Fox and Angel, Creative Partnership
AN OPEN LETTER TO THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OF BT
December 14th, 2011
Ian Livingston
BT Centre
81 Newgate Street
London EC1 7AJ
Dear Ian
I will set the scene: I hope you read this letter carefully and deal with it at board level. As you will see I am not just a disgruntled customer, serious issues are at stake.
On Tuesday October 25th an oak tree fell on the Ashdown Forest taking with it my broadband (01825713001) and landline (01825712178).
I notified BT the next day. This took some doing as I was repeatedly asked to contact them via the internet as they were busy. Unfortunately due to the nature of the fault this was not possible. In the internet age many people will have this problem and it should not be beyond the wit of BT to recognise it. Whilst I can see it is cheaper for BT to get people to complain on-line thus reducing the need for staff, from the customer’s point of view, (particularly those customers who have a malfunction of internet service due to a BT fault) it would be much more satisfactory for extra telepersons to be recruited to address the problem of high call volume and not put the problem back on the complainant). The excuse that they “are experiencing “high call volumes” is no excuse. Another pertinent question that needs addressing is why this should be?
Eventually I speak to someone and explain the problem. A few days later, (not immediately I suspect because the fault is not on my land and I cannot be charged for it so I am put quite far down the list) engineers arrive and mend one line but cross the wires so the landline is now the broadband line and vice versa. The other line is for no reason I can fathom cut off on the pole and one wire from my house is left strewn across the forest.
So my internet still does not work and my new and wrong landline has no messaging service. My 712178 number is still receiving messages but I cannot access them. My 713001 number is not known by anybody although has no blocking system in place for “courtesy calls”, (surely an oxymoron), so I am besieged with calls offering stair lifts, double glazing and amazing financial opportunities etc.
Over the ensuing weeks I ring BT many times, always having to start again from the beginning, and having to wait “because they are receiving a high volume of calls”. (If everyone has been subjected to this level of ineptitude I am hardly surprised). BT tells me via texts I cannot reply to and telephone messages I cannot respond to that they are “still trying to fix the fault”. This cuts no ice with me as I can still see the wire dangling and no engineer in sight.
I wait in the whole of one Monday and Friday for a visit that never materialised. By now time is passing. Suddenly without warning early one morning there is a crash on my door and a BT man arrives to tell me “we are here to put up a pole, but you don’t need a pole do you?” I explain the simple problem again, as in spite of my detailing it over and over to call centres around the world nobody at BT or Openreach seems to have grasped what actually needs doing to rectify it. This new team arrive without a clue. I doubt a pole is needed as since they fixed one line, (albeit wrongly) without a new pole so I can’t see why the second line running parallel cannot also be fixed similarly. I don’t venture this opinion as they are the experts and when another van with more men arrive I see by dint of numbers they are at last on the case.
Imagine my shock when 15 minutes later I look out of the window and the two vans and several men have disappeared and the wire is still dangling.
I persevere. I ask to speak to a higher up. No one is available. I am repeatedly told to track the progress on the internet although they know the internet is the problem. I am besieged with texts that inform me engineers are “working on the problem”, (not true), or that the problem is taking a long time to sort as engineers need to work “outside my property”. (You don’t say). BT is floundering now. Out come some randomly chosen responses presumably selected from a series of options on a card and I get the ones not yet used. Perhaps the logic is that one will turn out to be right although since they have not listened to a word I have said, although it has been clearly enunciated and oft repeated and is not even a difficult problem, I am not hopeful.
I am warned I may be charged if my equipment is at fault or the problem is on my property. It is as if the people in charge of texting are sending me any old auto text to keep me at bay in the hope one might prove to be correct. A simple problem of 2 broken lines is becoming unbelievably complicated. The most irksome text being the one that says the engineers are working on the problem when I can see from my kitchen window the broken wire dangling from a tree. Several weeks into this sorry saga all BT have done is make things worse.
