Ceridwenscauldron

Ring Ring

"Hello Russian Telecom how can I help you"

"Hello I'm moving to a new address and would like to set up phone and broadband services."

"OK customer can I have your name please?"

"Mr Vladimir Lenin and my partner Mr Leon Trotsky"

"And what is the new address?"

"The Winter Palace St Petersburg"

"Let me just call that up on the screen there Mr Lenin. terrible weather we are having right now isn't it? got anything good planned at the weekend?"

"Well me and the boys are just hanging loose nothing too revolting"

"I have the details on the screen now, a Mr N Romanov and family are listed at this address at present"

"Yes they are moving to Siberia and I'm taking over the rental"

"OK Mr Lenin we have done that for you, I have terminated Mr Romanov and his family and your phone and broadband will be up and running by November anything else we can do for you?"

"Not today thanks"

"Thank you for calling RT"

Shortly after my complaint to Of-com was logged someone from the BT chairman's office rings, I run through my complaint again, she makes a couple of sympathetic noises and says she will try to have the matter urged as a priority, I say why can't you just turn it back on?

I get the spiel about orders and how it takes a week to get a broadband service set up, (I can't imagine why this is do they have to dig up the cables and turn little taps on to let the magic photon beams down the cables perhaps.) Apparently it takes a week to close it down too, well I would not know that as they chose to close the connection down while Moff was away! and a denial of the previous admission that they had not followed the proper procedure.

I argue that we never asked for it to be terminated etc and that I am sick to the back teeth of people at BT who just seem to try and find excuses not to do anything or take ownership of the problem.

She says that she is taking ownership of the problem and will ring me back when she knows more about what is going on.

A little later she rings back to say they are trying to get the service reconnected as a priority, but someone else is taking it over as she (the person who has just taken ownership) will now be off until January. I wish her well in her time off.

All the time BT stick to this nonsense about duty of care to new customers and when I question the setting up of an internet service at an address just on the basis of someone asking for it with not a shred of evidence of who they are or that the address is genuine I get the line that customers would soon complain if they did that. Well I'm complaining now that they don't and BT don't like it.

Lets see what happens tomorrow

Someone from BT calls this morning to ask if an engineer can visit, I tell her that the phone line is now working but the broadband isn't. She says it won't be connected until Thursday because of orders needing to be raised etc.

Hang on someone at BT told me the service would be resummed by the latest today (Monday) She then started the it wasn't me that said that game and the it takes so long to raise an order excuse so I say.

"So its just your internal bureaucracy preventing you from reconnecting the service that you should never have cut off in the first place"

Her reply "If you choose to interpret it that way"

Well as you can imagine I was a bit unhappy about that on top of the other issues, so I told the young lady that I was going to complain to Of-com. I could tell by her attitude that BT now regard me as a difficult crank just because I want them to reconnect the service and won't give up.

I then hear that Moff has had a text message saying that the service will be reconnected not by Thursday but on 28 July.

Galvanised into action I drop another note to the corporate Press Office and ring Of-com where a very nice chap listens patiently to my complaint, takes it all down and gives me a complaint no and tells me to phone the BT office that deals with Of-com complaints.

Call the number and speak to a very weary sounding chap, who is very apologetic, takes down the details, admits that BT did not properly follow procedure in terminating the account and promises to get a complaint handler to call me back.

tune in later to see what happens.