BT's dangerous suggestion.

[Hurricane Puffrose]

I have been having issues with my wireless broadband connections, I called up today to ask for help. The info I was given beggars belief!

"Just get a screwdriver, remove the front panel of the main phone socket and put the adapter or the phone directly in to the main connection.. "if that doesnt work, take the box apart!"

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRUMSTANCES DO THIS!!

What people do not realise is, there is enough ampage in a phone socket to throw you across a room!! I have got belts off headsets and phone sockets before, its not nice!!

DO NOT DO ANY OF THIS IF YOU HAVE A WIRELESS PROBLEM!! no matter if Alexander Graham Bell himself came and rewired it, it would not make the slightest difference!!!

I have reported this to BT, and I am thinking of contacting the H&S exec too!!

Be safe my friends

P.

[bluebottle]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Absolutely right, Puff. A doctor told me once that it takes 220/360 volts to restart someone's heart after it has gone into ventricular fibrillation, but as little as 9 volts, yes, 9 volts to stop the heart beating.

If I were you, I would report this to HSE as the advice the BT employee gave is potentially dangerous and puts BT in direct contravention of Section 3, Health & Safety at Work Act 1974 (Failure to Ensure the Safety of the Public).

[Inca]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

I got told to try that,my phone socket had been mullered by the previous owner of my house.I told the woman who suggested this to feel free to pop round to mine for a swift sharp shock when she attempted it,or to do the sensible thing and send a Man with a Van who Can..my name aint Bob the Builder ,,was fixed next day

[teaboy2]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Unbelievable. Bet it was a indian call centre!

[Inca]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Unbelievable. Bet it was a indian call centre!

Mine seemed to be

[teaboy2]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Lol you should have told them to go unscrew the plug socket and put their finger in and let you know what reaction they got (if they lived to tell the tale that is), as it be the same you would get if you unscrewed the telephone socket and started messing about with it.

[labman]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Inside the phone socket, if you undo the two screws on the front panel, there is a test socket which can be safely accessed. Are you sure she didn't mean this?

[Inca]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Inside the phone socket, if you undo the two screws on the front panel, there is a test socket which can be safely accessed. Are you sure she didn't mean this?

Lab,,aint never safe to ask Ole Inca to wield a screwdriver under any circumstances as my OH and my son will testify. A few years back I decided to use the hedge trimmer,it suddenly stopped working,so I ambled indoors to check my PAYG electric hadn't run out(since got rid of that thing!),and t'was only as I bent my head to look in cupboard I realised the trimmer had become portable ! I had tripped the electric by chopping thru the lead ,so I asked my next door to fix it,,he did,,and I did the same thing 5 mins later hence,,I don't meddle cos I'm lethal

[miliitant]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

A WRITTEN COMPLAINT NEEDS TO GO TO BT OVER THIS

you have a fault and reported it to BT

now you are not a BT engineer so you are not qualified to be unscreewing a live BT socket

FLIP THE COIN OVER NOW

if a BT engineer came out and found you had been tampering with the socket, they will prob bill you for the call out as they will say they fault was due to your actions. i can assure you of that as it happened to my neighbour over a phone extension

this is a BT problem

YOU PAY FOR AN ENGINEERS CALL OUT IN YOUR LINE RENTAL

do not unscreew any covers and demand a call out from a qualified engineer

[labman]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

.......... but in the meantime, don't complain if you haven't got a phone, when if you'd done as they asked you might have pending them sending an engineer out. :tinysmile_grin_t:

[Hurricane Puffrose]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

she mentioned the front panel, then said i that doesn't work, take the box apart!
i told her, she has 2 hopes, and one is Bob!!

The phone is working fine, its the Wireless connection that's mullared!

Jess's bloke is going to ring me and talk me through resetting my firewalls, and reconnecting to the wireless.

OH and she wanted to do a line test WHILST I was taking the box to bits and fiddling with wires!! And yes Teaboy, she told me she was in Poona, and that I speak quietly and indistinctly and I do not ennounciate my words. I am the ex station announcer for Fenchurch street and Marylebone station!!

[Sapphire]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

You should have started ordering a takeaway, guaranteed she'd have understood that.

[dogtired]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Follow labmans suggestion when I had my problem and e-mail the chief executive!
(BT again thread!)
so far it seems to have worked for me!
Got a new hub and box on the wall (still had to do the "test" with the test socket but you could get round that I am sure )
just got to sort out the bill now which is still incorrect on line apparently they only update when the bill is due as for a lot of the "services" you pay in advance.
Hope you it fixed!