At one stage I am asked to take part in a “customer survey”. I agree and discover this means I can jump the queue and an even more obsequious teleperson than usual pretends to understand my problem. I say pretend as by now I have reiterated the situation of the crossed wires about 20 times. Later when the auto-survey rings me I am interested to see the questions relate almost entirely to the performance of this one, (no doubt specially chosen) operative and do not ask me about the performance of BT and Openreach in general, whether I am happy with the company and whether my problem has been understood or solved. The questions are formulated so that if answered truthfully BT can no doubt give itself 10 out of 10 for “customer satisfaction”.
It is a pity all this energy “fixing” data to look good is not spent improving the company. It is not an exaggeration to say BT a “communications company” probably is the worst company in the world at passing information on and actually “communicating”.
Sometime around now I am told by text that the problem is fixed. Except that it isn’t. The wire is still dangling. Neither of my numbers work as they should. To add insult a bill arrives from BT charging me for all the calls on the 713001 line which I only had to make because I had no internet. Also charging me for “caller display” a feature I do not have.
More time elapses. There is no way of speaking to anyone who is actually “working on the problem”. I have to again wait in a long queue and ring India where a young man thinks he is being helpful by testing my line. I tell him this is a pointless exercise as I can see the broken cable but he insists. By this time my business is suffering. Nobody can get hold of me. My in-box I am told, (the one I cannot access, although friends, colleagues and customers do not know this) is full.
I ask my ex-husband, who is working abroad to help. After his interventions someone from the north of England (who tells me he is do with sales) rings to say Openreach will return on Friday, (I had already waited in all day Thursday as I was told by text from BT that they would be coming that day). By now, although the problem is on the Forest, some way from my house, not on my land and should be self evident, I realise Openreach is not capable of fixing it without close instruction. In case they arrive when I am not at home I explain the problem in letter form, type it out and stick it in a plastic envelope labelled BT onto the offending pole.
I am now informed by text that an operative will be arriving between 1pm & 6pm. It is chance that I am in at 11.30am when a man turns up. I tell him he wasn’t expected at this particular time and it was lucky I was in.
“I don’t know nuffink about that” he says, I wus just told to cum ‘ere”.
I explain the problem and show him the broken wire.
This man turns out to be the kind of man, (like most previous operatives) who can’t do nuffink.
He says he can’t put the wire back on the chimney. I say I don’t mind where he puts it as long as it is fixed. (I also mention that the wire had been on the chimney for 23 years without mishap, but he says fings are done different now and it is a matter of ‘elf and safety). I say the wire can be fixed to the wall next to the other wire which was crossed. He looks doubtful.
Then he looks at the pole. I show him where the wires go and where for some unknown reason one line has been cut off. He says he can’t go up that pole because the wires are too low. Too low? I say….with some incredulity by now, does he mean too high? No, too low is the problem he says as if he fell he might get caught in the wire and the pole might fall on him. It is a matter of ‘elf and safety.
I, not unreasonably to my mind, ask him what his ladder and impressive amount of equipment is for and why the first man who crossed the wires up on the pole didn’t worry about ‘elf and safety. I should point out that this is a very ordinary pole, looking stable and not unduly high or low. (As the previous lot of Openreach workers have said I do not need a new pole).
I ask this man why he can’t go up this pole if the other engineers went up it and he says “them’s them and me’s me….I have to think of meself”. I give him a copy of the letter I have taped to the pole outlining the problem written in simple English in case he hasn’t quite “got” the admittedly very straightforward problem. By this stage I realise you can’t assume anything. He doesn’t want to read this missive and is much busier logging on than listening to me.
The instructions are trying to be helpful and an aide memoire but he keeps wanting to give them back to me. He is a man who is not in the least bit interested in problem solving but very interested in explaining why he can’t do nuffink. I remain calm and patient in very trying circumstances.
I have laid out the broken wire across the grass so it cannot be missed and labelled it. He winds this up so it is less well seen, a pointless exercise and records in his log book that this has been achieved.
