Who is responsible?

We got round this by moving to BT as a new customer, but your right it has to be a business line,Afraid I don’t know why, I think it’s linked to charity status. It is though time for us to find a different provider as BT is extorition for what is basically an internet only line!

I had a similar problem with TalkTalk at the charity I look after. My experience couldn’t be more opposite.

We didn’t know the user credentials as the manager who set it up had left under a cloud. TT did all they could to help us regain control of the account and it was sorted in a day or two. Calling in the fault we had the warning of a similar charge if the fault was caused by us. This is totally normal and is a condition that BT Openreach impose on all call outs even though ours showed a line fault (there could still be another fault that comes to light after their fault is resolved).

The Openreach engineer will only attend by appointment and if he finds the fault is yours you will be told there and then exactly what it is.

Having worked in a support situation I can tell you that your attitude as a customer can have a huge effect on how the supplier deals with you. Go in all gungho “it’s all your fault not mine” and you will get what you deserve. Start threatening journalists and lawyers and you’ll just put the backs up even more. If it comes to it, TT can afford bigger lawyers than you can, but what exactly are they going to do to TT? You don’t need a lawyer for small claims court and if you go there better hope Openreach offer no defense or you will be stuffed.

Journalists? Yeah I know a few, one of them is a mate and he broke the Fred West story. It’s hardly going to be national news is it? Look Mr Ed I have a new story, some cadets having problems with their phone line. Yee bloody har. Feck off and find me some real news.

Get real, start treating the people who are there to help you as people who can help you not as obstacles to be bludgeoned out of the way. A little bit of civility goes a long way. I can tell you from their side they can spot BS a mile away and they can dig their heels in way deeper than you can.

That’s 30 years of being on the wrong end of know it all customers speaking. Try being nice not macho, it works. Openreach will not attend without the possibility of a charge no matter how pissy you get, but in all my years I’ve not actually been charged yet. Make the engineer a cup of tea, that’s worth more than the threat of a journalist or a lawyer IMO.

Honestly I think you have had some good advice from pretty much everyone.

From the picture you supplied the wiring damage does look to be on the supplier side of the demarcation point, it also looks poorly supported and unprotected, so that could be suggested nicely to any fitter as a contributory supplier failure – if and only if that is the fault location. The ‘line test’ used to be very basic; look for a far end capacitor kick, it was heavily depended on the skill of the tester. Now it is automated and at least until recently was just as hopeless. A whole bunch of neighbours were affected by a cable break, yet our non working line was still reported as remote testing OK… Ten minutes later the status changed on the suppliers website…

It is not clear where your cable enters, ground level, half way up the wall or higher. To me it looks as though it might have been snagged at sometime and that the cable sheath has been destroyed, they are normally quite tough so take some effort to damage. However, chafing against the rough wall at the entry point could have weakened it if the rest of the run, outside of the picture limits was, for example blowing about in the wind.. All in all it does not look like rodent damage or an attempt to cut the cable, rather it appears to be excess strain, but, who am I to know?

As an outsider I feel that the damage is on the their side of the network termination point, but that the cause could be anyone’s responsibility and, bottom line, unless it is resolved you will not have any service. I do not think there is any real prospect of litigation ending well, based on the evidence you have presented. [That is without considering personal feeling about whether they are a bunch of (…………..fill in whatever term of endearment you prefer).] Even if it does come down to having to pay, which is more important, (a) having service, (b) keeping the cash or (c) a battle with no winner? I urge a vote against (c) and have strong reservations against (b) without strong justifications.

[For me TT come with baggage, I only briefly had ‘service’ from them and that was only by default as another supplier gave up and I was service slammed, my issue at the time was their lousy cancellation methodology which tried to make it impossible to leave like Sky at the time. Happily this was long before they decided that all your confidential information should be a gift for anyone else to take. They still do not make barge poles long enough for me to touch them ever again but that is my problem.]

