Intolerable
This morning I spent an hour an a half with a chap in India, after holding on for 45 minutes to get through to him. He was a very pleasant chap, but at the end of our conversation we failed to agree that the very sporadic service I have been receiving lately from BT Broadband was in any way his employer’s fault. It was mine, because I was requiring a wireless signal to travel 45 feet to my computer, most of it across open ground. The maximum range I could expect, he said, was 25 feet.
All the tests he ran were remote, and none of them were designed to explore the possibility that the machine might have had a sporadic transmission fault. I’m on line now, and my signal is crap. Yesterday it was fine. Tomorrow it will probably be fine, but it’s the days of uncertainty that do my head in. This is compounded by BT’s failure to offer anything that approximates to decent customer service.
But you know what? It is my fault. For a few years I had a very good ISP, a small firm called Zen, which operated no call centres at all and sorted any problems instantly. To my shame I left them, not because of their service but because BT lured me away with their flashy, misleading advertising and with the bribe of free BT Sport.
At the first opportunity, I’m going back.
Quintin Jardine's blog 
Never, ever trust BT. That’s my motto.
“It ain’t half hot Mum!” Never,ever trust any of them. A similar thing happened to me this last weekend: lightning blew away my modem (box or whatever they call it now), phoned the SFR “boutique” nearby, explained the situation and they said that I had to phone Customer Service in Paris to authorise any replacement. I did that, it took about 2 hours of scratchy, appalling music to get someone on the line; I must add that the person I did talk to was extremely polite, didn’t yell at me and sorted the authorisation in about 10 minutes. Off to the “boutique,” everything duly replaced without question. Back home: nothing works. I deduced that the power supply plug was faulty. Phone Paris again to obtain authorisation for replacement of the power supply plug. Back to the boutique, replacement of power supply plug without question. Back home: still doesn’t work! The brand new box is faulty. Phone Paris again, etc. This time the nearby boutique is out of stock, I have to go much farther away to get a new one. Did that and it’s all working again now but they don’t consider the 250 km I had to drive there and back to get something that finally works (lightning strikes where it does and it’s not their fault), however, supplying supposedly brand-new equipment that doesn’t work IS, especially when you live a fair distance away from the supplier.
PS they did check my line remotely and I said that if there was anything wrong with my line we wouldn’t be talking to each other.
You should move over the border. I arrived in Spain in August to find that my Movistar router was goosed, good and proper. I called their service number and was taken through an automated test programme. My Spanish is pretty basic, but I followed it well enough. At the end of each step, I was asked a question, and simply answered ‘No.’ Finally the voice told me what I had known all along, that said router was indeed goosed; it said that their technicos would fit a new one within twenty-four hours. Being BT trained I did not believe that. In fact, they (they being area contractors, not Movistar employees) arrived two and a half hours later and bingo, I was back on line. It’s slower than BT but it fucking works. Y viva Espana.