I say when will Openreach be coming back? He says a surveyor will need to come out, and asks me if one has been? I am at a loss. It is over 3 weeks now and even I cannot follow this kind of distorted logic. I say can he give me a number so I can contact Outreach? He says “No you have to contact your service provider”. My service provider is BT I say…. and he says “BT aint nuffink to do with us”. I ask him why he has BT emblazoned on his comprehensive (but apparently useless) tool kit. He is at a loss as am I. I ask him why Openreach can only accept instruction from a company it is nuffink to do wif? I am now having to mimic the patois myself in order to be understood.
So, 3 weeks down the line, I am no further forward and have to wait in line and ring India. As well as a huge disconnect between the service provider BT and Openreach, (i.e. no connect) there is also enormous disparity in reaction. BT Indian operatives, whilst having no idea what is going on are forced to read from meandering, mellifluous and overweening apology cards, whilst the Openreach operatives are rude and unhelpful. The customer is stuck between a rock and a hard place; in my case with my landline and internet still not working.
Anyway there is light at the end of the tunnel. On the Friday a man called Steve Phethean appears. I tell him the problem. He shins up a ladder, first on the pole and then on the house and fixes the problem. He doesn’t say I need a new pole, or that he can’t go up a ladder. It takes him about 15 minutes to swop and mend the wires. The date is November 18th. A 15 minute job has taken nearly 4 weeks to put right involving teams of operators and engineers in the North of England, Sussex, and India.
Obviously I am relieved but I am concerned by the way BT and Openreach, (“the company it is nuffink to do wif” but from whom it takes instruction) are run.
Openreach can only make money because it is a monopoly. No company in the worlds could operate like this if there was competition. It is not known for anybody to contact either BT or Openreach with hope in their heart.
There are further concerns. Operators obviously quote health & safety to suit themselves on a random and speculative basis…..if they do not fancy going up a ladder for instance. (Although this begs the question why apply to work for Openreach if ladders are a problem?). Furthermore I am certain in the canons of Health & Safety rule there is provision for ladder training and you might reasonably have expected BT engineers to have undergone this and if this is so why won’t they go up ladders?). Why does Outreach send out men with vans including ladders and safety equipment if they can’t be used?
Why are teams of men more intent on logging on than trying to understand the problem about why they are there? If health & safety were a real concern it surely should be applied consistently across the board and not randomly used as an excuse not to climb a ladder. Has all this happened by default or has a management team actually put this kind of nonsense deliberately in place? Imagine if any of these men were to apply to another company for a job. ….they would have quite a shock in store.
Why is arriving at a job and going away again as soon as possible with a negative result rewarded?
Why proclaim that Openreach & BT are nothing to do with each other when BT cannot exist without the services of Openreach?
There is also a moral dimension. Can it be right to encourage this negative attitude in a workforce? Surely these kind of restrictive practise should have gone out with the ark or more worryingly are they deliberately put in place by managers who only want jobs that pay, (i.e. that they can charge for) to be completed on time. If this fault had happened to be on my property I can see I would have been billed handsomely for my trouble…..words chosen advisedly.
The salient point is this was a very simple problem to solve involving the mending of two easily seen wires, the kind of regular problem that I would imagine Openreach workers confront on a daily basis. I shudder to think how any of the engineers except the last one would have managed with a more complicated scenario.
If you have bothered, (unlike your operatives) to read to this point in the letter you will have some idea of the kind of ordeal BT and Openreach customers have to undergo. If it is incompetence that is one thing, but I suspect the refusal to link Outreach with BT, to make the complaints system impossible to access, in fact to make everything as difficult as possible for the customer is specially designed this way. If this is deliberate policy (and in my opinion sharp practice) it is both immoral and unethical.
There is great public debate about the huge salaries paid to executives in big companies at the moment and in the light of everything I have written here I am wondering if you are considering your own position? Are you in fact aware of what goes on in your company or is profit the only thing that matters? Profit based on a management system based on incompetence and obfuscation cannot be right, particularly the use of messages and texts that go only one way. It reminds me of the NYET factor in the totalitarian systems of the old USSR.
