Infinity Installation Woes

Ordered BT infinity.
Kit arrives.
Date for engineer to install - yesterday.
Engineer comes (doesn't fill me with confidence from the outset) Goes to green box ouside the house & connects the infinity to the phone line. Doesn't sync & makes the phone line hiss and loose the dialing tone. Engineer deems it a line fault, disconnects infinity (phone works again) and tells me I have to report line faut to BT & duly dissapears.

4 phone conversations later explaining that "your engineer says there is a fault on the line" and finally line engineer is sceduled. You'll get a call 1 hour before engineer arrives tommorrow.
Engineer arrives at 8 am or so (no phone call but fortunately my wife was in). The line engineer connects laptom & deem line to be perfect and in so may words says the infinity installer hadn't done his job properly and that he could and should have sorted it yesterday as the fault was the way the infinity had been connected up in the green box! However he couldn't do that as that was down to the broadband engineers.

I now have a resceduled installation date in 2 weeks time - by which time Zen will have terminated my ADSL connection and can't get any joy out of the Indian call centre tonight when I rang to try and get the installation brought forward.

Is it really fair I should loose connection simply because the installer didn't do his job properly?
I'm regretting leaving Zen already (sorry £36 a month is just too much for their fibre connection)

Andy

In reply to a post by mol2:

Is it really fair I should loose connection simply because the installer didn't do his job properly?
I'm regretting leaving Zen already (sorry £36 a month is just too much for their fibre connection)
Andy

I assume you are aware that even if you had decided that £36 was not too much to pay and had gone to Zen fibre you would still have had the "same" BT engineers doing the connection at your house.

Indeed I am aware the same engineers would have been doing the job.

However I wouldn't have wasted half as much time on the phone going through option after option and having circular phone calls after queing for far too long.

As a customer why should I spent my time explaining to BT's help desk the problem BT's own engineer had identified on a BT line but couldn't be bothered to sort out himself or make proper arrangements for those who could sort the problem to do so?

If you have to rebook the installation, you may as well cancel the order and start again to take advantage of the first 3 months free

Looks like you had a Openreach eng that shouldn't have a job and best let someone else take his job and he can get to the back of the dole que.

You get what you pay for.

In reply to a post by mol2:

Ordered BT infinity.
Kit arrives.
Date for engineer to install - yesterday.
Engineer comes (doesn't fill me with confidence from the outset) Goes to green box ouside the house & connects the infinity to the phone line. Doesn't sync & makes the phone line hiss and loose the dialing tone. Engineer deems it a line fault, disconnects infinity (phone works again) and tells me I have to report line faut to BT & duly dissapears.

4 phone conversations later explaining that "your engineer says there is a fault on the line" and finally line engineer is sceduled. You'll get a call 1 hour before engineer arrives tommorrow.
Engineer arrives at 8 am or so (no phone call but fortunately my wife was in). The line engineer connects laptom & deem line to be perfect and in so may words says the infinity installer hadn't done his job properly and that he could and should have sorted it yesterday as the fault was the way the infinity had been connected up in the green box! However he couldn't do that as that was down to the broadband engineers.

I now have a resceduled installation date in 2 weeks time - by which time Zen will have terminated my ADSL connection and can't get any joy out of the Indian call centre tonight when I rang to try and get the installation brought forward.

Is it really fair I should loose connection simply because the installer didn't do his job properly?
I'm regretting leaving Zen already (sorry £36 a month is just too much for their fibre connection)

Andy

Well, you could recount this tale to the "big chief's" office and you will then receive a reply, plus senior level monitoring of the action taken to resolve your complaint.

Forgive my ignorance but who is the "Big Chief"?

BT Chief Executive Officer. Ian Livingston.

Indeed, generally we get a lot more than you do what with not having to pay for install, equipment and a lower monthly fee. Guess what, we have a better usage allowance too.

How much you paying Zen? Oh wait, that's right. Everytime I ask you to let us in on the secret you disappear.

I'm sure we'll be seeing a reply from you to the post in short order

BT Group (British Telecom, Openreach) Ian Livingston, Chief Executive
e-mail Ian Livingston http://www.bt.com

BT really are a shower (present company excepted)... I had much the same scenario, with one engineer blaming the previous one who had blamed the previous one and all of them chasing different faults. Along the way, one of the engineers discovered a dodgy modem...

To trace the 'fault', Hole #1 was dug three inches too far to the left - I could just see the joint in the cable, and could have dug it out with my hands... but no, it had to be filled in! Then the next day Hole #2 was dug - apparently, each hole costs BT £500-600, so I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the contractors wanted to do it this way rather than just expanding the original hole by a few inches.

Anyway, none of this worked - Engineer #4 swapped a couple of contacts in the green box at the end of the road and everything's been fine since.

Except: my first bill was a huge shock - I hadn't realised the amount of data I was using, getting on for 200G when I had chosen the 40G cap, plus nearly £100 for phone calls (basically, her daily chats with Mum...) I immediately changed to Option 2 (free everything and no cap) - but I'm still getting emails warning of my Usage and amount of calls. Huh?

I rang BT this morning and was told: 'Never mind, Sir, we're just advising you of your Usage, you're not capped in any way' Me:'So why bother telling me, if it's unlimited?' No reply to that... (and another thing, you have to go through all the 'options' before getting through to a human, and you have to dial in your account number. The first question, when you do finally speak to someone is: 'What's your account number?' oy... (to be fair, banks do the same thing) But I guess somebody, somewhere, is paying for all this unnecessary duplication. Oh wait, I think I know who that might be

Sorry to ramble on, mol2, but when you eventually get your connection, your troubles have probably only just started

As a customer why should I spent my time explaining to BT's help desk the problem BT's own engineer had identified on a BT line but couldn't be bothered to sort out himself or make proper arrangements for those who could sort the problem to do so?


Becuase he doisent work for bt retail but bt openreach "BIG Differance"

An update: After emailing the address suggested I got some positive intervention.
Installation brought forward to last Thursday (told it would be am on the phone & pm by the web site)

Engineer duly arrived and connected it up & all works fine.

Interesting results on speed check - BTspeedtester - almost 39 download 9 upload, the one here only 19 ish down & 4.8 up.

What does that tell us - BT are throttling the onward connection perhaps?
Up to 40 won't be that even if you have the cabinet outside your house if BT are throttling it.

Try www.speedtest.net

No, it means what ever you are testing it with isn't measuring it right. Wired or wireless ? Decent PC, or an old dog ?

I'm not saying this through smugness. I get full sync and top profile, and yet my [censored] old PC will never show more than 17 meg download. OK with my son's new laptop, when connected via ethernet.