Clear signal after BT has its lines crossed

TELECOMS giant BT had a surprise for customer Robert Hadfield last week: after several weeks and plenty of angst he finally had a working phone line. Robert may have had a surprise for the firm too. Although Openreach, the BT subsidiary which is in charge of much of the nation’s pipes and cables, has come in for criticism recently, in Robert’s view its teams were not to blame for his problems and did their best in what were “very difficult circumstances”.

“Those guys on the ground were great, it was just the communications between offices gave me headaches,” said Robert, reflecting on a fraught situation involving 57 calls and hours of time.

The trouble began when Robert moved from London to Sussex in late June to a property that had been empty. Although he let BT know and was assured there was no problem, it emerged there was no landline.

Visits by engineers came and went, contradictory instructions and a lack of the right equipment dragged out the process. “I couldn’t understand why there was such a problem. My home is in a cul-de-sac surrounded by other houses, it’s not on the moon,” he complained to Crusader. “I kept telling them I didn’t have a landline but the engineers were told that it was a box problem, so we just continued around in circles.”

After our request to see if matters could be hurried along, Robert got the result he was after. “It took the last man who came just a few minutes to connect a wire and now it’s working,” he reports.

“The delay was the result of some external engineering work required, which wasn’t obvious when the order was placed,” BT explained.

We reckon Robert’s case is useful feedback, something BT might bear in mind as he considers compensation for the disruption. “I’m braced for battle,” he said.