The bottom line is that the Openreach wing of BT only exists because it is a monopoly and we all like it or not have to use its services. The double whammy is that with the burgeoning importance of the internet in everyone’s daily lives, we have to use it more and more, so its profit is guaranteed. A recent headline in The Times reads “Surprise Boost For BT as Customers Keep On Calling”. Well it is a surprise.
While this debacle was carrying on I was forced to explain to clients and friends my difficulties. Everyone, and I mean everyone, quite without exception, believed it was par for the course and all had an equally ghastly BT or Openreach, (like myself often both) tale to tell, from the friend in London who had to stand over an Openreach worker who said the ground was too damp to put up his ladder up and refused to sweep up the mess he had made, to the BT horror story described by my chimney sweep who’d wanted a number transferred from one building to another which turned into a nightmare scenario affecting his business. Another friend was without telephone and broadband for a month because neither BT nor Tiscali would agree to ownership of the problem.
My own problem was not just an unfortunate glitch it is utterly typical of a much wider malaise.
FOX & ANGEL ON THE MOVE
July 20th, 2011
We have been taking a break for a few months due to my house move, (impending), an office move and a general re-grouping.
I have discovered that it takes months to empty a family house after nearly a quarter of a century and that this is not compatible with thinking or writing.
Hazel, (who moved house last year) and I are starting on our next book in September in our new office in Winchelsea.
In the meantime if anyone out there is interested in buying a beautiful two hundred years old house on the Ashdown Forest with a wild-life garden home to 25 species of birds, not to mention foxes, badgers, toads and newts please get in touch!!
NHS REFORMS
July 20th, 2011
When I visit my local GP practice I see a busy well-run surgery. What I don’t see however is a lot of GPs with time on their hands sufficient to run new consortium. My GPs seem to spend every minute of the day seeing patients, visiting patients, organizing referrals as well as involving themselves in training. If they did have more time I am sure both patient and doctor would like them to be able to extend their appointments beyond the usual 7 minutes. As a patient you are severely under pressure to explain symptoms and receive considered advice in this narrow time-frame.
Since GPs are fully stretched already presumably they will be ‘outsourcing’ and ‘franchising’ (to use common parlance), if they are not to abrogate their existing responsibilities, (unless there is a stealth plan for GPs to run consortiums while cheaper nurses take their places in the surgery?). As far as I know there is no new and keen as mustard band of managers available to take up these important positions. Therefore the existing NHS managers will be being fired or made redundant by whatever legal mechanisms possible, in order to be redeployed by the new bodies. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out that some of these bodies will be lead by managers currently heading up existing hospital funding, although since it is deemed in urgent need of reform presumably they are thought not to be doing it very well?
However the changes work out we can safely assume that there will be a lot of hokey-cokey: people will be scrabbling for new jobs or hoping to hang onto their old jobs, and for some months will not know if they have a job or what it will entail. There will be stress and malfunction and loss of moral. For quite some time nobody will have a clue who they are answering to and there will be endless and drawn out computer glitches as nobody will tell the boffins what changes are needed because they don’t really know. During the mayhem this fluid situation will be an open door to collusion and cronyism and will be, certainly in the short term, extremely unlikely to drive up standards as is hoped.
So, if the man in the street is sceptical it is because he is right to be. Lansley, in spite of writing one of the longest and most convoluted government documents in history, (so much so that no-one has apparently actually got to the end of it) has not explained how his reforms will address the problems in the NHS that people actually worry about. What is the connect between his reforms and the reality on the ground such as long waits, nowhere to park, lost notes, uncertainty about which doctor you will see and their level of competence, (the funny thing about being ill is that you are usually not well enough to scour the internet comparing death-rates of individual doctors and hospitals as has been suggested we might like to do), poor staffing levels, over-worked (and often unfit & overweight) nurses and mid-wives, poor quality hospital food and no one to sit you up or help you eat, not enough staff to take you to the toilet and fears that you will be consider a bother if you ask, no joined up thinking and collaboration between departments, (essential for the elderly who almost never present with a single issue), and poor communication between other government agencies. (All the child abuse scandals have been exacerbated by different departments, sometimes even in the same hospital, just hanging on to their bit of the jigsaw).
