BT: It's good to balk

Okay this is is currently going to be pretty much a bitch fest at BT's expense. All those already uninterested should leave now and return for later updates. On the other hand if the bitching makes me feel better you may be rewarded with some joy at the end. So you may want to stick it out. Up to you.

I have magically found someone on Friar's Avenue who does not feel it clever to have security measures on their wireless internet. Some nasty evil part of me hope's they're on dial-up but if they were I doubt I'd be costing them any extra money as they'd already have to be connected. But yes now one week after our supposed activation date for the shiny white plasticness of the BT Home Hub and we are still internetless. There have been many phone calls lasting anything up to an hour to their 'Help'-line(s) and I somehow get the feeling we are no closer to cyberspace.

On Sunday we rang BT and were told that the broadband help desk people didn't work weekends and she "wasn't at liberty" to divulge any information about activation dates. We rang again on Monday and I spent 45 minutes talking to someone in India with little knowledge of a/ phone ettiquette, b/ what he was talking about or c/ the English language. People meeting any of these conditions should not be employed on help lines. Help lines are much more helpful if both parties speak the same language and at least one of them is trained in a job giving them helpful knowledge. During our phone call we made spurts of progress when he managed to tell me meagre snippets of information and I trained him on the basic operations of your common or garden personal computer and why the things he asked me to do were illogical and senseless given the nature of the problem. Then he finally divulged that his computer was saying that "the order is incompleted" sic and we should really be talking to Order Management. So he gave me their number. An 0845 number. I refused to have to pay to require about a service that should have already been provided so was transferred. Which is how I met lovely Scottish lady.

If you are a Scottish lady who works in Order Management for BT I would like to profess my undying love for you. You were nice and polite and demonstrated knowledge about the issue, computers and the English language. I wish I had your name so I could nominate for employee of the month, after Indian man you were a welcome breath of fresh air! Yes she even had nicer hold musak to which I listened while she spoke to the engineering department for me and found out that they were haveing 'routing problems' and it should be sorted in 2-3 days. The more astute amoung you will already have realised that nice Scottish lady was told misleading information by the engineering department and those days have already run out.

Keira rang back yesterday. She did nice phone voice for BT as she even rang the 0845 number. The were not very apologetic and then said that there was a tag on the line. A tag we were told had been removed when we first had problems with the internet ordering now 3 weeks ago. Needless to say we were not very impressed and made this unequivocally obvious without being rude. Though I think we are now making it our mission to simply bore BT into submission so they will give us the internet. I sent them an e-mail today asking for an activation date and details of how to recieve reimburement for the money we are spending on phone calls to them and on electricity going into a Home Hub that is, for all intents and purposes, useless. More e-mails and phone calls will ensue, have no fear.

On the plus side we were cheered to no end by 'Cheesey Pop Night' on The Hits. They even showed 20 Steps songs back-to-back and in chronological order. Sadly I knew all the words. There was also discussion of who in Steps could actually sing well. I kept saying that Faye Tozer could. Cat didn't believe me until number 20 "I Know Him So Well". Even after I pointed out that Russell Watson ('Opera-man') asked her to do a duet with him:



In other news I got my grubby little mitts on 'The Open Door'. I don't think it's as good as 'Origin' or 'Fallen' but it is still an excellent CD. I also interviewed for a voluteer position on a project working with the psychiatric ward at the hospital. I should here soon if I got the place. Fingers crossed please readers.