Time and time again we are told "You will have to cease and re-order" to fix the problem. Indeed, BT will begrudgingly not charge for an expedite on the new order if we do that!
They even lie when they make mistakes, and I do not make this accusation lightly. The order that is causing annoyance today is one where they went to the wrong address, but they have recorded it as "engineer was not able to gain access". Well, he would have been if he went to the address for which we placed the order. I will be surprised if we are not billed for a missed appointment in due course.
Now, I am fed up with BT expecting us to sort their mistakes. I said "you do it [the cease and re-provide]".
I am now told :-
Ofcom regulations prevent us from making this amendment on your behalf, this is why the system will not allow changes.
So, apparently it is OFCOMs fault that they cannot actually sort their own mistakes. I may have to ask OFCOM if that is true.
I really think that BT need a system for actually fixing mistakes when they happen - so if an engineer goes to the wrong place - get him, or a new engineer, to the right place right now, today. No messing with "cannot do anything as job now closed off", and no "cease and re-order" and buggering about. It needs an "Oh shit we screwed up, let's fix it right away!" attitude. I cannot believe OFCOM have prevented BT from doing that, but we'll ask.
Right now, for this customer, we have an order, which BT have not completed, and BT are asking us to do work to correct that. I have said we will do what they say but will charge for our time. They won't pay for our time. Waiting to see how this pans out, but obviously we want to get our customer sorted out ASAP one way or another.
Sadly I am not at all surprised by this. They are total arseholes.
ReplyDeleteDo you not have an account manager? he should be ashamed to even be associated with this level of ineptitude which just makes peoples lives a misery.
I had much the same tale on my initial FTTC provide.
ReplyDelete"Sorry, the paperwork's wrong, so we can't do it." SMC confirmed this was an error on BT's part, but apparently paperwork errors can't be fixed or ignored, so they had to fail the install and re-book. A box wasn't ticked, that should have been. BT confirmed the box was actually ticked on the original order, and it was BT's mistake that they hadn't copied the tick into the right place, but of course they couldn't just tick it now: they'd have to start again.
Then they expedited - a little bit too much, it turned out, entering the job past the Taskforce cut-off time, so nobody was actually assigned the job that day.
(Never mind the absurdity of Wholesale and Openreach having totally different terminology for the "moving wires around a bit" part of an FTTC provide, when "ordering" that option has no effect on the price anyway but prevents the install being completed if it's missed off...)
I sometimes wonder if BT's business process designers were sent on a video-based training course, and an ordering mishap resulted in them getting a marathon Terry Gilliam movie session...
The ofcom excuse just sounds like a slightly specialised version of the 'data protection' excuse, which loosely translates as 'we don't want to'.
ReplyDeleteThey do have an "Oh whoops we screwed up, let's fix it right away!" department. Email cceo@bt.com and things normally happen.
ReplyDelete