Smarthub flashing purple light of doom?

[leonkenworthy]

just had a lovely phone call from the BT complaints department. They can't get a engineer to visit me during the week after 4pm when I finish work. I live alone in a flat and there's no way I can get anyone to house sit for a engineer visit without me been there as let's be fair I need to explain the situation to the engineer. They also don't have engineer slots at weekends. So the next free day I have during the week will be the 27th. No internet until the 27th. So the complaints department have replied to say because I'm unavailable they can't provide the service to which I've replied no because you can't provide me with a convenient time for me to be present for the engineer you can't provide me my service. To which he sighed and softly replied exactly what he said before. So the notes BT have are that I'm the problem and they tried. Bullpoo. It's unacceptable that I would basically need to have no job to get my service back. I'm currently looking for a new provider who will be more willing to help.

[gg30340]

You will still need to have what ever the fault is with your line repaired regardless of which Internet provider you go with.

Unfortunately, unless you go with Virgin, all the Internet providers have to use Openreach who maintain the network and supply the engineers to carry out the repair that you need. This means you will be in the same position as now and may in fact be even worse because you will have "lost" your present slot that Openreach have provided.

[leonkenworthy]

I have had to sacrifice a shift at work and call someone else in to make sure I'm now home for a earlier appointment. It's all about making sure everything is convenient for BT. Not us the customers paying for the service.

[Daisyrabbit]

Similar problem here. Did everything including test socket no change. Called broadband help and various checks were made including on the MOBILE I was calling from! Was told the fault was near the exchange and will take 4 days to fix. Bad form BT. 4 days to fix a fault you should have been aware of. I can't be the only one affected.

[john46]

network faults are nothing to do with BT the network is Openreach's responsibility and that is the normal repair time the time scale you have been given applies to all service providers not just BT

[Daisyrabbit]

Sorry aren't BT part of the same group? I work from home and need internet to do so. A 4 day time scale is not realistic for me. Thanks for the info though!

[leonkenworthy]

The worse point is having to jump through 50 million technical checks every time, even if it's something you did yesterday, and then told to watch the connection for a day (keeping in mind there isn't one) for a few days THEN finding out you have had your connection turned off because of a silly error. Meaning you spent a month (my case the entireity of December) with no connection you are paying for, just because a switch was accidentally touched but get told it was a fault. I mean this is just a example of the many many problems I suffered from last year.

[Daisyrabbit]

It's been logged as a phone fault too although my phone actually works fine! Hope I don't have to wait a month!

[john46]

No Openreach are an independent company part of the BT Group just like PlusNet and EE are parts of the BT Group and under OFCOM rules BT get no preferential treatment from Openreach

[gg30340]

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@Daisyrabbit wrote:
Sorry aren't BT part of the same group? I work from home and need internet to do so. A 4 day time scale is not realistic for me. Thanks for the info though!

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If you work from home and you depend on the Internet you should consider getting a business line which has a higher SLA (Service Level Agreement) which includes a quicker timescale to repair faults as well as a compensation scheme.

You should also be aware that logging a phone fault when your phone works OK could slow the whole process down because a telephone engineer can not resolve broadband problems. It could lead to Openreach sending out the "wrong" engineer and when he can not fix/find your telephone "fault" Openreach will either close the fault or have to send out a broadband engineer which could take more time to arrange one.