The Daily Novel

Wonder of wonders. A human being from BT called Dave actually telephoned my mobile just now responding to my complaints. More below, but first new readers should see the revised score sheet.

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone: 57

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 54

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is Sir Christopher Bland, a distinguished businessman and former chairman of the BBC. Does he know how badly his company is failing its customers?

If you see him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

Dave did not apologise but he did provide some explanation about what he thought might have happened. When he telephoned, I thought that it was the power of the press. The Observer sent a few of my complaints to the BT press office yesterday.

Not so, said Dave. It was simply that my complaint, which had reached his intray on 5 September,  had finally got the top.  Apparently there are lots of other people who have been waiting over a month for BT to connect their phone.

What had happened, he suggested, was simply because openreach, the company that acually connects the telephone, now a separate entity from BT, considers an order to be inactive, if it is not activated very quickly. So BT has to re-issue the order. He assured me that he would now re-issue the order, and that my line should be connected in 48 hours.

Still no explanation as to why BT failed to tell openreach that the order was still active despite my almost daily complaints to them about my phone not being connected.

I am quite prepared to accept that the problem may lie with the procedures adopted by openreach and that it might be something to do with strictures placed upon BT by the regulator, ofcom. If this is indeed the case then BT, openreach and ofcom need to get together and establish some better procedures.

The poor phoneless customer is not allowed to get in touch himself with openreach to get connected. Neither is the individual customer able to make complaints to ofcom, the regulator, which is financed by our taxes.

Surely something wrong there.

Ofcom is supposed to ensure that BT does not abuse its huge power and gives good service to customers. It is clearly not doing so at the moment.

Ironically BT is not doing its shareholders any good either. If they had connected my phone on August 1 they would have had two months payments from me by now.  Instead my money has gone to inflate the profits of T-Mobile, who have had more money from me over the last two months than in the previous two years.

At last I have got recognition from one of the two utilities who have blighted the move into my new flat in London. npower, who supply the gas for the central heating sent me an email late on Monday acknowledging their mistake, withdrawing the threat to cut off my gas, and offering to pay my £50 mobile phone bill in full, so long as I supply them with a copy of my mobile phone bill. Unhappily, I use pay as you go, I cannot do that. But I hope to find some other proof. At least they acknowledge that I deserve compensation for the way they have treated me.

Contrast BT who have still not replied to my emails of complaint. That is actually no longer true because as I started to write this blog a chap called Dave from BT telephoned my mobile. Not to apologise but to tell me that one of my emails of complaint had actually been read by a human being. And after I had told him something of the story he assured me that my line will be active in 48 hours. If it happens it will by then be 59 days late.

More on this in a BT update blog later today.

Meanwhile I still do not have an explanation from npower as to why the mix-up over my gas supply occurred. I hope to get that as well as compensation. And will blog about it when I find out.

(According to Lisa Bachelor, writing in Sunday’s Observer, BT is still blaming the bad weather for the delays in installing phones. None of the examples she uses in her column, part of the Observer’s ‘Why are we waiting campaign’, is as bad as my experience. Just tried again. The automated message still tells me to check and try again!)

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone: 55

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 54

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is Sir Christopher Bland, a distinguished businessman and former chairman of the BBC. Does he know how badly his company is failing its customers?

If you see him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

Up early to drive my wife to Axminster to catch the London train. Blinding September sunshine as hot as Provence and it is only 9 AM in the morning. Did my first shop at the Tesco store there. Snatched a special offer - a computer keyboard knocked down to two pounds. Be perfect for using with my laptop in London on the spare mahogany computer table. Should help me to stave off repititive strain injury for a few years, however much I blog.

It is only ten minutes drive so I am drinking my coffee on the terrace at Charmouth before 10 AM. Feeling the heat of the sun seeping through my flesh and bones. Decide I am not going to waste the day on the telephone to BT, who have still failed to connect my London number. It gives the message, ‘You have dialled an incorrect number”. In other words it is my fault not BT’s! Perhaps I should just leave them to it. And post up the figures on my blog. And change the title to How many days does it take to connect a telephone. Now 48. Maybe when the total gets to 100 days I can persuade some MP to ask a question in Parliament.

So today I shall enjoy myself. But the morning newspapers are full of the panic arising from the Bank of England’s bale out of the Northern Rock Building Society. Apparently depositors have withdrawn three billion pounds in three days, which is more than the total assets of many building societies. The shares of another aggressive mortgage lender, Alliance and Leicester, fell by one third last night, though the management insists that it in my trouble at all and has not sought the help of the Bank of England.

