Although moving house wasn't exactly easy, it would have been a lot better if I hadn't had to deal with BT. To those of you who don't know BT stands for British Telecom, and they are just about the only people who can get you connected to a phone line in the UK. I say just about as they have begun releasing lines to other companies, much like they have done for Internet Service Providers. In our last house we were with TalkTalk, and I had no complaints at all. Their customer service was good, I didn't spend much time on hold when trying to call them and above all they where cheap. However, they where unable to connect a phone to my new house as there was a problem with the line and so I had to enlist the help of BT. Not only was there a problem, but I was also informed that they couldn't do anything about that line anyway as BT had control of it. My heart sank as I new I was in for a battle.
It didn't start well, but then again I wasn't expecting much. The first few days of trying to get through to them only made me wonder if I should just have the phone implanted into my head. Hours and hours of listening to on-hold music and people continuously saying "I'll just put you through to the right department", to which you had to explain the whole story again, before being redirected to yet another department.
At one point, two days before actually moving house, I was actually transferred from a BT operator to some guy in his living room at home. He was watching TV at the time and seemed quite annoyed that another person had been put through to his phone. I obviously wasn't the first! He said I should tell BT about this, but in order to do this I had to hang up. But after spending another 45 minutes on hold I gave it up for the day.
After the move Mandy decided that she would try but she had to use the phone box in the centre of town. She stood there with Matthew for 40 minutes on hold, and whilst on hold there is a message which says that if you type in your phone number, this can be any number including a mobile they will ring you when you are at the front of the queue, so thinking this might be a good idea she typed in her number.
Some 30 minutes later someone rang back and then they had to transfer her to the correct department, only they lost the connection. She was by now getting slightly annoyed to say the least, so she used the ring back option again, and again someone rang back, and she told them not to put her through unless she was going to speak to somebody straight away, so the person went away and came back to her saying that:
"There is a bit of a queue, why don't you try later."
"From where" she replied
"Your house phone..." stated the bemused BT worker.
"I don't have a house phone, that is why I have been on hold for over an hour now in the centre of town"
The BT worker obviously didn't have any other suggestions, it didn't occur to them that a person wanting to install a phone line might not actually have one already! In desperation Mandy put the phone down and went to an Internet cafe and tried to get to BT website and do it from there but the internet said that we had to ring them! It's like the old AOL CD which stated something like:
"If you are having trouble getting onto the Internet please view our online help at www.aol.com."
Mandy had to give up for the day as Matthew was getting hungry, and she wasn't going to put up with any more silliness from BT.
I have phoned from work a couple of times, but there seemed to be this barrier. I have never paid a connection fee to BT before, but they suddenly seem to have started one. In order to get a phone installed I would have to fork out £125! This is a lot of money when you have just virtually bankrupted yourself trying to pay for a deposit and the first months rent in one go! Every time I got through to an operator I would have a long discussion about the bill, refuse to pay it, get into a heated debate about the cost of services, and then eventually hang up when they refused to allow me to continue any further unless I paid the money.
That weekend we went to visit Mandy's parents so on the Saturday we rang from there and after finally getting through to somebody only for them to say that although there is a phone port in in the house for the phone line, there isn't actually a line from the house to the telegraph pole.
The only way we were going to get a phone line was to pay £125 for a brand new line to be installed. So after much discussion with this person in BT we decided that we will have to pay this otherwise we weren't going to get a line. I then got put through to another department, again, but I then spoke to the most helpful and understanding person I had spoken to in three weeks. This Scottish girl eventually convinced me that I would need to pay this money, and that it was kind-of new, but there would be no way around it. I also managed to tell her the story about how I had been trying to get a phone line for weeks, and about the man in his sitting room, to which she was shocked, so when I hung up the phone I was pleasantly surprised. Although quite poor.
Anyway the final outcome was that we got a date for 2 weeks later for them to come and install the line and I had taken a few days off as I was going to go back down and collect Mandy and Matthew.
When the date finally arrived the BT engineer was there at my house at 9 AM and started work whilst I was finishing off my breakfast. Due to the state of the phone port (it's an old house) he said he would have to replace the lot. 30 minutes later he was finished with the inside of my house and he then climbed the phone mast outside my house. Five hours later I set of for Aberystwyth and I happened to notice as I got to the end of the road (some 50 meters) that there was not one, but two BT vans sat at the end of the road with both engineers looking into an open manhole cover and scratching their heads.
I still concede that £125 is a lot of money for a phone line, but it looks as though I really got my moneys worth out of BT this time. However, their customer services really are shockingly bad! A guy I know has been paying too much for his broadband for 3 months now, and every time he phones up and tries to get it sorted nothing happens and they charge him too much again.