17 Faults in 12 Months!

[Jdatkin]

Well Folks, im back!!!

Super-Duper, Ultra Fast, Mega-Reliable Infinity has died once more!!

Came into office yesterday to find the DSL light on the Openreach Moden was no more!!!

Called Infinity helldesk, to be told they would look into it and would update from Openreach within 4 hours.

3 hrs later, gets a text, were investigating, but 24hrs later, still nothing!

My question is, who thinks that 17 Faults on one line in 12 months is acceptable!!!

BT clearly do because they arent doing much about reducing the problems, in fact they just keep on accumulating!

Thoughts & suggestions please!!

[Jdatkin]

Well, after reporting on thursday (i think), and being told that they would pass to Openreach and they would update within 4 hours, little happened.

After about 3 hours i got a sms text to say that the fault had changed from being raised to being investigated, which leads you to think that an engineer is looking at it - rite!,,, WRONG!!!

Come saturday afternoon, and still no action, and certainly no Broadband connection i decided to give the Bt Infinity Helldesk a call.

They told me:

Aaaaaah yes, mr atkin, your fault has been labelled as requires an engineer to visit you, would you like to book it now!

I initially said, no, i would have liked the person who was apparently investigating it to have booked it, or called me to book it a couple days ago instead of the whole thing being left in limbo until i got frustrated enough to call in myself to chase it up?

I cant beleive that its up to the customer to keep chasing up faults, even after reporting it!, surely BT should have got the appointment booked as soon as they realised that an engineer was needed to visit site?

Anyway, sat here waiting for engineer now, i just hope he turns up, they do have a terrible track record of not turning up for me??

So fingers crossed that someones turns up, and that they can sort fault no 17 out promptly this time??

[DaveA]

Hi,

Fault raised on Friday and it looks like it was booked to BT Wholesale.  Not sure on their timescales, but I believe that they are mainly Monday to Friday based anyway.

You called the Helpdesk after 24 hours, which is eminently sensible in my opinion, no matter what fault you're having and who you're having it with.  (I have no idea why people wait weeks for contact and then complain because nothing happened.  I certainly wouldn't.)

Engineer booked for Monday, which would have been the earliest appointment anyway.  To be honest you're quite lucky, as the weather and flooding this year have played merry hell with the engineer workstacks, and sometimes you're booking an appointment only to find it return a date a week and a half later.

I can sympathise with your issue.  Sometimes people get the crap end of the stick when it comes to services or objects, or whatever.  I had a car that burst its petrol tank two weeks after a six hundred pound MOT.  On the other side of the coin my lass' late dad's ancient Jetta never failed an MOT.

In this instance, however, the process has been enacted as quickly and efficiently as it can have been, especially considering it was raised on a Friday and ended up needing an engineer.

I hope they fix it quickly for you.

Dave

[Jdatkin]

Hi Dave,

            yes i can see how it looks like im lucky when you put it that the fault occurred on friday and engineer was there monday, on the face of it yes its not too bad at all.

However, when you call to raise the fault im sure its not normal that you should be prepared to keep haing to call in to make sure its been passed onto the relevant team and the correct action has been taken!

I agree that this is something that i will always do, but this is due to my experiences rather than something that i feel is the customers responsibility.

As for monday to friday, i cant quite get me head around them being monday to friday!!, its not like faults only occure monday to friday, and by the sounds of it there is certainly enough excess of faults to keep someone there over the weekend trying to manage what appears to be a network which is struggling to cope for whatever reasons.

And as for lucky, i really struggle to consider myself lucky, please remember that i have had no less than 17 faults in 12 months!, this is luck, BAD LUCK!!, in fact it leads me to believe that there must be someting else wrong somewhere between me and the cab or DP to have this amount of faults on one line!

AND, as highlighted on another post on the forum which has now been locked for replies, as a business customer i pay a considerable amount more for similar products that residential customers enjoy. The additional cost being passed off, in the main to superior service and response???

Im just not sure that 17 faults one after the other, and now on the third port swap after port flexing failed to resolve adds up to a superior service!

I grant that the overall  completion time time was good on this occasion, bu,t what would it have been if i hadnt had sufficient bad experiences to know not to sit back and rely on BT to act on my behalf to get it sorted!

[DaveA]

Hi,

No you're right, at least insofar as you've had a rubbish time of it.  I would be upset too most likely.

As far as availability goes, however, where would you draw the line?  Most businesses that I'm aware of tend to only open on weekdays, although I realise that opening at weekends is becoming a lot more common than it was.

But how much more expensive does everything become if you go to fulll 7 day service for a business with a million customers?  Or how about we make it 24 hour callout for everyone?

