BT declares war against The Register

BT has declared war against The Register. Its tactics are straightforward -- to drown us in its Kafkaesque bureacracy. Today, BT's ISDN 30 maintenance team told us that it would not investigate problems with our voice/data lines until 13 September. Why the delay? Well, according to BT, The Register does not have an ISDN 30 circuit. It has never had an ISDN 30 circuit. Therefore it could not have had our ISDN 30 circuit taken out of commission. This is curious, as we have been using an ISDN 30 circuit since 26 May until the weekend before last when BT asked us for permission to take it out of commission for testing. And then forgot to turn it back on again. Or rather did not forget to turn it back on again as it was never on in the first place, so it could not have been turned off. Our predicament -- one voice line and one data line currently shared between nine people -- is of little concern of the BT ISDN 30 maintenance team, who tell us that we are a "sales problem". So what does this mean that some BT sales Johnny failed to complete the proper paperwork? What's the odds there's an audit trail here to uncover the lamebrain within BT who's been dicking around with our business. Roughly equivalent to finding Elvis Presley on the moon. ® And here's our earlier story about BT from 3 September. Our apologies to anyone who has tried to call us over the last couple of weeks and found the phones engaged -- we're have a little local difficulty with BT. In July we reported a fault with our BT ISDN 30 circuit. In the jargon, this is a "bearer problem" -- in other words, there's nothing wrong with our equipment. Two sets of engineers and innumerable site visits later, and the problem is still unsolved. But it gets worse. Last week BT took out a circuit for "testing" -- without our permission -- leaving us with one data line and one voice line to share between nine people. It took two days of badgering by our telco reseller to get the circuit back into commission again. BT asked us for -- and received -- our permission to take out the circuit at the weekend for more testing. Then the incompetent dolts failed to turn it back on again. We have been "running" on one voice and one data line all week. Most staff are working from home. Our BT file now contains ten fault references and 23 pages of notes -- but the problem is still unresolved. At 11.30am this morning, BT informed the internal rep we deal with that it had brought our circuit back into operation. So why are the phones and the data line still not working? This would bring us back to the status quo ante -- BT still has to repair the original fault we reported two months ago. Imagine the treatment we would receive if we weren't an outspoken IT publication, with more than 60,000 readers coming to our site every day. ® Are you a small business? Do you have a BT horror story, you'd care to share with your fellow readers? email them to me and I'll personally make sure they are all published in some shape or form on The Register.