Phone is easy, Broadband is hard

It’s been about a week since I posted anything here, and the main reason for that is the lack of a broadband connection in the flat. It’s ironic that the broadband connection as hard to get as the phone was easy.

As you may recall:

The guy on the phone had said that they would not be able to provision broadband on the line until it had been up for a few days so that they could measure it. He advised me to call back on Tuesday to order it.

I was surprised that they couldn’t provision my broadband request the same day, but decided that maybe I should just call back later and see if I really needed to wait five days to get the process started.

This was the beginning of my indoctrination to BT. When they tell you to call back in five days, they really mean five days, and they won’t be ready a second sooner than that. So each day after I ordered the phone I called BT to ask about broadband, and each day I got some an answer that said to call back in a few days.

On Monday I called the broadband specific help number (instead of the general customer service number 100), and told them I wanted broadband. The guy on the line asked my why I hadn’t asked BT to provision broadband and the voice line at the same time. Ach! I told him I had tried, but was told that they couldn’t do that.

He told me they could do it, but since it hadn’t happened that way, I would still have to wait until Tuesday to request broadband.

On Tuesday I was finally able to put in my request for broadband, and was told it would take 7 days to provision it, so it will actually be tomorrow that the equipment shows up. Unfortunately, I’m back in California for a week, so I won’t find out until I get back to London.