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Living just 3 miles from one of Bedfordshire's largest towns, our village has managed to prevail on BT to install a fibre cabinet. That's a major success, as we weren't even due to be included in CBC's BDUK-funded Rural Broadband plan for approximately another 12 months.
Anyway, once I discovered that the new cabinet (7) was live and that my property was connected through this cabinet, I put in my order for the 38Mb/10Mb fibre connection (the best seemingly that I could get) and the order was accepted on 2nd July. It also advised that I was due to be connected on the 9th July. On that day I got an e-mail saying my service would be starting on the following day, 10th July, except that I was away at the time. However, since it didn't require me to do anything I was relaxed about it. I returned from holiday on 16th July full of expectation, only to find that my broadband was still on ADSL2+. I was disappointed!
Come 18th July, another e-mail saying my service would be starting on 19th July - and sure enough, on the morning of the 19th an OR engineer rang on his mobile to say he would be connecting me up. However, about 90 mins later he rang again to say he couldn't connect me as there was a need for some extra plant in the cabinet to connect me to cabinet 3. When pressed, he thought that this might get actioned later that day, or perhaps with a couple of days. He explained that he needed a connection from the new fibre cabinet (7) back up the road to the old cabinet (3) that I was actually connected to! Further disappointment! [I should add that cabinet 3 is perhaps 50 years old, and carries the copper connections for the entire village of 86 houses back to the Hockliffe exchange, but has no fibre connection itself (perhaps now or indeed ever!)]
On 25th July, I spotted a couple of OR engineers just starting to work on the new fibre cabinet (7) and got chatting. It transpired that they were connecting up one of my neighbours who I knew had ordered his BB service after I'd advised him that BT was now accepting orders as our lines were shown as connected to the new cabinet. [In my opinion, this meant that he was being connected ahead of my order!]. I enquired of them as to what "plant" might have been installed recently (since the cabinet had been activated) which might have prevented my order from being installed a week previously but which was now enabling them to connect my neighbour. They said that the equipment had been there like it was since activation, and in their opinion, all that was lacking was the job being allocated to an engineer. They tried looking on the database to find my Line number (I didn't have my Order number to hand!) but were unable to find it. They suggested I wait a couple more days, and set about looping my neighbour's connection over the 100-pr link cable to cabinet 3. Yes, I was deflated.
On Thursday 26th, I received a seemingly spurious e-mail notification that my Line Rental Advanced payment was due to expire within 6 weeks and that I should consider renewing it. So, ever dutiful, I got into a 'chat' with a BT lady and explained the situation as I didn't want to be crossing Orders and making matters more complicated. After some 35 minutes, she came back and said that she'd been told there had been a fault in the exchange and that my order had been 'overlooked'. However, she added that the fault had now been rectified, she could see the order, and she had spoken with someone in the L/Buzzard exchange who felt that the connection 'could' be done either that afternoon or perhaps the following day, but there was no certainty about it. She apologised, adding that she was sure I'd be compensated for the delay; but frankly, I was incredulous ... that "an exchange fault" could have caused an order to be "overlooked" like that!! Anyway, as I learned to expect by now, nothing happened, either that day or the next - although I felt I had at least registered my complaint.
This morning (Monday 30th July) out of the blue I received a phone call from a chap in some noisy BT office, enquiring as to whether my service was now working. I explained that I was still connected, but only using my ADSL2+ service, and that I was increasingly concerned as to quite when I'd be connected to the fibre service I'd ordered as the 100-pr link cable between the cabinet I was really connected to (3) which linked on to the fibre cabinet (7) might be getting filled up. He understood my concern, gave his name and even called me back as promised within 15 minutes. He informed me that my "order had been cancelled". Somewhat taken aback at this, I asked whether it was possible to say 'who' had cancelled the order and 'when'. He informed me that the order had been cancelled between the BT system and the OR system (he couldn't be any more specific!) but couldn't say when. He kindly offered to re-order the service for me, offering a discounted rate for the 18 month contract. I was reasonably happy to sign up, but said I didn't want to be sent another "Smart router" and have to pay a tenner for it! He understood and said he'd make a note on the order that I shouldn't receive another one.
So now I have a new order and a new date for when the service 'might' get connected - Thursday 9th August. However, I'm not going to hold my breath!!
The moral - if such a thing is appropriate to either BT or OR - of this story is that one shouldn't believe a single word that BT or OR say - unless you're actually staring them in the face!!
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