If you live in parts of the West Kennet Valley you may well have had (just) your telephone landline as communication since Friday. BT recognise that there is a Broadband ‘Service Outage’ – i.e. they aren’t providing what you as customer rely on and pay for – but are they actually taking this seriously and trying to resolve this failure of providing what they are being paid for. And in this area there is no mobile coverage for any network so no chance of hooking up the computer to the phone. Nothing…..
Are BT willing to get this resolved – with any degree of urgency? The experience of the past few days – leads to a clear answer – NO.
We – marlborough.news apologise for any lack of activity or updates as we are affected by this outage and are totally reliant on the copper wire landline and the car to drive into Marlborough or to where there is some mobile signal. This story is being posted whilst sitting in the courtyard of The Parade Cinema in Marlborough, connecting the iPad up to the mobile, which thankfully is 4G.
Where we are based, out in the West Kennet Valley as noted above there is no mobile signal, at all. We are EE for mobile (part of BT), but that goes for customers of any network provider. And BT want to cut off the landlines and deliver ‘Digital Voice’ – so the next time we suffer a similar outage, we are back to the same level of connectivity as our forebears who built Avebury and the local mound of earth that we know as Silbury Hill. i.e. nothing……. Progress.
What are BT doing about this? They aren’t willing to talk to marlborough.news, despite numerous requests. They won’t respond to a range of questions. They aren’t interested. When talking to their representatives the story behind the cause of this outage seems to mysteriously move. Originally – on Friday (14 Nov) it was an ‘Exchange problem’ (the exchange by the A4 junction) and the service would be back on by 9pm. It wasn’t. Saturday – still no service. BT – ‘engineers working remotely, back on this afternoon’ was the line. Nothing. On Sunday the story had evolved into a ‘power supply issue’. Power into ‘a cabinet’. So now the problem transferred to the ‘Power Supplier’ (assume SSEN). Check Monday am for an update – evolved to Wednesday 19 at earliest. Apparently it’s now a ‘safety issue’ and the power to the cabinet had to be disconnected. But no engineer from the Power supplier will able to look at it until Wednesday 19. Five days after this fault emerged, some engineer may look to work out how to get it fixed. Or so we are told. ‘Safety’ issue? For whom, or what? The local Rat or Vole population?
So is this an important issue for BT, as their words keep telling us? No. Experience leads to us to a very different conclusion. If customers stopped paying their bills because they weren’t getting a service that they were paying for, now that would be a serious problem and BT would act on that, instantly. That’s the real balance of priority – pay up, irrespective of whether BT provides the service that they are contracted to. They have confirmed that we, as customers will have to pay for what they are unable to deliver. That was a question they were prepared to answer.
Words, and the validity of those streams of words are only ever tested in times of crisis. Like an insurance company ducking out of paying for the car to be fixed, or for the house falling down for nefarious and irrelevant reasons. Used to be ‘an Act of God’. BT haven’t used that one yet, but the fear is that their range of excuses and promises has only just started……..
Baydon Church Clock restored and back in place
