Metropol

February 17:

I order broadband. I am told by my provider that I will receive regular updates about the progress of my order, and to to allow up to 14 days for activation and my modem to arrive.

14 days came and went.

March 16:

Jamez phones the internet provider in question and is told that there is a problem with my telephone line, and that extensive groundwork and re-wiring of the BT network in my area needs to take place. Most broadband orders require an average of 10-15 jobs by BT technicians per customer. With my order, as of 4pm on March 16, BT was up to job 138.

Feb 19:

Driving from Cardiff to Pembrokeshire, my engine starts smoking as I reach Carmarthen in west Wales. The car comes to a complete stop on a busy section of the A40 with no hard shoulder. The police come along and tell me that if I don't move my car within 1 hour they will remove it themselves and charge me £300 for the privilage. I call the RAC, and they tow me to my house in Pembs (36 miles).

After 2 weeks of the car sitting in a field next to the local garage and several promises to investigate the problem of my car, I have it towed to another garage where the problem is identified. It needs a new engine.

Luckily a second hand engine is found from an identical car to mine which was involved in a rear end shunt, and was written off.

March 8:

The second hand engine arrives at the garage in question, and I am promised that the new engine will be fitted within 3 days. I call back 3 days later, but my car is still parked in the corner of the yard with the new engine in the boot of my car, which has pissed out oil all over the boot.

I complain about this, and am offered a 10% discount on the final price. I am then told my car will be ready in another 4 days time. I called back on March 16, and the car is STILL parked on its own untouched in the corner of the yard, but this time with the back tyres completely flat from the weight of the second engine in the boot.

I go ballistic, and say I want it done as soon as possible. If the car was driveable I would take it to another garage, but I'm completely helpless as to what I can do.

Moral of the story: Never expect anything to be done in Pembrokeshire within a month. Always allow four times as long and plenty of aggro when hiring goods or services. This is officially the worst place in the country to live, and the people are just so lazy and backward round here.

I can't wait to move back to Cardiff. It may be more expensive, but at least you don't get endlessly pissed around by slackjaw yocals.

Anyone else had similar experiences of total incompetance or just general fobbing off?

I order broadband. I am told by my provider that I will receive regular updates about the progress of my order, and to to allow up to 14 days for activation and my modem to arrive.

I wouldn't call crap ADSL setup a Pembrokeshire exclusive, I've gone through the tenuous wait to have ADSL put on a line on 3 occasions now, with different providers and in different locations and each time I've been told it will take 'up to' 14 working days (so up to 18 real ones) and that I'd be kept in the picture about what's going on.

Although they've always been prompt with supplying the modem, actually providing you with a line which can make use of it seems to be much more of a challenge.Each time I've got nothing and ended up having to chase them up only to find that BT need to do work which the ISP hasn't informed me about or that the ISP forgot to place the order with BT wholesale etc...on each occasion the time from placing the order to actually having the broadband alive was between 3 and 4 weeks.

Cable was a refreshing change - with broadband faster than ADSL, chepear than ADSL, easier to install than ADSL (no nasty USB software modems), and above all else - less than 3 days from placing the order to actually having it up and running - perhaps another advantage of moving back to Cardiff...

I ordered a simultaneous connection of my broadband and telephone number when I moved house, and this was agreed 3 weeks in advance.

When I moved house, the telephone number was still the previous occupant's. There was no broadband. BT refused to do anything for a week because "the owner of this line has not told us he is moving". They must have thought I'd broken in and was phoning BT to cancel his line for a laugh. I threaten to make a large number of premium rate phone calls and the phone line problem is sorted next day. No broadband though. That'll be fixed 3 days later.

3 days later I phone to ask why my broadband is not working. "You haven't ordered broadband sir." Yes I have. "We have no record of that - I'll order it now for you. It will take 7 days". No sorry, not good enough. "That is the best I can do".

I speak to various departments and managers and they are all fucking useless. A nice bloke at BT Northern Ireland does phone every day to apologise for the fact that the company he works for is crap but that he can't do anything either.

7 days later stiill no broadband. "Must be a fault at the exchange". Someone will look at it tomorrow. We repeat the no broadband and exchange fault for 4 days in a row. No one knows if there is a fault at the exchange.

"The fault is with BTYahoo, sir." BT and BTYahoo discuss the matter for a couple of days among themselves. No one fixes it. Everyone gives me a different server name to connect to, none of which work.

Eventually 4 weeks after I have moved house, an engineer at BT Lines in a switching centre in Scotland phones me and tells me that the company he works for is crap and has been broken up into so many bits that nothing works anymore and that no one takes responsibility for anything. We discuss how the BBC is much the same these days. He promises to call back within 20 minutes. He does, gives me the right server to connect to and everything works. Had I been able to speak to this man the day I moved house he could have sorted it all in 20 minutes.

