Thread: BT call centre and their awesome engineers

My exchange is BT only and I renewed my contract and got a shiny new black hub and the phone. Hub works very well and the broadband phone is a great addition, crystal clear calls for free on a night etc so chuffed.

Anway came home wifey moaning no dial tone. Fair enough I'm Sigs will have this fixed in a jiffy.

A bit of fault finding and I got dial tone back, It was the hub, its creating an open circuit (short) so dropping the line. Bugger, not so much its the hub, it just needs replacing but bugger I'm going to suffer the idiots at BT's call centre on the other side of the planet.

I gets a young lady, awesome pidgeon english a 5 minute call is taking 45 minutes. She is convinced the fault is I cannot use broadband and make a call at the same time, I keep repeating the hub is faulty and it drops the line. Ive hit a wall and she carries on to say an engineer will call becuase broadband uses high frequencies and this can interfere with calls (yes love thats why we use filters and guess what mine are fine).

I pops out my trusty Belkin plugs up and I'm back online within 5 minutes. 2 hours later BT's engineer rings up...

BT, your internet is working
ME, yes a temporary fix, I plugged in an old router
BT, old router?
ME, yes the router I used to use before I got the new one
BT so you internet is working
ME, no, the new hub you sent me has a fault, it drops the line as soon as you plug it into the filter.
BT, Ok did you use the cd?
ME, No its a hub and Im not thick,
BT, no CD?
ME no CD, I plugged it in checked config and was away. It worked fine until today.
BT, can you plug it in and tell me what lights are lit.
ME, If I plug it in it will drop the line, the hub is causing an open circuit.
BT, can you plug it in and tell me what lights are flashing
ME, the hub causes a line fault if I connect it I will lose this call.
BT, so the broadband light is flashing?
ME, 2 secs (gets ready) ok when I plug this in the line will drop are you ready?
BT yes yes plug it in and tell me whats flashing...
ME, plugs it in... line goes dead...
ME, TWAT!

There's only one solution...

Move home to somewhere that BT doesn't have total control of the exchange. They're a complete bunch of chimps.

Unfortunately the monkeys follow a basic script, then when they can't fix it by their limited script they pass you over to a proper engineer.

Thankfully I've only had to deal with them once.

Home Hub? Get rid. It's shite.

Self updating which blocks off ports rendering Xbox 360 unusuable etc etc.

I work for BT and I wouldn't have one. Matter of fact, I gave mine away.

Have a look to see if SKY (I know, I know its SKY) happen to have ADSL2 in your area.

If they do, and you already have Sky TV, then add Sky Max to the package (Its an extra £10.00 a Month) and it gives you speeds of upto 16mb, I am getting 12.5. But..... the best bit is they have a TRUE unlimited downloads on their max account.

So if you happen to spend a fair amount of time of rapidshare / torrent it helps no end.

[Deleted]

Originally Posted by Mr_Creosote

Home Hub? Get rid. It's shite.

Self updating which blocks off ports rendering Xbox 360 unusuable etc etc.

I work for BT and I wouldn't have one. Matter of fact, I gave mine away.

Agreed, mines still got the wrapper on, wouldn't use it if they paid me.

Weird. My hub has worked fine for a year with no problems.
Watch the fcuker play up now that I've said that!

You think you've got problems. I've got a mate who works for BT. Here is a story and, as you are sigs, a quiz.

One of BT's business customers in a far flung part of the world had a requirement to deliver call data to BT in the UK for pattern analysis. This is a fairly huge text file that needs to be sent half way round the world about once a month. Data protection laws require the file to be transmitted in a secure manner.

Here's the quiz (as you are army sigs, it's multi-choice)

How would you arrange the delivery of the data while satisfying the security requirements described above?

a) Encrypt the file using gpg and transfer over the internet at zero cost.

b) Slap it on a CD and hand it to Fed-Ex at minimal cost.

c) Charge the customer a six figure sum to send BT engineers half way round the world to fit ISDN modems to his mainframe then write a bespoke application to drive the modems because 'this is the only way to ensure security'. Later, when the angry customer asks why BT is charging over 100,000 dollars a month for ISDN access, you discover that a bug in your bespoke software keeps the international ISDN call open permanently, whether or not data is being transmitted.

Can you guess which option BT chose?

Originally Posted by Ancient_Mariner

You think you've got problems. I've got a mate who works for BT. Here is a story and, as you are sigs, a quiz.

One of BT's business customers in a far flung part of the world had a requirement to deliver call data to BT in the UK for pattern analysis. This is a fairly huge text file that needs to be sent half way round the world about once a month. Data protection laws require the file to be transmitted in a secure manner.

Here's the quiz (as you are army sigs, it's multi-choice)

How would you arrange the delivery of the data while satisfying the security requirements described above?

a) Encrypt the file using gpg and transfer over the internet at zero cost.

b) Slap it on a CD and hand it to Fed-Ex at minimal cost.

c) Charge the customer a six figure sum to send BT engineers half way round the world to fit ISDN modems to his mainframe then write a bespoke application to drive the modems because 'this is the only way to ensure security'. Later, when the angry customer asks why BT is charging over 100,000 dollars a month for ISDN access, you discover that a bug in your bespoke software keeps the international ISDN call open permanently, whether or not data is being transmitted.

Can you guess which option BT chose?

Originally Posted by Mr_Creosote

Home Hub? Get rid. It's shite.

Self updating which blocks off ports rendering Xbox 360 unusuable etc etc.

I work for BT and I wouldn't have one. Matter of fact, I gave mine away.

No problems with mine and my 360 flys along with no lag. I also work for BT and will be looking out for you sonny jim. How dare you slag off a piece of our awsome hardware.

Originally Posted by Warrior-Webbing

Have a look to see if SKY (I know, I know its SKY) happen to have ADSL2 in your area.

Beware, they have their share of callcentre chimps as well. My dad's DSL connection had trouble accessing various US-hosted sites (hotmail, yahoo...), and I'd managed to establish that there was a routing problem somewhere upstream. One of the happy people I spoke to said "your internet is working, it is not our problem if you cannot get to US sites".

In the end, I somehow managed to get through to an UK callcentre, and duly created enough of a stink that it did get escalated, but this took days.

If you have issues with Sky - and you can get online have a look here http://www.skyuser.co.uk/ they have always been far more help then Shy Customer Services have ever been.

The problem with BT is they have very few engineers anymore, a fault with a service like broadband has to be isolated from the line, if its a line fault, your sevice provider will send out one type of Openreach Engineer, if its Broadband they will send a different Openreach Engineer, but here is the rub...

Your Sevice provider has to pay Openreach for this service (even BT!), unless it proves to be an Openreach fault. SO what do they do? Take ages trying to convince the customer that their own equipment is faulty or works as it should.

Do what I did when the Hub failed to work, tell them it won't power up and there are no lights on at all, had another in 24 hours and its worked fine ever since, oh and I have 2 hub phones too.

Those homehub things are sheeite, I've a load of busted ones here. I did however "revive" one by flashing it with some Thomson firmware.

Mag to grid, and buy a Cisco router.