40 calls later and I get an engineer

Since the 24th November I must have made about 40 calls to BT. Shortly after my so called activation I was adamant that I wanted an engineer to come out to run a compatibility test. However to get to this stage it takes a lot of ranting and raving and BT to go through the same procedure about 20 times.

Yesterday (28th Dec) I had the engineer visit my home. He confirmed what I suspected from the start and that was the line is not compatible for broadband. He couldn’t even get his modem to sync with the exchange and he was shocked that I was able to get it sync. However he informed me even though I was getting it to sync we were on the limits and I would not receive anything faster than 160kbps. I asked him even if they were to upgrade the exchange would it make a difference. He said not at all because you are physically too far from the exchange and the noise on your line is too much.

I also found out during the course of our conversation that the engineers that come out are no longer part of BT, as they now have to be impartial and not favour one ISP. I found this ironic seeming that he had the BT logo plastered over the side of his van. However my experience with BT over the last few weeks is that no one in the company likes to take responsibility for anything.