In addition it is unwise to be unwell during school holidays, especially August, and hospitals barely function at weekends and bank holidays even though people are ill at the same rate. The cost of agency nursing is scandalous as is the use of foreign doctors, (often of doubtful provenance with poor language skills and inadequate checks) to fill the gaps in the out of hours service that we should remember GPs gave up to the benefit of themselves but to the detriment of their patients.
If all the safeguards the government promises are put in place there will no longer be “the competition to drive up standards” as hoped, (they can’t have it both ways) and if they are not put in place the danger is that straightforward medical procedures will be cherry-picked and patients with complex problems will be shifted from pillar to post, possibly ‘outsourced’ to the point of invisibility. Governments have a shocking record when it comes to regulators in any event, who are initially enthusiastic but ultimately toothless and are unable to protect the public.
Medicine in hospitals should be team work with everybody from the cleaner to the consultant working towards one simple goal, a good outcome for the patient. Knowledge should be freely shared and all concerned should be able to speak the truth as they see it without fear of reprisal. This is the culture that the government should be promoting. A new philosophical approach is needed not more business-speak. Most doctors do not want more initiatives, they just want to get on and do a good job.
If the government had truly wanted to help the health of the nation it should have should have instead instructed Lansley to take on the food and drinks lobby which would do much more to save money by keeping people out of hospital in the first place.
As it is Cameron has taken fright, Clegg has watered the bill down and now nobody knows what, if anything, is to happen after all.
LET HIM SPEAK
July 20th, 2011
(as seen in the Guardian & The Week December 2010)
Sir: Every time the Prince of Wales raises his head above the parapet there sounds a cacophony of outraged voices who ask what right he has to tell us how to live. Well, when it comes to planning, it seems we need some help.
You only have to lok at the tawdry shopping malls, unimaginative housing and the acres of identikit out of town supermarkets to see that something has gone seriously wrong in the last forty years. Planners, architects, councils and builders have lost all aesthetic sense in the rush to make money. Much regeneration is exactly the opposite, already out of date, stale and run-down.
If this is the best they can do, it is not good enough and I for one do not want the Prince of Wales to be silenced on this particular issue. It is pretty obvious that when it comes to planning, big business and featureless corporations have leverage and pay lip service to the supposedly democratic process.
THIS TAX IS TOO COMPLICATED
December 23rd, 2010
As featured in The Independent on the 14th Dec
Sir: Abruptly raising the cost of University tuition is a crude way of allowing the markets to sort out the complex philosophical problem of what education should be about.
Blonde in Florence
December 6th, 2010
www.blondeinflorence.blogspot.com
- Blonde in Florence by Camilla Johnson
- I think a lot (and seemingly even more so in Italy). This blog is my way of getting a good night’s sleep; a space for the many musings that run through my head everyday.
A year at The Old Fox House
December 6th, 2010
It has been a topsy-turvy year. The coldest winter in living memory killed plants I’d nurtured for two decades. My passion flower withered and died, once rampant on a sheltered south-facing wall. Brimstone butterflies normally wake in January, in 2010 their first appearance was in March and even then they fluttered only tentatively.
Lack of Maintenance
December 6th, 2010
As featured in The Telegraph, Dec 5th, 2010
Sir: It is not just big projects that the British don’t do well, it’s maintenance. The whole of the railway system needs up-dating, not to mention the mind-set of all who work and run it.
Let him speak
December 2nd, 2010
As featured in The Guardian, Dec 2nd, 2010
Sir: Every time the Prince of Wales raises his head above the parapet there sounds a cacophony of outraged voices who ask what right he has to tell us how to live. Well, when it comes to planning, it seems we need some help.
Bus Passes
October 29th, 2010
As featured in The Independent, October 29th, 2010
Sir: Retaining free bus passes may have been seen as a cynical manoeuvre by the Coalition to keep the elderly onside but in fact it is an excellent example of joined up government thinking. Anything that keeps retired people interested in life and encourages them to go out and about promotes good health. Free admissions to museums serve this same purpose. The more active older people remain the less pressure on social services and the NHS.