BT Fault Line works a treat

 by Martin Belam, 6 February 2004

BT Fault Line - 0800 800 151

Credit where credit is due - I normally moan about services rather than praise them. Last night my connection dropped on the computer, and my frantic scrabble around the spaghetti junction of wires between my PC and the phone socket eventually led me to conclude there was no dial-tone regardless of how I wired everything up.

No dial-tone???? I had a Kurtz* like moment of horror - I couldn't get online. TiVo couldn't update its television schedules. Technically I was in breach of my Sky TV subscription agreement.

So then I picked up my slimline Waltham Forest 2003-4 BT Directory. Which was provided free. And I found the fault line number. Which was free. I used my mobile phone to report the fault. It was 1am so I wasn't expecting a human, but I certainly wasn't expecting the service I got. Which was free. By simply pressing buttons on my mobile I was able to report a fault, have my phone number checked, have BT report back to me they had identified a fault, have my incoming calls on the faulty line diverted to another number, and opt to receive text messages updating me on the progress of the work.

I awoke to find a text message waiting for me from 8:05am to say the work was done and my line was now working again.

Huzzah!




*  The thing I particularly like about the link is this. For 100 years "Heart of Darkness" has generally been regarded as something of a masterpiece of looking into the human soul.

Alternatively, you can just post a comment like this to the internet:

"the only reason this novel is still in print is because english teachers get hard-ons through mental masturbation trying to analyze this overly ambiguous work."

And, sir, I look forward to your novel still being in print in a hunderd years time :-)

2 Comments

Please read my email sent 23.1.08 at 20,30pm as it is causing a great deal of distress. just realised you will not receive my email. I canot find an emails address for bt so please if you know one could you send it to me and I will send you a copy of my complaint.

All I can say is Martin Belam was extremely lucky. I've rung that number twice tonight (11.25 pm.) and was twice left for some minutes, hanging onto a line with dead silence having navigated through the auto system to identify my needs.

Worse, I'm following up a problem that another department swore to me had been resolved at 6.30 this evening.

In my opinion, BT is disinterested in its customers. It simply wants your money for a service it only half provides. If I ran a business where I could absolve myself from failing to service a complaint, I would have to close down under the pressure of the public and God knows how many other bureaucratic quangos that exist. But BT? Not on your nelly.

All I can imagine is that BT's upper management today are no different to those when BT was a public service and as a consequence, all too aware of how to avoid giving a service or answering a question.

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