The government insists that there is no need to panic but has taken the quite unprecedented step of guaranteeing the deposits of Northern Rock and any other bank which falls into trouble. Clearly Alastair Darling knows the history the Great Crash on Wall Street in 1929 and how it started a worldwide slump which was still causing unemployment and poverty for millions throughout the 1930s. The Republican administration of President Hoover had made the mistake of increasing the panic by tightening the money supply. The reversal did not begin until the Democratic regime of Franklin Roosevelt, whose New Deal pumped in Government money to rescue world capitalism, and provided work and earnings for the unemployed.

But the experts are polarised as to the severity of the present crisis. The optimists note that the world economy of the 1930s was dominated by western capitalism, which caught a severe cold when Wall Street sneezed. Today’s economy is much more diverse. The vast and rapidly growing Chinese economy, whose ideology is an inscrutable mixture of the thoughts and Chairman Mao and Karl Marx and aggressive modern high tech capitalism.

Gordon Brown is somewhat similar. His roots are deep in the British Labour Party, with its blend of socialism with Christianity. But he is eager to work together with big business and finds much more in common with the convictions of Margaret Thatcher, than does David Cameron, the current leader of the Conservative Party.

The pessimistic experts are not at all sure he has got it right. What if the Government action does not stem the panic the Government is compelled to deliver on its promise, and pump several billions into the economy? The figures are big enough to cause an even greater panic and start people remembering the run on the pound which has plagued so many Labour administrations in recent history, including those of Clement Attlee and Harold Wilson.

The problem is that history never repeats itself exactly. I think that the pessimists are right to be worried about mortgage lending. Mortgages as high as five times earnings have become common. And some people have been encouraged to borrow more than the current value of their houses, based on the expectation that British house prices will go on rising, as they have done so spectacularly for most of the last fifty years.

I am impressed by the arguments of the pessimists. House prices had already started to fall before the Northern Rock hiatus. A mild recession for a year or two is highly probable. And it is not going to be easy for the government to stop it developing into something far worse.

Thinking about the economy led me into thinking of the big companies who have just as much influence upon our lives as do governments.

(Pause to walk out on to terrace and have another injection from the sun. There is just enough wind to stir the leaves of the palm tree but the sea is placid, the waves gently lapping the beach. Two walkers are strolling up Strongborough Hill and beyond it the sands of Chesil Beach are clearly visible, though it is too far away for me to see the people on it.)

I feel so good that I am minded to put in a few good words for some of the fattest cats of capitalism. Currys have just telephoned to say they are delivering the new cooker tomorrow between eight and twelve and that their delivery man will telephone me half an hour before arrival. I think they will be as good as their word, because that is what they did when they delivered the new dishwasher a fortnight ago. I am also welling up with gratitude to Tesco, for the bargains I picked up this morning, including four bottles of Rioja.

Dixons, which also own Currys and PCWorld, and Tesco, are two of the great success stories of post-war British capitalism. Both Stanley Kalms (Dixons) and Jack Cohen (Tesco) were full-blooded exponents of capitalism and evangelical about its virtues. Both companies provide excellent value for money and mostly very good quality. Both companies can be faulted. The low prices of Dixons’ products are partly due to the fact that their salesmen persist in encouraging customers to take out expensive five year guarantees, which, in my experience, are mostly un-necessary. Tesco, like most big supermarkets, squeeze the prices charged by their suppliers, so much that they have difficulty in making any profit.

But they clearly pay more than lip service to the notion that customer is always right and and know the value of talking to the customer, and above all listening to them.

Unlike the two companies who have caused me most trouble in my house move, BT and npower. In writing this blog, it occurs to me that this might be something to do with the fact both are the products of the privitisation of public utilities ushered in with such conviction by Margaret Thatcher.

On one of the rare occasions when I acutally got through to a human being in BT, he told me that the problems I was experiencing were maybe to do with the restrictions put upon  BT by the regulator, Ofcom, and the role played by the split off company, Open Reach. I think this might be worth looking into when I have time.

Meanwhile I hope that the Brownites would do well to ponder just how their version of New Labour needs to be amended. Questions for their next away day.

1. How do you regulate big companies to limit their use of their power?

2. Is the capitalistic model the right one for public utlities? Perhaps the best way of running public utilities is not nationalisation nor capitalism, but a third way.

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone: 48

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 47

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is Sir Christopher Bland, a distinguished businessman and former chairman of the BBC. Does he know how badly his company is failing its customers?