The nice man at BT NI phones to apologise for it still not working. He is happy (though surprised) to hear that it is and apologises for the fact that BT is shit and gives me about £75 credit to my bill.

I later discover that BT have stopped charging me for broadband on direct debit and are charging me on my phone bill, but haven't thought that perhaps I should be paying more on the phone bill direct debit to make up for the stopped broadband direct debit. I owe them £115. Which I am now paying off at £5 a month, because I can.

I have spoken to various people at BT Moving Home, BT Northern Ireland, BT Yahoo, BT Faults, BT Lines, the operator, a woman in BT Corporate Affairs, a woman in India, a man in Dublin, BT Accounts, BT Wholesale and BT Broadband. Just to move my telephone number and broadband connection half a mile.

So - no - it's not just Pembrokeshire.

Scottish Power sent us a bill for £1000 after they decided not to bother actually collecting the direct debit from us. Then they tell us it's gone up from £90 a month to £150.

So we ring Scottish hydro to move, they say they'll send us a welcome pack in ten days.

Ten days later, nothing. We ring back... "Mr Hewitt? No we've got nothing on our system." Enquiries to whether someone had recently quit their call centre went over their heads and we were told we infact couldn't change anyhow until we got SP to change from a 3 meter setup to a 2 meter.

So we ring SP. "No that's their job not ours"

So we ring Energy Watch to complain. They say do nothing, leave it to them...


and yesterday our welcome pack arrives from Scottish Hyrdo re "our verbal agreeement" on a day where we never rang them.

We rang back and are told we still can't move as we have the 3 meter thing and they'd have probs sent a cancelation letter anyhow in a few days.

The lights are still on but the only people who seem to be getting our money are BT from all the phone calls.

I'm just very surprised that me ordering broadband has caused such a headache for BT. They've been at the telegraph pole outside my house at least twice.

I must be the only person in my village to have heard of broadband! At least when I am connected, I should have a fairly favourable contention ratio.

Jamez wrote:I must be the only person in my village.

Oh, sorry, broadband.

Jamez wrote: contention ratio.

A what??

Hymagumba wrote:We rang back and are told we still can't move as we have the 3 meter thing and they'd have probs sent a cancelation letter anyhow in a few days.

I have recently moved to a new (rented) flat and didn't understand why there's two meters and a lot of boxes in the cupboard for electricity. Turns out is some weird 'total control' system whereby ScottishPower use a radio microswitch to switch on and off the power to storage heaters and hot water depending on the weather - this is charged at a different rate to the regular electricity.

However, I don't like SP and want to move. I'm then told I can't because of this weird 'switching on-and-off your heaters' arrangement. No other supplier wants to know. Would probably be up to the landlord to sort out, but doubtful he cares how much his tenants pay. So I get a letter saying the price goes up 10% but can't do anything about it.

Oh yes, and the reason I hate SP is from when I was a student. Lived in another (rented) flat for a year. About 9 months in, I realise we have not had an electricity bill. Phone SP, they say 'Um, no record of you'. They call backk an hour later saying 'Um, we do supply you but your flat got 'lost' in the system. Haven't sent a bill to you for 2 and a half years.'
'But I've only been here for 9 months.'
'Prove it'
My honesty then meant I had to send them a copy of my lease, settle the huge bill in one payment and tell them to contact my landlord about all the extra money they are due from before I stayed there. However, that didn't stop them sending round heavies who wanted to take my stuff....

I have Control Units too, course their radio controlled clock was 9 hours out of sync for ages which cooked the house during the summer...

A what??

The speed quoted when you order broadband is the maximum speed available - you don't actually get all the bandwidth to yourself but have to share it with other people in the area which will reduce your speed if more than one of you is on at the same time. The technical way of expressing how many people you potentially have to share your broadband with is the contention ratio.

So, if you have a contention ratio of 50:1 (which is quite common) it means that the provider can effectively hang 50 people off the same connection, and so if all 50 of you are online and trying to heavily use the connection at the same time, then you'll only get 1/50th of the speed you are paying for.

Non-home broadband connections might have the same rated speed as home products, but they have a much lower contention ratio (right down to 1:1 contention if you really want to pay for it) to prevent the problem from becoming so pronounced

In practice, contention is rarely a noticeable problem, but if you live in a built up area where broadband is particularly popular, it can be an issue.

I have recently moved to a new (rented) flat and didn't understand why there's two meters and a lot of boxes in the cupboard for electricity. Turns out is some weird 'total control' system whereby ScottishPower use a radio microswitch to switch on and off the power to storage heaters and hot water depending on the weather - this is charged at a different rate to the regular electricity.

