Three years today

Just a quick post while Jussi sits on the phone listening to Mozart courtesy of BT 'customer service'.

Three years eh? Where are we at? Well - not as far as we hoped but moving into the house has lifted spirits no end - despite the best efforts of BT. Jussi and the goats are thriving, The Girl is excelling at school, and I've got myself a job with ambitions.

Some of these ambitions, some of the good things noted above, some of the happy spirits are being tested by BT. Shall I tell you the story?

Their website promises people they can have their account moved in 5 days. Jussi phoned and we were promised connection in 3 weeks. Jussi phoned to complain and she was told about the telegraph poles being unsafe.

There are lots of stories about bad (not even poor, its BAD) customer service from BT around here. From other peoples experiences we know that nothing gets done unless you complain and complain again.

Jussi called again. No the telegraph poles are fine they told her. She demanded a superviser. Eventually, and man do they make you wait, average call times to BT exceed 30 minutes, if you are lucky about 10 of these are spent talking to someone. She got to speak to someone who told how hard it was to organise things where we live and on and on he went. He promised someone would call in a couple of days.

After the couple of days had passed Jussi called again. This time they promised someone from BT Openreach would call in a couple of days.

Yesterday the BT Openreach van appeared. The mannie looked around, said he needed to do some pole work but would be right back and he needed to get into the house. So we waited around for the day but he never returned.

Today we have a computer generated message (on the phone in the cottage which we have to use) saying that our appointment for connection has been put back by a further 6 days.

Jussi is still on the phone now, listening to Mozart, telling someone every 2 minutes that she is still there are she wants to speak to a superviser. But getting nowhere - except very very angry.

Now I know things are tough up here, and the sparse population makes service expensive to deliver. But compare with Scottish Hydro - a much less profitable company (but still profitable enough!) - who can fix all kinds of disasters in all kind of weathers. BT make an absolute bloody fortune and their customer service is seemingly deliberately obstinately useless.

Now she is speaking to someone - who are explaining that there is a problem which BT openreach has to sort. The superviser she is talking to now is being equally useless. She is now demanding to speak to the supervisers superviser. Oooh its getting louder. Superviser one is doing his best to get rid of her, but Jussi has learnt - keep trying - keep pushing....... The superviser is telling us that the work is being done as we speak. He doesn't realise that the exchange and the line to it is fully visible to us as she speaks. No one is working on this problem.

Of course BT wont let me talk about it to anyone, they will only speak to the account holder.

..... dot dot dot....