to sort your in home communications needs....
Hey! Don't slam the door in my face! Open the door you pratt! I'm here to sort your wifi! Open up!!! Now...or I'll leave! OK, I'm leaving then. You'll be sorry...
Non-Indian high street shops? Does that mean we will hark back to the good old English days of Wednesday early closing and every shop is shut by 5pm? BT to be renamed to "The GPO"? Railways to be renationalised under "British Rail" and every computer company to be nationalised into ICL?
Bugger this for a game of soldiers, I'm off back to Switzerland.
I guess UK workers are getting radically cheaper compared not only to the developed world but also to a rising economy like India.
More to the point, this could be learning real lessons. BT have acquired a decent chain of high street shops with EE, and a UK call centre with Plusnet. Perhaps they've genuinely come to appreciate the value of those and concluded the rest of the consumer-facing business could benefit from things consumers like.
Pity they didn't fight ofcom and the government when it could have saved the brand.
You were once a telecomms company. Now you're a 'communications provider' Due to not fighting hard enough.
BT should have point blank refused to allow other companies into its exchanges back in the 'mercury' days. They didn't.
And the UK suffers because we don't have a phone company anymore, just openreach, who, while doing a valiant job, can't communicate with the actual customer because reasons.
Frustrated? me? NEVER
Sorry, but Ofcom and the government have let them off light.
Openreach should provide telephone exchanges and national connectivity.
BT should just be "yet another ISP".
They're not.
The reason they were separated in the first place is still present - BT and Openreach are in league and just don't care about you because they know most people can't go anywhere else.
A couple of years ago I walked into a workplace that needed a leased line. They'd literally contracted, signed and paid years before and... nothing. BT were the providers, Openreach never did a thing, they both just shrugged. Over those years that they were literally contracted to provide a line they collectively did only the following: Put in a piece of empty blown-fibre tubing. Came back six months later when complaints were made, and did another piece. Came back six months later when complaints were made, and did another piece. Nothing was jointed. Nothing reached the actual place they needed to, they were in no rush whatsoever.
I took over the IT. I looked into it. I complained. They did nothing. I escalated it like mad, and they "came and looked". Turned out, after all those years, there had never been enough room at the exchange to service that kind of line anyway. When I finally got a friendly set of engineers on-site with me in tow, they literally scratched their heads because there was nothing they could do even if they wanted to - there was nothing to connect to at the other end, even if they did all the work that they'd skipped for many years while they actually had our money still. They went away, telling us it was "at least a year away", which was the fourth time we'd heard that.
I put our postcodes (yes, multiple) into various checkers and nobody else said they could provide us with anything, because as far as the checkers were concerned, we were only serviced by BT/Openreach.
So I phoned Virgin on the off-chance, having had a leased line from them before. We had a number of LONG conversations, but I had a good contact from a previous leased line with them at another site. Turned out, a millionaire who lived quite a way away had a private Virgin line installed at great expense for himself. Because of the way they'd put it in (they'd been quite forward thinking), it didn't appear on the checkers as it only needed to service this guy who didn't live near our postcodes, but it was able to be fed off in order to provide the required service to us. We finally had a company willing to install a leased line, at a reasonable cost, which had never appeared viable from any of the automated trackers for anyone but BT.
We cancelled the BT order and told them why. We ordered Virgin. I then spent SIX MONTHS throwing BT and Openreach personnel off our site because they kept turning up to try to provide the line we'd ordered years before, "we're coming to join that tubing"... no you're not, mate. "We're coming to blow the fibre", through what? "We're upgrading the exchange down the road so we can connect you", because you could have done that at any time but fobbed us off all these years? And literally they were just turning up, unannounced, at random, trying to gain access to our site, on an cancelled and refunded contract to try to get our business, months after we got rid of them.
Three months later we had a Virgin line. They still kept coming. After many years of "trying" to install, the only serious motion happened when they realised that they didn't have a captive audience, that we wouldn't touch them ever again, and that our money that they'd been holding
onto for nearly 5 years was about to get refunded, plus interest, for non-delivery.
