Julie's Boggle

I suppose our return to the internet after an enforced absence of 2 and a bit months (!) cannot be allowed to pass without a rant of some sort. And in this instance, there are two words to describe the source of all our woes: BT and Pipex.

The side of BT that deal with phone lines (BT Retail) can at least claim to have customer service, even if their technicians are occasionally found wanting. In this case, a basic crossed line was fixed (on the 30th of August) within 48 hours of us notifying them, but by using the simple expedient of plugging us into a whole new position in the exchange, thus cutting us off from our broadband provider, Pipex.

And, Pipex, on the other hand, never lost an opportunity to disappoint. The shiny, happy people at the Pipex call centre were unfailingly pleasant and apologetic, and utterly, utterly impotent when it came to driving the actions to resolve our problem.  (We were confidently informed that it had already been resolved on at least three occasions.)

During the three weeks that they had to fix the problem, despite numerous calls on their expensive “Customer Service” and “Technical Support” lines, all that was achieved was the accidental cancellation and subsequent reinstatement of our account.

By the end of the first week of teeth-gnashing, we were firmly resolved to leave Pipex (who, incidentally, have been bought by Tiscali since we originally joined), but we needed to rescue our emails first and that required time and resurrection of the hated dial-up modem.

A weekend away slowed us down somewhat, but the day after we got back, we started the process of getting a new internet service provider (ISP). Unfortunately, new accounts take 10 days to be processed. Ho-hum.

At the end of those 10 days, our new ISP diligently attempted to hook us up and came back with the announcement that there was a fault on the line (Really?) and that BT had been notified. (This is BT Wholesale – a different section of BT to the one that deals with phone faults, and one that will not speak directly to members of the public.)

So, on the one hand, we were rejoicing because we now have an ISP that actually does something to resolve our problem, and proves that they care by calling us back! Tears of joy all round. But on the other hand, groaning as the BT call-handling system limbers up and churns out another couple of days wait.

Finally, poised on the very brink of getting us back online, our new ISP was on the phone to us again with an update. They had been told that BT Wholesale were doing some really heavy maintenance -taking up all their engineers- and aaarrrgghh! they wouldn’t be able to schedule our reconnection for at least another 7 DAYS!

Sadly that still wasn’t the end of it.   At the end of that first week, and every week that followed for the next 6 weeks, our ISP diligently informed us (by phone, email and snail mail) that BT were, regrettably, going to need another [insert number here] days to work on the problem. Before long we also heard that they were closing our exchange and working overtime to migrate everyone to another exchange.

Fortunately our faith in BT was so much diminished by the time the second letter arrived that we didn’t hang around waiting, but somewhat irritably handed over the funds to pay for a 3G modem (a pricey little toy) and a month’s worth of Pay-as-you-go option with “3″ mobile.

That turned out to be a lifesaver in terms of getting us connected again, but the speed and general flakiness of 3G in a basement flat (the only practical modem location for getting a good signal was in the middle of our bed!) meant that we were not very happy 3G customers overall.

The resolution, which came on the 3rd of November, was even more absurd than what had happened in the interim.  Pipex it turned out, never did realise that we had cancelled, and eventually sent out one of their overworked engineers who connected us up (in the old exchange) again!  And, well, it’s far too complicated to explain here, but we’re going to stay with them for a little longer (still waiting for our “refund cheque”) at least until that exchange is formally closed.

And (our happily reconnected) life goes on…