[Gllug] BT suckage

[Jon Masters]

Hi,

I have recently placed an order with http://www.mailbox.net.uk/ for
ADSL. It's going to be real good, they're wonderful people, etc...

However how about a fun BT story to cheer you all up:

When I ordered the ADSL, I knew BT could not run it over our current
home lines because we have a DACS box installed outside our house which
multiplexes two lines over one real copper pair - ADSL requires a real
copper line to run over in its current UK form.

With this foresight, I wrote on the order form (twice) that BT would
need to remove the DACS box and my proposal was that they simply drop
the second line (as we won't need a data line after this - I am planning
to nab the engineer and get them to install a second master socket in my
room with the ADSL splitter so I can use the main line for backup dailup
as I'm in Nottingham and I run all that stuff remotely, etc.) and save
themselves any expensive needless pointless work on our lines...

Mailbox and I have been repeatedly reminding BT of my instructions over
the last week however their response so far has been ``You have what is
known as a DACS line and we will need to remove that before we can
install ADSL'' (jcm thought: ``why thank you, you clueless fool''). This
afternoon I was finally able to gain access to the notes on our account
with full details of what exactly BT have been doing. So far:

1). An engineer was paid to determine that we would need the DACS nuked.
2). Several engineers were paid to re-establish the well known fact that
    there are no spare copper pairs from the Tilehurst exchange in to
    our road and that we are sharing lines using a DACS box.
3). Several engineers were sent onsite to paint mark an area of grass
    outside our house for another company to be paid to dig up the road.

Tomorrow (or soonafter), an external company is being paid by BT To dig
up our road and fit a new manhole with access to a line which is being
pulled through from our exchange in order to give a new line for the
ADSL. This is going to cost BT (and hence all of us paying customers)
money which they could have saved simply by bothering to read an order.

I told them again this afternoon of the situation but it's all sorted
now apparently - at some stupidly needless expense on their part :)

--jcm



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