26
Heh.
So this week I’ve been back down in Swansea, doing two exam resits for ones I failed back in Jan and May. Moved into the house we’ve sorted for this coming year, which is a lovely little place.
Anyway, I get there and I start to think about bills and services I’m going to need in the home. So I call up BT on Monday and place an order for a new landline to be installed in the property. All goes through well, they take my direct debit details and tell me I’ll be contacted within 48 hours by BT Openreach to have my line installed.
So on Tuesday I’m contacted by Openreach saying they can’t find my address at 27 Gower Road in Swansea. I tell them what it actually is and the engineer says to me that as I’m on a different exchange to what they thought I was and that I’d need to put my order through again. So he says he’ll get sales to call back in an hour or so to get it sorted out.
An hour passes and nobody calls, but I wait until Wednesday to get on to them. I go out to the BT phonebox, about a 5 min walk away and call sales (who I was told was going to contact me anyway). Get told they can’t help with order numbers beginning with VOL (the order number I’d been given on Monday) and that I’ll be passed through to someone who can help. Spent about 20 minutes on hold that time to get through to someone who said that I’d be contacted within 2 hours to discuss the problem I’d been having.
Hung up, satisfied that I was beginning to get somewhere. As an aside I called Swalec next to get the gas and electricity bills set up. Answered within two rings on a geographic phone number (OK, I had to pay for this whereas the BT numbers are all 080 freephone but it could be worse - it could be an 0870 to an offshore call centre) and had everything set up within 5 minutes of dialling the number.
Later on that day, I still hadn’t received any word from BT and so I went back to the phone box to try again. Got through to sales, they couldn’t help as they don’t deal with VOL numbers. Got patched through to landline service to a woman who was sympathetic but still couldn’t deal with VOL orders. Got patched through to another call centre who hung up on me. On my second call I was told to call a different number who could deal with VOL customers. Tried to call that, waited on hold for about 40 minutes before someone came along who wanted to quickly call a taxi so I wasn’t going to make them stand about an wait for me. Tried again afterwards, the call was answered much quicker this time (within 15 minutes) and was told that she could read my order number details fine.
So she looked my order number up and told me my landline had been set up fine and that everything was working. Of course, I was quite happy at this and was about to hang up when I told her the story that they’d got my address wrong and as such, how would they have known which property to set up? She asked me to confirm my address and told me that she was looking at an order number for a property (I didn’t catch the address though she probably shouldn’t have said it in the first place) in WEST SUSSEX! Not satisfied with being in the wrong part of the city, I’m now apparently in a different country!
So she looks through all the VOL order numbers for Swansea and I’m the only one she can see, still registered as 27 Gower Road. I ask her if she can change the order and get it right, but I’m told she can only read the orders and not change them. So she puts me on hold and sends me through to a different call centre. When I get there the automated line tells me the system will hold my place in the queue and they’ll get someone to call me back when a free operative’s available. So I leave my number and wander back to the house. I get called back within 10 mins by a helpful gent in what sounds like Liverpool. I tell him my story so far, and I only get as far as saying the letter V in my order number when I’m told they can’t help, going to have to be put on hold and talk to someone else. So I spent another 20 mins or so on hold and my call’s answered by someone in Durham. I’m asked for my order number before anything else at all, immediately told she can’t help and to hold the line.
So then I get patched through to the VERY SAME call centre with the automatic place holding system. 30 mins later I’m called from Liverpool again, who yet again can’t help. By this time I’m getting rather fed up. I’m on hold for about 30 mins when my call is answered by someone in Scotland who is actually very sympathetic. However, it still doesn’t mean she’s able to do anything with VOL orders. So I get put on hold again.
Forty-five minutes later I’m starting to get VERY agitated at hearing the basic “ring-ring… ring-ring… ring-… Sorry but we’re very busy at the moment, please continue to hold and you’ll be connected to the earliest available operative”. There’s not even any comforting, happy hold music at BT. I’m then put through to an operative from…Â BROADBAND SUPPORT! As you can guess, having been greeted by this when all I’m trying to do is get a landline installed is somewhat annoying, and I sadly ended up shouting down the phone to this man. I did apologise to him and said I know it’s not his fault but can he help? No, he can only deal with broadband problems. He offers to forward me to another call centre though, which I reluctantly agree to. However, after waiting again I get through to broadband service this time, whose best option is to give me the same 0808 number I’ve been calling since this morning!!
So anyway, I decide to give up. By this time I’ve hung up on the last operative, I’ve been on that call alone for 1 hour 31 mins (their incoming call to my mobile, their money, I don’t care!) and have spent about 5-6 hours on the phone today, having spent less than 20 mins actually speaking to human beings.
Thursday comes, I’m in all morning revising for my afternoon exam. For obvious reasons, I decide to leave my mobile on the table in the house. Nobody from BT had called when I walked out the door at 12:55.
When I get back from my exam, 3 missed calls, 3 answerphone messages:
- Apparently I’ve missed my engineer visit this morning. They came to my door but nobody was in. Which is definitely odd - I haven’t left the house once all morning and I know I would’ve heard the doorbell going. I did have to wonder, though, if the engineers had turned up to Gower Road or West Sussex!
- As I missed my engineer visit this morning, is there any preference on time I’d like for my next visit?
- As I didn’t get back to them (I was in an exam, it wasn’t easy!), they’ve booked me in for the earliest date possible - Sept 10th in the morning.
September 10th?! They can’t even deliver me a landline to the wrong house until Sept 10th? Bear in mind I STILL haven’t managed to get my address changed on their database yet… Even if I did get the landline, I’d have to wait until that day to find out if I need to cough up £120 to install wires to the doorstep and to find out my telephone number. Only THEN can I wait the 14 days to get ADSL, meaning I wouldn’t have an Internet connection better than dialup until Sept 24th, at which point the new term will probably have begun. With all due respect BT, sod that!
On Friday, when I was back in Nottingham, I phoned BT to get everything cancelled. Typically, cancellations couldn’t deal with my cancellation request (what’s a VOL order number?) and neither could the special 0808 call centre set up especially to deal with these numbers. However, I get through to a friendly woman with “Customer Options” who was able to tell me that as there was technically no order in the first place and no landline, there’s nothing to cancel. I’m going to cancel my direct debit with the bank to make sure they can’t bill me for something I don’t have, and for all I care they can keep calling at 27 Gower Road or wherever in West Sussex until they fit a landline. It’s not mine, I don’t want it and I want nothing more to do with their stupid company ever again ever!!
So now I’m looking forward to getting in touch with Virgin Media to have their 2 for £20 offer installed giving me both a landline and the basic tier of Internet access, including free digital TV to boot! 
