BT's status checking and fault reporting setup

What with the incredible storms Britain has been hit with over the past week it was inevitable that we'd run into some form of technical hitch with either the broadband and/or power. Until today we'd been really lucky and not hit with anything.

Today, at lunch however was a different matter, I popped out to get some milk to go in my tea, on my return all my messengers and VPN programs had thrown a wobbly and the router's ADSL light was off. I've had this happen once or twice in the past and it's rectified itself within a few minutes so I decided to have an extended lunch and it should all be sorted, if not I'd call BT.

After another 30 mins had passed there was still no sign of connectivity so I called BT. Having called BT before I was ready for the IVR but BT have obviously added a new twist. I was -to my surprise able to quickly navigate the menu options to end up about 6 options later being told to call the broadband technical support on 0845 600 70 30.

Great I thought* and I quickly got through to an advisor (not surprising when it was no doubt costing me £1 per minute). I immediately had a steak of fear driven into me when I quickly realized I was through to an Indian call center. I explained that I just wanted a "line status check" but he didn't really understand what I meant and wanted to know what email client I was using. Being as co-operative as I could I decided to play along and after a few more questions he asked if he could put me on hold for a minute. After 5 minutes of being on hold I hung up.

*But why didn't they put that on the first option with "If you're having broadband issues".

I then managed to get hold of BT's line status report system (thank Julian) which for the record is 0800 169 0199). All sorts of issues were being reported except for mine (sometimes in a completely in-audible voice). At the end a helpful voice says "If your issue is not reported here, please unplug your router/modem, restart and then try again". I would have expected him to then go on and say "If this still does not sort it please call xxx and report a potential fault" but instead it hung up.

So I went back to good ol' 150 to test the options and get through to an advisor and then I head option 4 - "If you'd like to report a fault please press 4" - I did.

- I waited -

- I waited some more -

Just as I was about to hang up I heard a voice say "You typed in 01384 261779" which is indeed the office telephone number but I didn't type it in. There were no instructions so I thought I'd wait some more. After what seemed like an age the voice came back again and asked if I'd like to report a fault and gave me some options including testing the line myself, checking the status of a previous report or talking to an advisor. So feeling that I needed some human help I went for that at which point it hung up on me.

So back I went to try and do the automated check but that didn't get me any further, no wonder BT's not getting any complaints atm -you can't report them!

In a last ditch attempt I decided to try my usual tactic of Button Bashing™ as it usually gets me to an operator on the basis of "it's a stupid caller" but this time it didn't work and resulted once again in me getting cut off.

As it happens in this instance, it was only a matter of time before the problem would rectify itself...

Author

Tim

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