So, after my last blog on super fast broadband a little while ago I did eventually get somewhere with BT. Hoards of Openreach vans descended on us from September to November 2017 to lay fibre to all the BT manholes around the housing development – FTTH was coming to this part of the North Cotswolds and I was more than a little excited. In November my neighbours reported being able to order fiber optic broadband. I checked – I couldn’t. I waited a bit longer. I still couldn’t. It was starting to look like a small section of our street hadn’t been updated on BT / Openreach’s systems. We knew that the fibre was under our feet, we just couldn’t place an order.
December ’17 – After scouring the inter webs I found a contact form for the right part of Openreach and I logged an issue. No response.
January ’17 – I logged an issue with Openreach again. After two weeks they contacted me to say that it will require further investigation, ok, promising.
April 4th ’18 – Openreach finally respond to say I can now order fibre. No indication of what the problem was or what they have done to enable this, which reinforces my suspicions that they don’t know their arse from their elbow. But, hey – I can place an order, right? Well.. I was to find out that I could place an order, but that might be as far as I ever get.
April 4th ’18 – So, I place order at BT.com via Quidco (£95 cashback) for Fibre broadband (Infinity 2 Product) and £150 cash back from BT too – deal.
April 10th ’18 – I phone BT customer service as I’ve heard nothing apart from the initial confirmation email. 30 minutes on the phone to be told, well not much. There is a problem with the order, it is under investigation, but no one knows what the problem is or when it might be resolved (!).
April 12th ’18 – another phone call to BT and no more information available. Apparently they seem to have no shame in the fact that this an astounding lack of transparency around a customer order. Total call time is now ~45 minutes.
April 18th ’18 – A phone call from BT customer services no less! They tell me the issue with the order is with porting my sky phone number over to BT. As it’s a FTTH order the only way to keep my number will be to switch the number to a BT copper line (and have the broadband over the fibre optic) or choose a new number. I ask for which ever is the simplest approach and is least likely to cause problems or issues further down the line with the install. Just give me my fibre optic dammit.
So, we proceed with the scenario where I get a new phone number. I’m placed on hold again and then the CSR asks if she can phone me back. 45 minutes later and I get a call. It appears there is a problem and we will have to keep my old number on a copper line, separate to the fiber optic broadband. Ok, right… so you spent two weeks investigating a problem to then phone me and give me a choice, when really there is no choice and I must .. oh, whatever. I’m back on hold again. She comes back to say everything is going through and we select installation dates (quite soon – yey!) and I’m fairly happy, everything is going to go through and she waves the £9.99 router postage charge as an apology. It’s a little gesture, but it’s appreciated. I should shortly receive an email confirming everything. Must be about 120 minutes wasted talking to BT call centres so far.
Hmmm.. where is that email confirming everything?
April 20th ’18 – I have received no email or other communication from BT about the order. It’s Friday and 1st install stage is happening on Monday, so I phone to check the order is proceeding. Low and behold, would you believe it – there is still an issue with the order and it can’t proceed. I am told that the only way to get it moving is to loose the £95 cash back and place a new order at the new, higher price (in which case i would be £124 out of pocket over the life of the contract). Another 31 minutes on the phone…
They also fail to see my point that they haven’t resolved the original issue with my order so what will stop the same shower of sh*t from happening again with the next order?
I ask to make a complaint, I’m told that I should get a call back before 9pm. They do and offer me £20 but try to insist that the issue is out of their hands… I don’t buy that (but I do take the money). Another ~10 minutes for a sub-total of ~160 minutes on the phone.
I place another order. After a couple of days I call to find out when the 1st install will be happening. I’m put on hold whilst they try and find out how many installs will be required. They come back and tell me it’s a two stage install but they can’t tell me when the 1st install will happen. This is annoying as I need the fibre to be routed to the back of the house where we have power and room for the ONT. Another 20 minutes on the phone.
Two more days pass and I call to see if they have a date for the 1st install. More confusion on how many installs will be required. We never really resolve it. ~10 minutes on the phone.
On the day before my install date I get a text message from Openreach. My order has been cancelled. My heart sinks. I call BT, they in turn call Openreach. But, apparently this is a mistake and the order is still going ahead. Another 10 minutes on the phone and an emotional rollercoaster.
So, that would now be a grand total of 200 minutes on the phone…
May 4th – #StarWars Day #FibreFriday.
An OpenReach engineer pitched up at 8.30. He thought the fibre had already been pulled through to the house. It hadn’t. Queue a two and a half hour delay whilst a reel of fibre was brought up from the Swindon depot. Eventually, 5 hours later and with two engineers on site the cable is in, the equipment installed and the fibre broadband is up and running. It’s fast too. It almost makes up for the bad taste in my mouth…
For a full account of the full fibre optic broadband install – go here.
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