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.