Re: Standby for downvotes!
Ha, we hit this at work a few years ago.
Nothing like as bad as yours but i had issues whilst setting up a retail premises. There's a telecoms company I won't name who were appalling. They get bad reviews on the internet which I read thoroughly once on the project. Had I been around before the contract was 'signed' it wouldn't have gone ahead. What said telecommunications firm were asked was could they install three PSTN lines plus one DSL line? Yes they say they could ignoring the fact that BT/Openreach (can't remember which it would have been as I can't remember the date) would be doing it. We'll also need a PBX as there will be a need to transfer calls between extensions. They say they have a clever virtual way of doing that and no need for a physical box etc. Sadly the manager who signed up to this had no technical experience at all.
So I'm brought in directly after my holiday to look at the situation regarding this and till points etc. before the shop opens. The company was very prompt at getting the bills sent out sadly not at customer service or satisfaction. I discovered that the three PSTN lines have been wired up one on each floor. So the initial call would be on line one which always came in to the ground floor. The first thing I did was ask how the calls were supposed to be transferred. It was an NGN and I'm told that if one line is busy the caller is transferred to the next line which will then ring. I said that's not a replacement for a PBX and they said it's not meant to be. So if a particular salesperson is needed and they're on the 2nd floor when the call was answered on the ground floor what happens then? Shouting or word of mouth seemed their best solution to that.
There were mysterious charges on the bill that I could never get removed no matter who I spoke to. For example there was a charge for an antivirus package on our data line which did't appear to do anything. There were others that had been agreed to by the person who 'signed' the contract. When I asked to see the signed contract I was told it was verbal and they had a recording of it. When I asked to hear it I was told their equipment didn't allow them to do this - Sorry. They insisted they had powerful broadband which was true but sadly dismal equipment. Their modem/router was a the same as an ISP supplied for homeuse. It didn't penetrate through reinforced concrete very well and was useless except on the ground floor. So I went with powerline to reach the upper floors and a wifi point connected to that up there. I asked for the username/password one day so I could check the settings and change the wifi password. I wasn't going to get that from them apparently so I googled it. They hadn't changed it from the default which was nice and insecure.
Then after opening they phoned up one day and spoke to the cleaner who was convinced that signing up to a call package would be a money saver. At over £50 when the calls were mostly incoming that was a bit rich. So I complained that an authorised person hadn't made the changes and we'd be cancelling our direct debit and taking legal advice if it wasn't removed. As soon as the contract was up we told them to bugger off
Biting the hand that feeds IT