Surely this is just economy 7? With this system there are two meters which charge different rates and a radio switch which the electricity company control as you describe. Overnight, your entire electricity supply is switched from one meter to the other and charged at a much cheaper rate, then it's switched back to the standard rate in the morning. This is to make electric heating using night storage heaters and hot water from immersion heaters viable. However, it doesn't just affect your heating equipment; all electricity consumed is charged at the cheaper rate when it's in force - this was why it was so popular to run tumble dryers etc overnight in the 80's.

Even if no other supplier in your area supports economy 7, this shouldn't in itself prevent you from changing - loosing economy 7 just means that you will no longer have cheap rate electricity and will have to run your nightstores at standard rate, if you can tolerate that, then you should be able to change.

Oh yes, and the reason I hate SP is from when I was a student. Lived in another (rented) flat for a year. About 9 months in, I realise we have not had an electricity bill. Phone SP, they say 'Um, no record of you'. They call backk an hour later saying 'Um, we do supply you but your flat got 'lost' in the system. Haven't sent a bill to you for 2 and a half years.'
'But I've only been here for 9 months.'
'Prove it'

I had a little run in with the leccy companys a couple of years back in a student property. Over the summer holiday, an unscrupulous salesperson (funnily enough, from Scottish Power) changed the electricity supply in my room SWEB to Scottish Power, using an assumed name. Upon moving in, I got a bill covering a period during which the property was empty (yet electricity was apparently consumed) from Scottish Power. It was not addressed to me nor to any previous tennant. As SP was cheaper than SWEB I was happy to stay with them and had the account changed into my name. But my landlord then pointed out that under the terms of my tenancy I had to use their nominated energy supplier (which was SWEB) and insisted I change back.

The process of getting the supply changed back to SWEB took until March (I moved in in September). In the meantime, I kept paying Scottish power. But when it finally changed over, SWEB then sent me a bill backdating to cover all of the electricity which I'd allready paid SP for!. Upon talking to both companies and the eventual agreement was that as the supplier should never have been changed, Scottish Power would refund the money I had paid them and I'd pay SWEB's bill.

Although SWEB initially appeared very understanding, happy to wait until I'd got my refund from SP and happy to let me pay it off in instalments, I then noticed that SWEB had priced the electricity at their own rates, which were more expensive than Scottish Power, and thus were trying to get me to pay more money for electricity than the rate which I was being billed at originally (and which they never supplied anyway).

No way was that happening - I was prepared to pay SWEB's rates from the time they took back the supply, but I was only prepared to pay SP's rates for when SP were supplying the electricity. At which point a battle of correspondence and phone calls commenced. Scottish Power refunded every penny I'd paid them and thus considered their interest to be over and refused to have any further involvement in the matter. SWEB wouldn't budge from the figures they were quoting for the SP period (which were significantly greater than the refund I'd got from Scottish Power). My stance became more and more firm, leading to me advising them that as this account was in dispute, I would not be paying any electricity bills until the matter was resolved. This stalement lasted until the end of my tenancy in June until...


...well nothing happened actually. I had decided not to renew my tenancy and as that address had no ties to anywhere I've lived before or since, I just walked away from the situation, ultimately owing SWEB a years' worth of electricity and them with no way of contacting me, tracing me, or enforcing any legal action which they may have taken against me. Can't say that I care either. If they weren't so incompetent as to allow the energy supplier to be changed without confirming it with their original customer in the first place, dragged their heals for 6 months as they showed little interest in correcting the problem, then tried to screw me over to more money than they were entitled, then they'd have their bills from that year. They got greedy, they ended up getting nothing.

Though we don't have much problem these days with things like these, I remember when we still had BT back in 1997, there was a fault with our phone line, so we phoned BT to report the Fault and we had naff all response.

Now because my Dad was getting sick of BT and wanted Multi-Channel TV, we looked at Nynex Cable and we ended up going for that instead. Anyway we phone BT to tell them that we no longer need their service as we've switched to Nynex and at the same time told them about the Fault, they sent out an engineer and sorted the problem, but we still went with Nynex anyway and to this day we're still with them, albeit now NTL we've had no problems with them, the only time we were really annoyed was when the Digital TV dropped off on a Sunday Night, leaving us with no TV and all Customer Service Phone Lines were shut, though by about 10.30am the following morning the service was back on.

But on a couple of previous occassions when this has happened they usually leave a message on their Customer Service Fault Line saying "There's a problem in these Postcodes areas and we're currently fixing the problem, we apologise etc etc"