Argh! Damn you BT! We hatesss you forever...

[annwfyn]

We are now moving into our fifth week of limited internet access.

After having an engineer visit us on Friday and tell us that it was all fixed, the internet died for its longest ever time period - it went down at 9 pm last night, and stayed down until 1.30 pm today.

Furthermore, dial up doesn't work, and telephone calls are being randomly cut off.

I called BT and yelled. They said they would send out another engineer on Wednesday morning. I'm meant to be back at work then. I need to actually be in work, doing good things and getting some decent work experience. I need to not be sitting at home hoping for the BT engineer to turn up on time.

They also said sternly that unless the problem was purely with the line, they would charge us £116 for a call out fee, and another £99 for fixing the problem. I asked "how can I tell if it is a BT problem?".

They said "you can't. We're just keeping you informed of potential charges."

This means I'm now quietly panicking that I'm about to be charged over £200 for the phone line going down.

I am so very very vexed with this today.

Comments

[wildrogue.livejournal.com]

That seems somewhat unreasonable. On the other hand, what on earth can it be if it isn't the line? Barring some bit of wiring coming loose I can't think of anything.

[chrisvenus]

I'd say that if they have been out before and not told you that it is your problem (and in fact that they have fixed it) then they are potentially at risk of fraudulently conning you out of your money. It shouldn't be too hard to argue that the engineer before should have told you if it was beyond their remit and since he didn't then they can't claim on the second (or more) visit that it is.

I reckon its one you can shout them down on anyway if needs be.

[chrisvenus]

Remind me, do you own the house or is it rented? Just thinking that if its the latter then anything but your equipment is the landlords responsibility so might be worth checking with them. Of course if you own it then that's your problem still. :)

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Sadly (or not sadly most of the time, but sadly today) we actually own the house. No landlord. Just me and Jeremiah.

[sea-of-flame.livejournal.com]

Erm...if it's not their problem, how /can/ they fix it?

I presume they mean if the BT line /is/ working, and it's your computer having the wrong settings, or something?

We're on BT as well, and I know when ours goes down (due to the connection having a brief blip), we need to restart the router before the computers can connect to the outside world again - and if we didn't do that, the connection probably wouldn't come 'back' unless someone accidentally unplugged it & forced a restart...

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

No - it's not that a 'computer needs rebooted' problem that they will charge for. They will charge us if there is a problem with the wiring and it is on our property - so - if there is a frayed cable running through the wall that needs replaced, then they charge us. That's what they mean roughly.

I am pretty certain it's not a case of 'computer needs restarted'. I've had 4 20 min - 40 min sessions on the phone with tech support running through all that - rebooting computer, changing microfilters, changing ethernet cable, typing random numbers into the computer and reading out the numbers I get in return etc etc. BT do make you go through a lot of hoops before they will let you near the engineers :p

[pmp.livejournal.com]

I'm surprised the callout fee is as high as that, when we had a problem with our internet connection and line, the quoted callout fee was £60.

You can still argue the callout fee anyway, they have to prove that the line was working 100% when their engineer left, otherwise their repairs were substandard.

The main problem you're likely to be left with though is they can legally leave you with JUST the main point working, their obligation ends with the primary point of entry for the phone services in the house. So if the main box works fine (but not any other extension points) then you can get stuck with the fees and phones that don't work...

[castorpollux23.livejournal.com]

BT IS THE DEVIL!!!

You cancel and they charge you three extra months!!!!

I feel your pain!