You say that you 'i pay a considerable amount more for similar products that residential customers enjoy.'.  Well that's true, but you also have to consider that there are many times more residential customers that business ones, so business doesn't get the advantage of numbers.

Also if you wanted to have a truly stupendous level of service agreement then you'd have to pay thousands a month for a leased line.  The most expensive ADSL based package that BT Business has is Network Premium, which costs £100 per month and has a £25 claim you can make if your fault goes over 8 hours.  If you're on anything other than Network the most you're paying is about £25 per month (plus VAT on all of the figures here).  Line rental doesn't count because you'd be paying that to whoever supplied the phone line anyway.

Finally in relation to responsibility.  Yes it's our responsibility to get the falt fixed as quickly as possible, but in my opinion people shouldn't just wait around.  Do you want to rely on the possibility that absolutely nothing will go wrong at the provider side?

What happens if there was a fault on the agent's phone and the callback wasn't made?

What if they phoned the wrong number by accident?

What if your phone was engaged each time they tried to call, and the case was set to close because we can't spend all day calling just you?

And so on, and so on...

The 'you' in the above bit isn't you by the way.  It's 'you' the customer in general.

No company is infallible, omniscient or omnipresent.  We're just a bunch of people trying our best to fix stuff that breaks.

And that, folks, is the bottom line.

Dave

p.s. I agree that there's likely something up with the line.  With that many faults you should ask about having a new line put in.  Don't know what the answer would be, but under the circumstances...

[Jdatkin]

Hi Dave, thanks for the reply.

Firstly i am more than happy to agree that in essence your a bunch of people that are present to soley fix stuff which has gone faulty, and i am ever grateful to each person i speak to when trying to resolve problems, its not so much the people i have a problem with, its the 'system' the company, or at least its lack of customer focus at least that really gets me.

I have no idea what percentage of companies are open mon-fri vs mon-sat or even 7 days, i know we are open 7 days, and i would guess the majority may be open mon-sat, but i would have thought that in light of bt offering services which are used 24/7 by literally millions of people and business's i would have thought that they might offer a more complete backup service with regards to their own availability, especially if they are facing 'adverse wetather' and the one i love most which is MBORC - Matter Beyond Our Reasonable Control.

Nobody is suggesting a 24hr callout lets keep it within the realms of reason.

Lets be honest, every season we experience a new 'once in X many years weather event' nowadays. If its not unusually heavy rain, its unusually heavy wind, and of course shortly it will be the time of year for the old heavy sow card to be played, and lets not forget the Olympics, ive been told that they have caused havoc too!!, as well as 'Too much demand for new infinity installations' being cited as a causative factor?

I mean, come on, its not like we have all just been dropped onto the shores of the UK, we all know what the weather is like and we should be better prepared for it.

We knew the olympics were coming, as we did the infinity product, it seems to me that a more realistic issue is simply that BT dont have enough staff to manage the state of their network as well as try to roll out new, netwrok based products on the scale which is needed.

And as for it being the customers responsibility to keep calling in to chase a fault, im just sure this cannot be rite!

OK, on occasion a call agent may have a faulty ohone, or take down the wrong number, but is it really that disorganised in there that we need to be calling back every  few hours to make sure agent A has passed it to Agent B, then tp make sure Agent B has Called Agent C and then Agent C has called Agent D to come out to fix it!!!

Im lucky that i have for various reasons some knowledge of how the system works, but surely to god you shouldnt need this insight to be able to get a simple fault resolved in a timely fashion, i cant beleive this is what were being told?

Id also like to mentione that i now for a fact that if you call in, lets say to chase up an installation, then you call back, the person that handled your call previously gets pulled up about why the customer has had to call back?

I also happen to know that an agent who didnt manage to sell a new product to one of 5 consecutive calls got put on a PIP- Performance Improvement Plan, which can lead to dismissal!!

I also happen to know that one lady who did manage to sell someone a product got put on a plan because later on that day the same customer called back to sales and ordered another product, and it was seen that the agent had failed to identify that she could have sold him two products in stead of the one!

So although i realise that you are normal everyday people who spend their days trying to fix our faults, i think that your also spending too much energy on trying to flog us another product.

Now i fully understand that this is not your decision, or any of the agents who you speak to when calling in, it almost certainly comes from higher above, so i dont hold any of the very nice, very polite folks who take the calls responsible, i dare say it is as stressful at times for the call agents as it is for the customers, but what i will say if that no matter how high up these orders come from, it is having a negative effect on your customers, and i dare say your staff too, which may be one reason why you clearly dont have enough of them left - In My Opinion at least!