Steve, I think that your are right on the money with that last comment. However, most of the ISPs and others service organisations appear to use the same agencies for call answering and staff them all with little more than script jockeys. Go off script and you are in the tiger country and they will not cope. Of course some users are hugely dumb and believe that everything is down to the provider. After a San Francisco earth quake, one user complained to us that his service was affected and what were we going to do about the problem? There is no publishable answer to that one. Neither is playing with a domestic router going to fix an ISPs authentication router or flaky DNS. It is better to sit those out and have a tea/beer/tipple of choice, play in the park or whatever and not bother the sweet little heads of the call centre. However, when things go bad over billing or the like things do take a different turn and you do not need the switch it off count ten and turn it on again level of ‘solution’ that many offer.

I understand and accept Dave’s advice over bombastic assaults to complaints lines, but do those responsible for failures understand how life affecting some serious errors can be. Sometimes you want someone to suffer rather more than you want a simple pile of words. I have only once ot twice got the revenge I sought, I had to field frequent poorly addressed complaints from one customer and then his organisation really did things to piss me off. So I returned the favour I rang him at a suitable hour while the issue was still live somewhere round 2:00 a.m. I did not have to be overly aggressive to him; reasonable and well intentioned I stated the failure of an area for which he was responsible. After his similalry time calls, boy was that a case of revenge served nice and cool.

When it comes to the likes of banks not being able to issue valid tax certificates, I tended not to be quite so cool, nor did I feel that their script jockeys had the capability to resolve the time of day let alone a system that clearly did not work. A nice formal letter to a senior person asking who within HMRC should be asked to help them out with their failure can often bring results.

Sometimes you just want never to do business with a (dis)organisation ever again in such cases  does one need to really hold back? I tend to sympathise with the jockey for having to work for a crap employer remembering that most calls are recorded and then tearing the employer’s systems apart for the patent failures including a lack of training to staff.

Bob,

I understand your rock and hard place situation and sympathise. In such cases it is hard to know what else you can do. In the light of recent events is there a possible fire risk angle? That could be one that papers or even TV might become interested in following up after a carefully crafted header letter with an ever-so-polite-series (of attached) letter copies. To a tiny extent I understand the drive to build new, but applying the one in one out rule, (build a new one let and old one fail) solves nothing.

Virgin did the same cable shoddy work with my daughter’s place, miles of cable round rooms, up hill and down dale rather than consider any other option. Perhaps that is how the sub-contracted fitters are ‘trained’.

Steve, a good point about insurance though happily it did not apply to the areal installers who went on the roof and into the loft to sort out the installation. I would have thought that Sky blokes were insured for the same style of work?

Richard

Steve, it must have taken him longer to go the way he did than just through the wall, across about 2M of well lit and boarded loft space, and down the inner wall. There, in situ, was already a large wall plate which could have taken the cables, only has an unused ethernet cable and the TV antenna socket. Instead, I estimate that he used around 25 M of double antenna cable. Not exaggerating, at least 25M. The wall plate can be unscrewed from the wall anytime and more cables pulled through.

The unused Cat 6 Ethernet cable was used before, for a WD TVLive box. When I give Sky the elbow, that will be used for something else. Either NowTV, or a Humax box, something of that nature, don’t know yet. I test the ethernet cable now and again, it was fine last week.

An explanation of matters with our landlord: the Group – Waterloo Housing Group – was once our Sheltered Housing landlord. That government-supported programme has now lost funding, all over England. (but not Wales and Scotland, I believe)

I have learned something almost unbelievable today, from an ex-Admin ‘face’ a mate who has just left the company. Apparently, a few years ago the Group had received funding from China, in a Chinese government pilot programme to dip their toes in UK Housing waters! Now that China is taking other directions, the money has gone and the Group is in financial difficulties. Which is almost certainly the explanation for Repair & Maintenance issues not being rectified, and why the Group is selling off housing stock, as tenants leave. That includes ex-Sheltered Housing bungalows in my son’s village, 5 miles down the road. Those bungalows are just like ours. Now I believe that they are just waiting for us Oldpharts to empty our perches: this Close is “Prime Location”. We would hate to leave this village, but if a private rental comes up locally, we are off, whilst still young enough to do a move. And Virgin are cabling-up Louth…