If you see him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

Number of Days BT has failed to connect my telephone: 44

Number of Days BT has failed to reply to my complaints and give me any explanation for this delay: 43

Money spent on mobile phone trying to contact a BT human being: £50 plus

Time spent on the telephone and internet complaints: Hours and hours.

Apologies from BT: Nil

Yet the BT automated messages declare that my call is important to them and that it is their policy to reply to complaints in two working days.

The Chairman of BT is Sir Christopher Bland, a distinguished businessman and former chairman of the BBC. Does he know how badly his company is failing its customers?

If you see him, tell him. This is what he looks like.

In the dream I had bought a much older and lighter Yamaha motor cycle to replace my trusty but heavy Yamaha Majesty 250 cc scooter. I had made the purchase quickly and when I got it home I found that it’s performance was inadequate. I made some enquiries and discovered that it was indeed a brilliant bike, much loved by a devoted band of enthusiasts. But the company’s product. To work well this Yamaha required a modification which involved fitting an extra six exhaust pipes. Making this a motor bike looking like no other on the roads. Many people found that the seven ribbed fan on the side of the bike was ugly. But to the enthusiasts, who included one of my colleagues in City University’s music department, it was not only beautiful but an example of engineering excellence. The company did not make this modication. You had to buy the kit from the band of enthusiasts for 935 pounds.

I don’t think it is likely that Yamaha, or any other company, ever made such a bike, so instead of checking it out on the web, I thought a bit about how my sleeping mind had come to write this nonsense drama.

At yesterday’s meeting I had to meet a fresh face from union headquarters, and in the social chit chat before we got down to business I told him that it had taken me 48 minutes to reach City University by public transport, whereas it would have taken me 13 minutes on my scooter, which is now garaged in Dorset. He told me that he had walked from HQ in twenty minutes, but that he too preferred the speed and convenience of two-wheeled transport. He had a 900 cc Yamaha, which he did not use yesterday, because he has recently moved to deepest Surrey and comes up to London on the train.

I told him that my first bike was a 125 cc BSA Bantam, which had by far the biggest sale of in Britain in the 1950s, before the Japanese arrived, spearheaded by Honda, and drove BSA of the face of the earth. We might have gone on to discuss whether British manufacturing declined because of conservative and slothful managers or because of bully boy and conservative trade unionists. But instead we got down to business, which involved trying to protect our members from the effects of the new fashionable managerialism which is sweeping the British university sector.

Back to the dream. Now it serves as a reminder that I too suffer from the dread disease of conformity. My first bike was in fact a 1928 Raleigh 250 cc which I bought for 15 pounds from my saved up pocket money. It was a huge weight to push when the engine gave up, which it did occasionally. So I sold it for 20 pounds and bought, for 25 pounds,a 125 cc James, a lively and smashing bike. It had a modified exhaust  which stuck out at an odd angle and made rather a lot of noise, which alarmed my family. So I did the ’sensible’ thing; traded it in and bought for seventy pounds on hire purchase a BSA Bantam.

In truth, I never liked it that much. It made heavy weather of the hills, and girl on the back was liable to jump off and run up the hill, it was so excrutiatingly slow. And it stopped frequently. I became something of an expert at tickling the carburettor to get it going again. But that is no fun on a rainy night on the Birmingham New Road.

Why on earth did I not have the courage of my convictions and keep the James? And why am I presently a slave to Microsoft, even though its huge programs slow my computer down to a snail’s pace?

And why do I continue to use my mobile phone to communicate with BT and npower when they make no effort at all to sort out their mistakes and apologise for them?

It is now a week since I wrote my last blog. I have been dealing with giant companies who do not seem very sensitive to my needs. The big advantage of the free market is that it offers consumers a choice. But what I am impressed by is the sameness of big companies. Both www.bt.com and www.npower.co.uk tell me that ‘Your call is important to us.’ And then they keep me hanging on for hours, listening to automated messages. When I send emails of complaint they send me automated responses telling me my complaint is being dealt with. BT tells me it is their policy to deal with complaints in two working days. But it is well over two weeks since I wrote my first email of complaint to BT.

And they still have not connected my telephone line in London, ordered on 12 July for delivery on 1st August.

Worse than that they have not given me any explanation as to why they have not connected the line in my London flat, which is a BT line.

Yesterday afternoon I thought that I was at least getting somewhere with npower.co.uk. After doggedly hanging on from my mobile I got through to a human being. And kept them talking about why they were making a second threat to cut off my gas supplies. They still insisted, as they had done six weeks ago, that they could not trace the payments I had made to them, because they had so many bank accounts. They said I would have to talk to my bank and give them the details.

