BT Business fail

BT Business just failed to move my phone and broadband on the moving date. What a useless service. I am now without remote back up.

In June 2010 I blogged about how we set up the remote back-up system and why it is important to back up remotely in the event that the unthinkable happens. And now, because of BT’s incompetence, I don’t have that working. I could lose everything in the next few days.

London calling

The remote back-up is at my parents’ house. They moved last Friday, 14 June 2013. I called BT on 6 June, as soon as the exchange happened and move date was confirmed. I asked for my service at the old property to move to the new.

I understood that Infinity was not available at the new address so it would be ADSL broadband instead. I gave them the address and the telephone number of the new address. I did flag up that this number was being taken with the people moving.

The following day I received an email thanking me for cancelling the service at the old address but I heard nothing about the new service at the new address.

Hanging on the telephone

On 10 June, I received a call from Stephen Rosie of BT’s Business Movers Service Management Team on my mobile with some queries. The sales person had not noted the telephone number of the new property and BT could find no service at the new address.

I asked for the information to be emailed as I was unable to write anything down at the time. That email had the moving addresses correct, but the wrong billing address. It had no phone number for the new property and no date for moving (it was blank – literally saying: “Provisionally Appointed for:               ”)

Within half an hour I had replied, from my iPhone, correcting the billing address and providing the phone number of the destination property. I also explained that if they used just the number 12 from the 10-12 High Street address they would find the correct property.

I then got a text confirming that the destination number was indeed due to be stopped on 14 June. It said: “We should be able to start the ghost number the same day and get B/B ordered. Result.” I understood Result” to mean it was all sorted, so asked: “Can you allocate me telephone number please?” I heard nothing more.

Call me?

By the day before the move I was starting to get nervous and I called the Business Movers Service Management Team. I was told my move was not until 21 June. I was almost reduced to tears.

I was eventually called back by a manager, David Carlton, who said he would look into it, listen to the sales calls and my calls with his Stephen Rosie and get back to me. By this time in the story it will come as no surprise to you that he never called back.

Here’s that call in full:

I got your number (written on the back of my hand)

So, on the day, in the afternoon, after nobody from BT called, I called the useless Business Movers Service Management Team again. This time (after the “that order is for 21 June”) I was told that the number had been started (it was different to the number I had been given the day before, but hey ho).

Listen to the call in full:

However, in the property there is no plug socket, just a hole in the wall, some chocolate block-type connector joining the official BT line to a cut-off extension line. The phone simple screams the whole time.

You got my number (why don’t you use it?)

I call Business Movers Service Management Team to report this (BT charges you 14 a minute from a mobile to tell them your BT landline does not work). They insist the job is closed off and, despite not having been done properly, cannot be re-opened. They cannot contact the person who closed the job without finishing it properly. Instead, they put me through to faults. Listen in full:

So I then I try Business Movers Service Management Team one more time. To no avail. Listen in full:

On Saturday, the engineer – booked for 1pm – 6pm, called at 11.45am to say he’s ready. I quickly arranged access. In an ideal world we don’t want the socket where the hole in the wall is, but he calls to say he is only able to repair the fault not move a socket. That must be a separate order.

In end, as the BT line comes into the property exactly where we want the socket, he agrees to fit it there for us. By then it was about 1.30pm. The phone worked and the engineer said broadband was functioning on the line with a 17meg download speed.

Hanging on the Telephone

I then tried to contact anyone from BT Business to get help getting the broadband working. But they are closed. Here’s one annoying call – lots of automated services until you get a message just saying they are closed and then they cut you off:

I made about five more calls to various numbers, either dead or engaged or no longer active or nobody at that extension. Eventually I phoned paid-for BT IT support. That chap said broadband will work and how to make it work: Listen:

It all looked so hopeful. But wasn’t to be. After another attempt, with my mother on the phone to BT IT support, they eventually concede, after checking, that my broadband account had not yet been activated.

I turned to Twitter to see if I could get any help from BT. But no.

I have emailed the chief executive Ian Livingston. I just do not understand how BT can provide such dire service time and time again. I cannot understand how the Business Movers Service Management Team does not work weekends as every company I have ever worked for, or in (as a contractor), has moved over the weekend.

Telecoms is a 24-hour a day global business, not an 8am to 6pm operation. Or am I alone in thinking this?