One of Pipal Associates’ customers, a voluntary organisation with a busy high street profile set about the complicated process of moving. They hired a telecom company to set up a new phone system and required BT to install the lines on day zero to minimize downtime.

BT let them down not only at every chance they got but in a way that caused the most disruption to their business and their sanity.

First they gave half of a business day’s notice that they weren’t going to turn up on the agreed day… but 10 days later. That caused major problems.

Second – 10 days later they sent an engineer who didn’t start until the afternoon, had to get another local engineer because he couldn’t work out how to connect the site in spite of it being a ‘gold’ site – i.e. totally mapped by BT. The job went on into day 2.

The lines got put in but they made a mistake in allocating the number range that the system was to use. A whole month after the move, BT has still not resolved this issue and we have no idea when the numbers for the telephone system will be come through.

The telecom company that my client used have been a model of patience, helpfulness and professionalism in regard to all this. Without them BT would have taken even longer, drifted off the job, misunderstood even more than they did. This telecom company won the contract hands-down against the only other tender that was sought – from BT.

Now I know that BT OpenReach is different from the BT Business and that it would be illegal for them to favour their own contracts over those of others in the provision of wholesale services but I keep wondering if we would’ve had the same problems if it had all been within the BT family…. and whether that’s what they want me to think.