As you may have seen on the company status pages we get a wide variety of responses on fault reports. This is especially clear when it is a single common cause of a fault and all the same report text, which our favourite telco clearly simply do not read!
What gets me is the sheer number of wrong statements they make in order to send a fault back to us.
These statements are not just mistakes but are outright lies. For example they claim to have carried out throughput tests that show the user maximising their upload (so?) when the user has not in fact used the line for months (i.e. it's a backup line). Clearly they have not done the tests they claim and they clearly do not show the result they claim. They are just making up LIES.
Why do it? so they can send the fault back.
There is compensation (pence) for having a fault open for 40 hours, and sending it back stops the clock. So these lies result in a financial gain for them.
Lying for financial gain is criminal fraud. Its illegal. People can go to prison over it. Companies can get big fines for it. It is not allowed!!!
So, do I just report this to the police? It really is starting to piss me off.
The plan is to try and get the whole fault system improved. This will probably take many months. We're pointing out the criminal fraud anyway and asking not to be lied to. That is just one thing that needs improving.
Ho hum.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Fencing
Bit of fun... We usually put up some Christmas lights on the house - some fairy lights on the metal fencing at the front, but a pain as mean...
-
Broadband services are a wonderful innovation of our time, using multiple frequency bands (hence the name) to carry signals over wires (us... -
For many years I used a small stand-alone air-conditioning unit in my study (the box room in the house) and I even had a hole in the wall fo... -
It seems there is something of a standard test string for anti virus ( wikipedia has more on this). The idea is that systems that look fo...
I wouldn't go straight to the police, but try and speak to the highest person in BT (faults?) that you can to raise the issue, and point out the fraud. maybe "automatically" doing a reject-clear on a fault the first time it comes back might get them to notice (and maybe tell them that you will start doing this - aswell as going to the authorities about the fraud.
ReplyDeleteI agree, though - they did the same on my line "maxing upload" when hadn't been home and the graph clearly showed little going on, and this turned out to be back-haul in Basingstoke...
I think it's incredibly important that this system gets sorted, they really need to actually start reading the notes on the faults, and using some common sense. they might actually find they end up with LESS work, and a more stable and working system by doing this, Lying doesn't create less work for anyone, it creates more, lots more, and it pisses people off.
J
If they have said something to you which is demonstrably untrue, don't you have some sort of financial come-back on them - i.e. the amount of time it takes you to determine that they're speaking bollocks and send the fault back to them? Can't you just start billing them when they lie to you?
ReplyDeleteNot in the contract, as far as I know, but maybe in tort law. I must look that up.
ReplyDeleteI think rather than trying to get the Police involved (who won't understand and won't care) the only solution is to file the equivalent of a class action suite ,with ofcom support (or awareness). You've also got the SFO if you (and other ISPs) believe the "cost" or "benefit" of the fraud to be +1million.
ReplyDeleteI think you need to consider engaging and working with other ISPs as they must also be experencing similar difficulties - perhaps O2/Be given your recent work with them and really ensure that they get the roasting they need. Until they get fined a significant amount of money, there is ZERO incentive to change their ways.