Dear Tristia and Clive,
CC: Press.Office@Talktalk.co.uk, newsroom@bt.com, Social Media & Any interested newspaper
I address this letter to you both. Like partners in a dysfunctional marriage…. Because frankly this charade has been like observing a dysfunctional marriage.
Tristia, I wrote to you back on the 6th of March, regarding our lack of internet and phone…. It’s now the 23rd of March and guess what? I’m sure you guessed it…. Still nothing. Frankly two yoghurt pots and some string are more useful than the service you currently don’t provide to us!
I didn’t hear back from you Tristia. You’re like the pen friend who doesn’t reply to my messages… we’ve all been there… or maybe you also don’t have any internet. You did however place one of your highly skilled team on our case. When I say highly skilled, I mean highly skilled in being generally clueless and issuing multiple empty apologies.
Never mind… I digress. We’ve now been 62 days without internet…. But I’ve realised Tristia that the lack of pressure from TalkTalk is your issue, but the lack of action from OpenReach is actually Clive’s Fault.
So, Clive…. We turn our attention to you.
You’ll find below in this mail trail, a copy of the previous email I sent to your partner in crime, Tristia. I suggest you read it… It’s quite amusing actually…. Until you realise it’s 100% true and is not a fiction novel.
You see Clive, the thing is (TL:DR), over 62 days ago, one of your employees told us that we’d go from temperamental internet to perfect internet within a few days. Those few days later, we were completely disconnected…. Since those “Few days” we’ve had no formal acknowledgement of when it will be fixed…. Or even IF it will be fixed. Who knows? This could be the end of the internet for us! But who doesn’t love being told we’ll get an UPDATE in a month, a week, a few days’ time. Not a resolution, just an update. The update is “Still no clue”.
I’m quite excited to read that Vodafone have signed a deal with CityFibre to provide fibre direct to the premises, as hopefully one day I’ll be able to get home internet without having to use your cack-handed infrastructure monopoly. If they were in my area now I’d have signed up already and left you and your sorry coppers for dust. (Same with Virgin Media….)
Now Clive, I’d like to let you into a little secret. In fact, not such a little secret…. You see the thing is, I work in IT. So I know lead-times for lines. In fact I have personally managed the installation of large corporate circuits. I also know, that according to the BT Website (Let’s be frank, you pretend to be impartial but aren’t.) I could have a Leased Line of a 1GB or 10GB bearer installed to my premises within 70 working days. https://btbusiness.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/14172/~/how-long-does-it-take-to-get-btnet-up-and-running%3F/c/5091/
Another week, and you know what that means Clive? It means that had I ordered a leased line as our line went down, you’d have arranged planning permission, local council permission, closed off the road, dug up the road, laid fibre, filled in the road, connected the line up to my house and I’d have 10Gb guaranteed upload inside my front door.
I’m actually fairly impressed that you can’t even get a 30ish (On a good day with the wind blowing in the right direction…) fibre to the cabinet line fixed, NOT INSTALLED, just fixed in the time it could take you to provide fibre directly to our house. GOOD WORK.
So Clive, please tell me… because I’m stumped. If you can dig up roads and lay delicate fibre cables to buildings within 70 working days…. How is it possible you can’t fix up a dodgy port on a glorified patch panel in our local cabinet? Have all your engineers mysteriously gone AWOL? Have they taken my internet AWOL with them?
To Paraquote Sinead O’Connor; Tell me Clive, where did I go wrong? Because Nothing Connects. Nothing Connects 2U.
I doubt I’ll hear from you Clive… (or from you Tristia if you’re still reading – You’re probably playing Candy Crush or watching Cat Videos on Youtube) but if you see this email… send me a sign. Hopefully a sign of an actual date of when this will be fixed.
I extend the same wish to you Clive as I did to Tristia – Tell me when and I’ll come and meet you, I your nice shiny office… probably with this mystical service they tell me about called phone lines and internet. Because, I’d love for you to be able to restore my faith in your service… but right now, I wouldn’t trust BT OpenReach… SORRY, JUST OPENREACH to look after a jar of dead flies.
As I’m sure you’ll understand – Slightly frosty regards,
Steven Phillips
@steveeypips