BT, bless...

[mr magnolia]

Anyone know how to talk to humans at BT?

The magnolian BT line has some sort of fault that means phones on the internally wired plug-in bits (RJ11 sockets) don't work, although the PC can happily dial up broad band,

To test that the fault lies not with BT, they request that you connect your phone to the socket on the face of the 'line-box' where the BT line enters the house. When this is done, all is well and the fault thus lies 'internally' , meaning it's my fault (so to speak)

BUT


the magnolian 'line-box' does not have a socket on the front - it has only a blank plate, so to connect to the socket within you must remove the face plate and leave the wires hanging out. BT say thats not a 'proper' fitting, despite the BT stickers on it, and that the fault service cannot help but 'customer services' will...

And of course they can't - they bounce you through to faults and so begins again the merry cycle of call options.

In the old days you could just call 100 and let them sort you - what on earth do you do nowadays?

[ecm]

Threaten to take your business elsewhere?

Or, perhaps, ask them to send someone round to install further boxes. There'll be a charge for this no doubt so you should get prompt attention.

Then just hold the engineer hostage til the job gets done.


or something.

[bellybabe]

What you do is, you take the name of everyone you speak to and what they say. When you get nowhere, you ask to be put through to the supervisor. And then their supervisor. And so on. I once got all the way to Adam thingy's PA, head of Telewest UK, after one of their minions had told us we "couldn't go any higher than him", and we said we could go higher until we got to Bill Gates. And you refuse to let them put you back through to a department you've already been through to.

If you have a BT box installed that is not a correct fitting, clearly BT installed it, so it is their problem. You tell them you will happily pay for any fault in your own home once they have demonstrated it is in fact a fault in your home, and not a fault caused by thier faulty installation and sub-standard equipment. And as ecm suggests, you then mention that you believe Telewest are much cheaper than BT and in fact offer a more reliable service, etc. And if necessary you then go on to write a stonking complaint letter. Need any help? My complaint letters are famous throughout the land... I'm posting one (yet again) to Edinburgh Leisure this morning...!



BB

[mr magnolia]

[Gemini]

[Dakota]