Happily I only had to listen to three responses from Smile, before I got a human being, who gave me a few numbers. I rang npower back and miraculously got through to another human being. Who told me at last that they could now verify my payments, but that before they withdrew their threat I would need to run downstairs and find the number of my gas meter. By that time I was at my daughter’s house and ringing from there. But I promised to do it as soon as I got home. Which I did and was kept hanging on for 35 minutes of automated responses before their closing time of 6 PM. (Yes, I did try their oft repeated offer to ring me back. But it does not work with mobile numbers!)

But what was finally admitted by npower yesterday is that they are trying to charge me for two flats at my new address in London. So yet another company is involved, www.parkheath.com, the estate agents who are responsible for managing the flat I am renting. So I still do not know whether the supply npower is threatening to turn off is for my flat, or another flat in the building. I alerted Parkheath to this problem way back in May.

Neither of these companies is guiltless. And I intend to pursue my complaints to each of them, until these matters are sorted out.

But tonight I realise that there is an even graver problem. Many, perhaps most, big companies, are slavishly following the curruntly accepted norms of how companies should deal with their customers.

Lots of soft soap, like ‘Your call is important to us.’ but a total failure to put things right.

What is even worse is that these values and practices are spreading to the university sector. Today I had to go in for a meeting at City University. It related to a consultation exercise. (The message to staff is your views are important to us. In fact university staff are punch drunk with consultation exercises. And this particular document reversed all the essential features of a similar exercise three years ago, which many staff opposed, but the management implemented.)

So www.city.ac.uk should take note of this. And particularly the new vice-chancellor, Professor Malcolm Gillies. He will have to take note of the views of the large companies who provide some funding. But he will also need to consider whether a decent university should slavishly follow these current corporate fashions.

This blog will seem like a mad rant, to anyone happening upon it accidentally. But before dismissing it, they should pause. Because what I have been experiencing over the past few months, is experienced daily, by thousands, possibly millions, of other people, who do not complain via blogs.  Because they do not write blogs. And because they have not spent so much time as I have to find out how the world in which we live works.

This world is dominated by very large companies, who are more powerful than most governments. These companies are not elected by anyone, not accountable to anyone, but their shareholders, who do not have any effective way of influencing what the companies do, unless they have a majority vote.

Everyone knows this. But no-one does anything about it. Not politicians, because they want to get elected. Not journalists, because…. I am not sure why. Journalists ought to look into such things, but few do. Maybe because it takes so much time, and their employers, who are mostly giant companies, want them to do things which don’t take so much time.

After spending three weeks in my bungalow in Charmouth I have achieved normal service there. I even managed to get a BT engineer to come. And he replaced the wires that had been corroded by the many years those wires have served, right back to the days when BT was a public service monopoly, required to supply a decent service to its customers.

The preset BT is controlled by managers who earn vast salaries, but who still have on their books, decent engineers, who know the business. Which is supplying an efficient telephone service.

After spending three weeks in Dorset I have now managed to get things down there working OK. But today I had to come back to London, and by BT line here tells me that I have dialled ‘an incorrect number’.  Even when I dail the number of my mobile which is stored in the phone!

In London BT has no techicnal problems, because the flat I am in has a BT line, which was working quite OK for the previous tenant. But although BT cut off my line in my old house around the corner on the first of August, they have still not managed to connect me here.

As soon as I got connected to the internet in Dorset I wrote an email of complaint to BT. Received an automated response that they dealt with such letters within 48 hours. STILL NO REPLY NOW FROM A HUMAN BEING AT BT.

This is not just a rant about the terrible arrogance and neglect of customer complaints by BT. Because I was able to get through to Sky, who did respond to my telephone calls, so I did not have to spend five hours on the telephone, before I spoke to a human being. GOOD ON YOU SKY.

Except tht☼ tonight I found that Sky had deducted 47 pounds from my direct debit. On top of the 60 pounds they have already deducted, although I signed up for Sky in Dorset for a deal which was 29 pounds a month.

From my own personal experience I know that there is a serious problem here. Which is not being looked into by journalists.

BT is ignoring its customers. BUT NOT MAKING MUCH MONEY OUT OF ME. Sky is being courteous and responsive, but is taking my money. Sky is dependent on BT for the telephone, because BT still control the exchanges. 

The customer is suffering. Me and thousands of others.

But journalists are not complaining.

If they don’t, who will?