Now, as for the £25 a month you reckon im paying, my last quarter broadband bill, for the infinity alone, no line rental etc, it was £120, i make that £40 a month?

I could site res customers who get the same internet speeds and easily more than my fluctuating 15-20mb for much lower price, and with other providers the same but at a fraction of the price,,,,, BUT, i wanted to stay with BT, and specifically BT BUSINESS because i wanted a superior service from the 'Natural first choice of telecoms providers'.

Basically i know of people (res) who get what im getting for about £10 a month, and some cheaper still, but i always think you get what you pay for!!!!!

And i thought i was getting a better service, especially being a little further from the exchange, but im not feeling it rite now.

17 faults in 12 months, and now your saying that i should try and tell them that theres a problem!!!, have you had to call in much and try to tell them, or an engineer that theres a problem!

Well sir we have run some line tests and the results are fine, its not showing any fault at present!!! 

Im not asking for and 100% Service Level Agreement, im not asking for a 24 callout from the engineers, and im not asking for a direct line to a faults viper team manager, im just askin for what i think im paying good money for.

A fair price for a fair service, and i dont think thats what im getting!

Also, i gotta say, that the inbound call platform is awful if you have infinity.

You just try and tell that computer woman that you have a fault with your infinity or fibre!!, you get through the ADSL fault desk, then go through all the details only to be transferred again, i think somoen has forgotten to update her  and tell her about Infinity??

[DaveA]

Hi,

Yeah I forgot fibre was more to be honest, but my point still stands.

The problem with your argument about unforeseen circustances is exactly the fact that they're unforseen.  And there's only so much you can do to defend against an entire river flooding half your town, or having three feet of snow land on your doorstep.  Boats and snowmobiles are expensive you know.

I still remember the really bad winter spell we had a few years ago where the entire country ran out of salt.  The next year there was millions of extra tons brought into circulation.  Guess what?  We got practically no snow, and hardly any frost.

It's all very well to say that companies should assume that everything is going to go to hell in a hand basket, but it's just not feasible to have a constant red alert going.

I do, however, agree that more business are opening six days a week though so you have a point there.

And I don't think it's insight that people should have with regard to chasing their faults.  It's common sense.  I'm not talking about taking full responsibility, I'm talking about being sensible.  Sitting and waiting for days, weeks, months or even years (yes I have encountered them all) for a callback about an issue without picking up the phone yourself at some stage is just dumb in my opinion.

Yes we should be making sure, as much as we can anyway, that callbacks happen, but the number of times (for example) people just don't answer their phones is amazing.  And if we kept calling each person until they answered then we'd still be working on cases from 2010, and have three times as many staff doing callbacks as doing incoming stuff.

It's true that they don't like repeat calls, but you have to draw a line somewhere with that one.

Finally your line.  The fact is that if everything is working correctly then it's working.  The fact is that it may break for a dozen different reasons, which would suck signifcantly.

But we can only go and fix each issue as it arises, which is time consuming enough.  At that stage you should be proddng the agent about speaking to a manager, especially if the same falt happens again.

Yes to some degree you would be hoping the agent would spot this, but can you imagine coming on the phone with17 faults previously raised on the system.  How long would that take to check through?  Also bear in mind that we see all the cases for all the phone lines in a company, so you would have to dig through every case to find the right ones.

Now that's a system issue there to a degree, and I think they have plans on changing the main systems we use, but that takes time and money to implement over such a large Helpdesk network.

Oh, and almost forgot, BT Openreach are in the process of taking on thousands of new engineers.  So you get your wish there. Pity half of them are coming from the Helpdesks and reducing our pool of experienced staff.  Ah well.

Dave

p.s. Forgot to mention about the passing from ADSL to Fibre Helpdesks.  Don't quite know why that is.  The main number is given out for Fibre, but they have a specific Helpdesk that isn't part of the main one.  The reason for that is because fibre has a different set of tests to the standard ADSL ones, and so it's better to have a more specialist team.

[Jdatkin]

Well, the infinity has been restored, although the upstream is 0.5 - 1.5mb which i think is very slow, and appears to be causing our IP moniotring cameras some problems, but im told i have to wait for the golden 10 days stabilisation period to end now that im on a different port.

I have made a complaint to the chairmans office / high level escalations about the lack of service, AND IMPORTANTLY the fact that 17 faults in 12 months appears to be seen as OK?

That averages more than one fault every 4 weeks!!

Come on BT get the idea that you win some and you loose some, and on this one u think that you should just run a new line in, or at thevery least get the engineers who wanted to visually check each section of line from end to end back to complete it as they wanted to months ago but was told that they could not complete the testing??

ANY SUGGESTIONS WOULD BE APPRECIATED