Monday 1 April 2013

BT (attempted) cable theft

A few weeks ago our BT phone line at home stopped working. No big deal as we have FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) so our 80 Mb/s broadband (though the amazing and wonderful Andrews & Arnold) still works.

Fault not repaired in three days (their target) and as I completely fail to get an update any other way, I make a "complaint". Surprisingly this results in a long email and apologetic phone call. Apparently someone had a go at stealing the copper cable. Talking to the City Council it turns out that they are applying pressure to BT to get this fixed faster as around 3000 people are affected.

It could be worse. The normal procedure for the chavvy wavvies is:
  1. Cut really thick cable on one place.
  2. Cut cable again in another place further down the road.
  3. Grab one end and pull really hard
  4. Scarper
However, in this case, they missed the critically important step 2, so the cable "only" needed splicing (presumably).

[ Update: I'm told there were actually 5 cables cut within 3 days and more like 5000 lines affected! They were cut in such a way that they couldn't just splice and so lengths had to be replaced.  - Thanks Nancy ]

On 30th March BT text me to say fault will be fixed by 21st March (sic)!

On 1st April (Bank Holiday - wow) we get a visit from a cheery chap who says he's a BT engineer. He asks if the phone is working. I report that we have dial tone. He asks if it's on the right number. I suggest (and he thanks me for the incredibly clever idea) that he should ring our number. After asking me for the number, he rings it and all is well. I'm guessing he's probably not actually a C.Eng.

I mull for a while why they didn't simply ring me - and guess that actually coming out in the van on a Bank Holiday probably puts some money in someone's pocket. Sigh.

Wonder if I'll get compensation.