Nuisance calls and a nuisance service

WE all hate unsolicited phone calls. If Raw Deal was put in charge of Britain (and Britain could do worse!) nuisance calls would be entirely banned. The public doesn’t need to be pestered by cold callers trying to flog this, that and the other.

George Connell, of Aberdour, reckoned he’d found a way to fight back. Last year he paid for BT’s caller display service so he could decide which calls he wanted to answer.

This worked until July, when it seemed to disappear. If his phone rang, the display said only “incoming call”.

George complained – three weeks in a row – and BT eventually decided it was a problem outside his house and dug up the pavement. All to no avail.

By August, with the service still not working, out of the blue BT declared it had disconnected the service “after the initial 12-month introductory period”. It hadn’t told George this, but kept charging him for it!

BT asked if George wanted the service reconnected. Of course he did – it didn’t make any difference, though, it still refused to work.

Raw Deal doesn’t phone anyone in an unsolicited manner, but we gave BT a ring asking that this situation be cleared up. An engineer came out to sort the problem. George said “I’m delighted, thanks very much. I spent three months trying to get BT to fix this but you managed it within five days.”