Tuesday, March 13, 2007

Thanks BT - Way To Treat A New Customer!

FFS. What a pain in the arse. I've just finished with NTL because of the move, after 8 years of great service (when you could get a hold of them) and 6 years of a solid and hassle free broadband service. With this move I decide to go for a BT Business account, as I was advised (by my mum, who works for BT) that it would ensure better service and fasting sorting of faults.

So fast forward to today, the date the line and account was due to start. Let's not forget what my business is, and the necessity of being online to do it, being a web based marketer / web master. OK, so this morning I plugged in and configured the hub they sent me. It took some figuring out, but I managed to do it manually. Then I made my first mistake of the day - I put their installation disk in.

That had the effect of hijacking my wireless settings and employing something called the Wireless Adapter Configurator (WirelessDaemon.exe) to manage them. The installation disk failed, but it left that behind. It killed the standard wireless dialogues and made it impossible to connect to the other wireless network that's been saving my bacon.

If you ever encounter this - the solution is to go into the service section of XP and disable the service - Wireless Adapter Configurator (right click and select properties.) Then you re-start Wireless Zero Configuration and all should be well. Bad showing BT, especially considering the configurator left no menu or shortcut entries to uninstall it. I only spotted it by luck as I was trying to get Wireless Zero Configuration to work.

Ok, so the broadband was connected and working at 10.00am this morning. Then, the engineer arrived to enable the phone line (I was under the impression it already was - but what do I know?) So he does his stuff - I point out that the number he's telling his engineer is different to the number on all the order forms I've been sent. He writes down the new number, and I already know this is the start of problems getting the broadband working, as it's enabled for a different number.

Sure enough, all the lights that were on earlier to show a good connection are out, broadband's dead. On the phone I go, and spend £10 of my pay as you go phone bill being put on hold and moved from person to person - after telling them to call me back as I'm on my mobile. 'No worry' they say, 'it will only take a minute.' Roll forward 15 minutes of holding, and the ominous mobile phone voice kicks in with the 1 minute of money message and the phone goes dead, my hard earned spent on nothing.

So I plug in all the phones here, which needed to charge before I could use it to ring them. Now, I also tried ringing the number the engineer wrote down was the new number and get a 'line does not exist' message - when, obviously it does as I can now ring out. So after the first lot of ringing around, no one has rung me. I ring again on the mobile, and get a lack of understanding on the line that makes me know I'm going to go through hoops again, and obviously no-one I'd spoken to earlier had left details on my file of the problem. I hung up not wanting to blow another tenner and went to the now charged land line instead.

I get through and am told that the line has to be rectified as there must be a fault on ringing in, and once that's fixed the broadband can be reactivated, here's the kicker, as it's a new number it will take another 5 working days before they can activate it. I explain my position (yes I know I can use another's wireless, but that's not the point, is it?) about needing the net to do business and am told there's nothing that can be done about it. By now I'm trying not to lose my cool, knowing it's not the lady on the lines fault.

She puts me through to the telephony department to sort the line invalid fault. They sort it out, problem is, the engineer wrote the number down wrong. (/Dio rolls eyes and sighs)

She redoes the order, so now I'm to phone back tomorrow to find out when the broadband will now be activated. So, that takes us through to next week before I get my own connection. Oh NTL, how I miss you, I won't hear a bad word said about you in future. Let's hope things pick up soon. I got a 5 year contract with BT. :(

Posted by Dio Bach at 15:47

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