Quintin Jardine's blog

Yesterday I had a strange and unsolicited email from a person named Libby Barr, managing director of customer care with BT. She told me that she’d been snooping on my Broadband usage in Gullane and that my wireless connection wasn’t great. That wasn’t news to me. It’s so unreliable that I’ve been using powerline adaptors for almost a year.  She told me also that I could buy a range extender from the  BT online shop. I knew that too; in fact I have a range extender, a better model than BT sell. Its benefits are marginal.

The Libbster’s message also included the following gem:

“We want to make sure you’re getting the best from your BT services so we recently checked the data from your BT Home Hub to see how well everything’s working and saw that you might not be getting the best wireless connection to some of your devices. Don’t worry, we can’t see what you’re using the internet for – only how well it’s working.”

Nice to know, but it doesn’t explain how she was able to do that, since I haven’t been at home, nor used my broadband there, for over a month. Nor does it offer any form of recompense for BT’s self-confessed failings.

When I tried to quiz Libby about the content of her message and to express these concerns, I found that it is impossible to contact her. Instead I was referred to a section of the BT website labelled ‘Contact Us‘, where I was able to key in my questions. I did so, at some lengths, then pressed ‘Send‘, so be advised that missives had to be restricted to 240 characters. Undeterred, I asked a simpler question: ‘Are you a help desk or an extension of Twitter?‘ That led me to be connected with someone named Sweety Pathak, who thanked me for my patience, before I’d even shown any. This cued an even simpler question; ‘Do you speak English?‘  Sweety wasn’t sure, for her only response was further gratitude for my patience, at which point, I decided it was in fact exhausted.