As payback, two months after the install, I removed all BT analogue, ISDN, etc. lines from site (about 40-50 lines in total) and SIP'd the entire thing over the Virgin line.
We've had the Virgin line five years now. It works perfectly. Zero downtime. They gave me a free speed upgrade to the maximum the line can take this year. We still don't appear on any of the checkers. I still get regular calls from BT asking if we want to use them.
BT and Openreach are in league, because they're still the same company. They honestly don't care about progressing any of their customers or the infrastructure, they just want you captive. And when they think they have no rival, they have literally zero interest in dealing with you, even when they have your money, have a signed contract to deliver, and have all the time in the world.
Only when they realise they could lose their monopoly do they bother to do *ANYTHING* about it.
There's a reason that I refused to even activate my analogue BT line at home, much less use them for ADSL/VDSL.
I wholly agree with the sentiments and anger at BT. They are the greediest lot I have ever come across in dealing with utilities. Others are not saints either !
They have all stooped to the lowest common denominator in terms of customer services and provide a bare minimum agreed level of service. Remember that asshole, Peter (bonehead) Bonefield, the CEO who vowed never to give free (inclusive) phone calls ? Who also delayed mass adoption of proper internet by years ? BT even delayed fibre rollouts, despite govt. fundings.
Thats how greedy they are. And the charges they want to levy for just coming around to sniff at your problems down the street cabinet?
They will however advertise till the cows come home about how they "listened" to their customers and brough call centres home ! Dick Swinging wankers, all.
AC wrote ...BT should have point blank refused to allow other companies into its exchanges back in the 'mercury' days. They didn't.
If Ofcom did not allow LLU in the early 2000s we would be back in the realms of £700 install for broadband and £70 a month for 1MB as we were then.
If Ofcom had any gumption and not staffed with ex BT bods they would have separated the infrastructure and got rid of the last mile of copper 10 years ago and we would be paying £10 per month for broadband with a version of VOIP for nothing.
Should be to put a stop to all this phone number spoofing that is helping to contribute to an annual £10 billion of fraud (according to the Beeb report). I know they must make a shedload of profit from all these scum inquiring about my "recent accident" and "Microsoft calling about my computer" but FFS BT, get your house in order, then I might consider using you.
Indeed, BT were the ones who actively encouraged and promoted the whole premium numbers malarkey, and we are still paying for a lot of them. Doctors surgeries, most utilities and other companies got on the bandwagon to rip us off ! Airlines, phone companies, travel agencies, NHS, you name it, they all got in the BT act of greed and money making schemes.
Rascals and conmen, they are.
And they sold our data secretly under the "PHORM" trials. Wake me up when the next price rise is announced, to justify their UK call centre moves and minimum wages to pay for ! Any excuse to make more money.
For a start, they can at least stop bombarding us with their purple adverts for whole house Mesh systems, which need not be necessary at all, if they had strong signal emitting routers in the first place and enough bandwidth, instead of contending ratios they play with.
Who are the main shareholders of BT currently? The hedge fund and their managers, who are baying for brexit so they can shaft us even more with price rises and minimal regulations. There's mention of Plusnet already having done that in another thread on here (owned by BT). Best is yet to come.
Just look at the 5G launch. What a shambles. only a few streets in 5 cities, yet bragging rights to the full. Will make you believe you are already in 5G heaven.
Rip Off Britain rules.
We’re helping families and communities across the UK, and companies in Britain and around the world, to remove the barriers of today to realise the potential of tomorrow,
Those potentials are never fully realised as you insist on keeping your copper line rental slush fund.
BT said it is “reinventing what it means to provide great customer service”,
Does that mean these people will know how the internet works and know what DNS actually is?
Having BT customer services tell me the current internet package doesn't support DNS was funny but not really that helpful.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
