when life conspires against you!

Antique_Guitars

Desperately needed to do some stuff for work online tonight and yep the bloody broadband is down amazing! Thanks BT

spark240

Its good to talk...

chillidoggy

Antique_Guitars said:

Desperately needed to do some stuff for work online tonight and yep the bloody broadband is down amazing! Thanks BT

I thought TalkTalk were bad, but having experienced BT's utter incompetence at work, I can honestly say that they take some beating in the crap service stakes. Sympathies.

Fuzzdog

If you have to deal with BT broadband technical support, I truly sympathise.

I remember last time I called them, the bloke kept telling me "No, no, you need to use Windows for your broadband to work, that is the problem."  It took several lengthy calls for me to finally get through to someone who actually admitted that the fact I run Linux had nothing to do with why there was no broadband connection getting to my router.

boogieman

The problem is all the "technicians" in the Indian help desk: Rupert, Amy, Jonathan etc know sweet FA about what problems you are having and actually how to solve it. They merely go through scripted replies (usually starting with " I need you to turn your router off and turn it on again"). They simply can't go off script.

When I was briefly on a broadband group with BT our testing services got outsourced to India too and it got ludicrous. You could almost guarantee the response to trying to diagnose a broadband fault in the exchange would be "please power down the card, reseat it and re power it". Never mind the fact you were taking 128 circuits/customers out of service every time you did that. That was 10 plus years ago too, gawd knows how many there are per card these days.

HAL9000

If broadband users in Mumbai have a problem do they get to talk to someone in Surrey claiming to be called Sanjay?

TTony

HAL9000 said:

If broadband users in Mumbai have a problem do they get to talk to someone in Surrey claiming to be called Sanjay?

I'd volunteer to do that job

I had a chat with BTs service centre earlier this week.  I did *almost* feel sorry for the poor lady when she went so far off-script that she started talking about "our Heavenly Father".

She assured me, absolutely, that our line fault had been fixed, and that they'd been monitoring our line to prove it.  The next day, 2 BT engineers turned up in a van to investigate it.  The engineers are pretty good guys.

Panama_Jack666

I had a gig last week.. Here's a summary of what happened.

Set off, realised I forgot something so had to run back in the house. Opened the back door of me car and a bottle of wine rolled out covering the drive in glass and my trousers in Red wine. Quick clear up.

Set off again and the bulbs on the nearside of my car blew, sidelight and low beam. Time was pressing on! Had to make an executive decision to try replace them or not. Decided to not...

However, cars were flashing their headlights at me (rightly so) after being on the road for a minute so I diverted my course to the nearest ligthbulbs.

Got the bulbs bought. Couldn't get the light fixture out as I didn't have a screwdriver in my car (I normally carry a multitool). Lucklily I was next to homebase, so went and got what I needed.

I change the low beam light but whilst doing so cut my thumb open resulting in my car interior and clothes having blood all over them. Obviously not ideal with having to hold a plectrum with that thumb.

Sat nav sent me to the wrong location twice.

I arrive 90 minutes late and the band are ready to play. I start setting up and realise I left all my guitar cables in the doorway at home.

Borrow spare cables from the other guitarist.

Amp doesn't appear to be working. First problem is the wall socket isn't working so have to re arrange the entire setup of the stage so I can have some power.

Power to the amp, no sound. Borrowed cables (That look new) are the problem. Borrow more cables!

I got there in the end but it certainly did feel like life was conspiring against me. Always remember, there is someone worse off than yourself. Whilst we were playing (Spirit in the Sky at the exact time of the call), the other guitarists' Mum passed away. We were doing the gig for his Son's 30th birthday. It was also his Mum's birthday was the same day but the family had made a decision to be at the 30th. I'm not going to go into details about that, but obviously an awful situation for them.

frankus

That's not life conspiring against you, that's BT being crap.

I first heard this sentiment expressed by Geoff Thompson - doorman, author, screenwriter etc: "this is a reciprocal universe, what you give out you will get back".

I had to do work from home yesterday, the RAS key didn't work for 2 hours, ended up working 3/4s of the day as my boss had added a deadline, so I blew some family time - it wasn't great, but I learned some stuff about our systems in the struggle.

Axe_meister

I wish the politicians would shut up about immigration, as least they are contributing to our economy. What they never talk about is the vast number of jobs going over seas, which is money that does not stay in our economy. It is slowly decimating the IT industry with no new local grown talent, projects are getting harder and harder to manage with half the tasks being performed offshore with all of the communication problems that goes with it, also I don't think the training/education the offshore guys get is up to scratch, they certainly lack alot of experience (the second you say log on to a unix terminal session, they run as they only know point and click)