I rang PO Home Tel to get a phoneline from them. There is a line into the flat in town but it needs a master socket fitted, the wire is just hanging loose.

Anyway they said it's £110 to send an engineer and I said OK.

Now I reckon it would take the guy 20 mins at most to screw in a master socket in the lobby just inside the front door and attach the two wires.
And they would have to switch on at the exchange.


So anyway the provisions dept just phoned to give me an appointment date........ three weeks from now.

Three weeks.

I refused.

I'm paying £110 and I'm supposed to wait three weeks ?????


Now a couple of months back I had to get a new line at my country house and I went to ID Net, they took my info and they rang back at the end of the week and said they would send an Openreach engineer on the following Monday to do a site survey and they put in the line on the Friday and that was to actually attach a new line from the tel pole to the house.


So PO Home Tel must be at the back of the line as far as Openreach are concerned.



Why should we have to wait so long when we are paying £110 ?


If this were the US and you were paying that kind of money they'd probably be there the next day as they want the business.


Service in this country really sucks.

Different areas have different waiting times depending on the number of engineers available and the number of provisions/faults outstanding.

It is the summer holidays so a larger number of engineers will be on holiday so waiting times will be a bit longer.

All CPs have access to the same appointment books for the area.

I think the problem is that anything connected with BT or Openreach is garbage.

This is what happens when providers have to use a monopoly like Openreach.

I wondered how long it would take you to turn it into an anti-BT thread.

I'd like to be able to say something positive about them if it was at all possible.


OK how about this.......some of the other telecom providers aren't that great either.


Here's one.....with a BT line you can use 1899,18185,18866 etc to make calls and save compared with BT's high call charges and connection fees for each call.

What's that got to do with this thread again?

You go on about a monopoly, it isn't BT's fault other companies have decided it isn't worth their while to install infrastructure where you are. Why not get on the phone to VM and ask them to install a network where you live?

Good call

I'm afraid that poor service just won't wash.


If you have to wait three weeks for an engineer they should put in a new master socket for free not charge £110.


As long as the public accept poor service things will never improve.



p.s. yes I know that Openreach charge the provider a wholesale fee and they charge the customer a higher fee nevertheless I have to cough up £110.



Well I don't actually 'cos I've told the PO to forget it.

Why if they quote 3 weeks should they install for free ?
If it were a 6 week wait should they pay you £110 ?
BT employ enough staff for average work stacks, make an order in a busy period then you wait longer than in a slack period....if BT employed enough staff that in the busiest periods you only had to wait a short time then in the slack periods a lot of people would be sat around with nothing to do, but they still get paid, so you would be complaining about BT being overstaffed and having to pay more for BT services as a consequence.
FYI Openreach charge the CP £65 for the install ,so the PO presumably the CP of your choice ,added the rest on for themselves, you assume a 20 minute job but how do you know long it will take, the £65 has to cover the enginners time (average is 2.5 hours for an install,) stores,van, back office and profit ( no profit, no business)...i dont think £65 is bad....

Eleanor is pretty much a professional BT hater.

You know things are bad when a leaflet sent to a 3rd party which said 3rd party never bothered to read yet caused them confusion would stop them from using a company.

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/s...257&highlight=

I know it's a 20 minute job because I had it done in my country house.


I know that people on here who work for BT or Openreach feel they have to defend them regardless of how bad the service is.

And you know for a fact the engineer never had to do any other work whatsoever elsewhere at the likes of the PCP, the cabinet or in the exchange to get your line connected.

You really are making yourself look very silly now.