Letters / Messing people about
On Wednesday 25 September, I reported a fault on my phone to BT: initially it was extremely noisy, and then was not working at all (except sporadically). It took me over an hour to make this call, mostly waiting time. I explained that I needed a working phone as my elderly mother’s homelink alarm system is set up so that the call centre phones me if e.g. she falls or does not return to bed in the night. I was told it would be fixed by Monday 1October. I also explained that I could not give them an alternate number to contact me on as we had no mobile signal; I further explained that borrowing a mobile phone would not help as I still would not have a signal.
On Thursday I received a text on my mobile phone from my home phone’s voicemail service to say that they were trying to contact me. I phoned the faults number given and was given an appointment for Friday 28 September between 8eight and one. Again this was confirmed to my home number by text. Fortunately I was able to pick these up on my mobile, because I was in range at that time. I rescheduled my work so that I was able to work from home on the Friday while waiting for the BT engineers.
I waited at home for my appointment between 8am and 1 pm. At 1.05 I phoned the BT Faults service from my mother’s phone, who told me my appointment was for 2 October. It took me 40 minutes to establish via their call centre somewhere (I assume) in India that yes, I had originally had an appointment for 28 between 8eight and one but they had cancelled it because they had ‘a major outage and resource issues.’ Their excuse? That this ‘doesn’t happen very often’. I repeatedly asked to speak to a supervisor but none was available. I received a call back at my work from a supervisor who made an appointment for me for 2 October. I did check with her, and she confirmed that it was definitely recorded on my records that my phone was not working.
Then I picked up a text on my mobile phone showing that there was a voicemail message on my home phone sent at 11.32 on the Friday. This was what it said: “This Hamish Mackenzie Openreach Partner with BT Group; you had an appointment with us this morning to look at your phone. Unfortunately we will not make this. I have reappointed this for Tuesday 2nd with a morning appointment if this is not suitable please contact your service provider.”
- BT is my service provider
- What part of my phone is not working is so very difficult to understand? Why phone me up on it?
I have spoken to my very kind neighbour who is also on the list of numbers phoned from my mother’s homelink alarm system, and she knows to come and shout to wake me up if she gets an emergency phone call.
I do hope that they will come on Tuesday. I don’t think it’s acceptable to mess people about like this, but no doubt BT will just continue to get away with it.
Sue Beer
Bridge of Walls
cc. Tavish Scott MSP, Alistair Carmichael MP
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