I have been staggered at BT’s inability in the last few months to fulfil orders and the lack of publicity surrounding it. It must be the case that BT’s reputation is so poor that client’s expectations aren’t that high and put up with it.
Anyone who has provisioned new telephone lines (either for voice or data) will have been used to BT’s previously good record of installs within 10-days of order. Recently however, BT has fallen way short with installs now taking up to 6-weeks to fulfil. Even when you do get a date I can pretty much bet against the engineer actually turning up and a lengthy process to get the engineer rebooked. BT still manages, however, to invoice the missed appointment fee!
We started seeing issues back in October which was put down to resources being stretched as redundancies started to hit and the increased workload of 21CN and Fibre to the Cabinet projects meant less engineers were available. Subsequently their ordering system was upgraded and all forecasting, I understand, was removed making it impossible for internal staff to even forecast demand put upon its own engineering team. This new system is also apparently responsible for a number of orders to randomly disappear further delaying the install process and properly upsetting end users. Even leased line orders are now starting to see similar kinds of delays as the knock-on effects are felt.
From what I understand they are working to improve matters with more vans purchased at the end of 2010 and engineers currently being recruited and trained to deal with the backlog. It can’t come soon enough!
Had a reply from BT on this, which was admittedly mostly what you would expect them to say.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/2011/01/12/significant-bt-new-line-installation-delays-strike-business-isp-fluidata-uk.html
Well now that the ‘adverse weather conditions’ have improved the service should be getting back to normal…
Openreach were very forthcoming about this in a webcast towards the back end of 2010 (Nov?) when the CP’s online were informed that 1100 engineers were being recruited specifically for copper deliveries. They were also proactively bringing engineers from other areas to work on existing backlogs – and then the adverse weather conditions hit. Not sure what the situation is like now, but we were told that faults came first, followed by missed install appointments (BT missed) and finally new installation appointments. More information on this can be found by logging into the Openreach website and there should be regular briefings. Hope this helps!
It really wired for this to happen now when they started updates and migration to 21cn networks and fttc end of 2008 so the part where they have taken more time to sort out mac’s new line’s As complete lasyness and taking money from tax payers is just wrong because if the had done orders correctly in passed they woodnt have had to give the money away because of doctoring Mac codes or adding people to retail system for everything when most of us had to get a line installed by retail before ordering bb with our bb providers and finding out that retail has to tryed to order bb for them self and then the system gets messed up and now a lot of us have no chance in moving to fttc. In new property after all the up grade’s in north west of England when in Scotland we all. Ready saw and watch the change and the mess bt retail ‘wholesale and open reach made u wood think they wood have learned by now because they have gov money coming in now think I’ll need to send of email to the tech mp that’s sending by the founds