Success (she says guardedly)

The BT engineer, a young lady called Sarah, arrived at 08.45!  She was here for 3 hours, first checking and testing everything, then replacing things.  Oh, I had an email from BT saying she would be coming....it arrived when she'd already been here a couple of hours - but then the broadband had been off most of the morning.

She replaced the cable from the telegraph pole to the house.  Incidentally, the other 3 houses in our row have all had their cables renewed, ours is the only one that hadn't been.  Presumably, this is because the other 3 houses have all had new tenants in (several changes of tenants, actually) and BT engineers have come out to do things every time a new tenant moves in and becomes a new customer.  We've been here 7 years, we didn't have a new cable connected when we moved in and haven't since, despite having engineers out on several occasions in the past because of problems.  Sarah said she couldn't understand why the cable hadn't been renewed previously, as it was clearly very old - in fact it actually fractured and disintegrated in her hands when she took it down!  I can only assume she'd been told from high up (the CEO's executive assistant) that this is a special case and to do everything properly.

She also fitted a new junction box - we've had a new one fitted before, but she said this one is the latest updated version.  She renewed wiring, inside and out, and fitted a filter thing (I have no idea what any of this stuff is, by the way!).

She said the system, which was working fine by this time, will take up to a week to settle down....it will apparently drop in and out during this time whilst it sorts itself out.  She told us to phone the helpline and ask them to do an SNR reset (not a clue!) about an hour after she'd gone (some kind of signal boost thing on new equipment, apparently) - we've done that, although I found it a bit odd that we were asked to, shouldn't that be part of their job?

Sarah also said when she was leaving that if we have any further problems after the week is up, to ring her on her mobile (number given in the email) and she will try to sort it out.  Hmm, BT seem to be showering us with direct phone numbers now!

The signal has dropped out a few times, for just a few seconds at a time, but certainly seems much speedier.  

And then in the afternoon Laura, the executive assistant from the CEO's office, rang me to ask how everything went.  When I told her what the engineer had done, and said it all seemed fine now, she wanted to sign off the complaint as resolved.....I wouldn't let her though.  I said I don't want it marked as resolved until after the settling down period is over and we're satisfied that it is in fact all fixed and to keep it as an 'open' fault until then.  She said that's ok and will ring me again in a week, at which time compensation will also be discussed.  If we have any further problems, I must ring her direct and not go through the helpline or anyone else.

I'm happy with how things have gone so far.  Let's hope it stays that way!