[Hurricane Puffrose]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

ok so I emailled them, to Ian Livingstone.

Dear Sir,

I would like to complain, yet again, about the service I have received from your company.


I recently phoned to ask if there was a broadband outage in my local area, as my wireless broadband is constantly crashing. The advisor asked me the colours on the Hub, and as I was asking my husband (my hub is in another room) she said "Well as the lights are flashing"..
I hadn't actually answered her question, she decided what the answer was for me!


She then, without any further questioning, told me (while on the phone to her) to unscrew my main phone box and plug the phone directly in to the wall WHILE she sent a pulse down the line, and if that didn't work she would talk me through dismantling my phone box.


You have absolutely no hope of me touching the main box to my phone, as this is your property and my interfering with this can result in a charge of criminal damage, and a rather nasty electric shock. What shocked me the most was the attitude of "It's completely safe!"


May I assure you that with a small child running around, and Meniers Disease, it is anything BUT safe for me to even contemplate fiddling with a phone socket, and at no time was I asked if I had any electrical knowledge, was I pregnant, have a heart condition etc. What your operators fail to realise is, it is not the voltage on a phone socket, it is the AMPAGE that can throw you across a room! The ampage in a phone socket can stop a pace maker! If I had complied with her and she had sent a pulse through that line, there is a very good chance you would be facing a very high compensation bill.


I was also extremely confused as to why I should be penalised by a fee for an engineer if I failed to put myself in a life threatening situation, surely I pay line rental (please note the use o the word RENTAL) to pay for maintainence on my line, so why would I be forced to pay for this twice? Surely it is a requirement that any wiring issues are done by a qualified engineer?
I can understand a need to cut costs, but I feel this idea of make the householder do the engineer's job is dangerous and is putting the customer in undue danger, to this end I will be also reporting this issue to my local Health and Safety Executive.


When I spoke to a cousin of mine, who has been a telephone engineer all his working life, he advised me, DO NOT under any circumstances touch that box, you can be charged for any problems you find as you have meddled with it.


Also, could you please explain how dismantling my phone box would help me with a WIRELESS problem?


I feel incredibly let down by BT, which have been a comedy of errors since I joined, and may I assure you that unless the situation improves I will most definatly NOT be renewing my subscription with yourselves.


Yours
A very dissatisified

Puffrose
My address
My town
Oop Narth!


Unfortunatly I am unable to provide you with my account number, as I cannot access my billing due to needing an account number to log in, and not being given the account number to start with. I have contacted your Customer Services regarding this, to be told I cannot be informed of my account number for the acccount holder's security, but I am the account holder, I have passed security, and I still may not know my own account number, incase I try and use the account holders information fraudulently!

My first response:




Dear Puff,

Thank you for your e-mail. Ian is currently overseas with very limited access to his e-mail, so I am replying on his behalf to avoid further delay. Please be assured that a member of Ian's senior management team will see and read your correspondence.

I am sorry to hear of the problems you are experiencing, I will pass this to our senior service team for investigation and response directly to you.

Kind regards,
Tracy.

Personal Assistant to Ian Livingston, CEO
BT Group
A9E, BT Centre
81 Newgate Street
London, EC1A 7AJ

Then I recieved this little beauty:

Hello Puff

Thank you for your email.

I am sorry to hear of the problems you're having with your BT Broadband. Further to my voicemail your case has now been escalated to our team and we have now taken full ownership of the problems you are facing. If you can allow us a little time to investigate to see where the problem is that would be appreciated and we will give you a call tomorrow between 8am and 8pm. Please let us know if there is a time that isn't suitable.

From my initial tests today, we would expect your line to be able to achieve speeds of 1.5mb and 4mb with an average of 2mb your line is currently connected at 3.2mb however I can see there are a number of errors on the line which will cause an intermittent connection on both wireless and wired connections.

What to do now

I do understand your concerns regarding removing the faceplate from the telephone socket, however BT over recent years have fitted new sockets like the ones below to allow you to test the BT Broadband and land line by elliminating all other internal wiring and are perfectly safe to carry out a test. We need this to be carried out to establish where the fault lies. BT only guarentees service to your main socket.

To help us, can I ask if you to carry out the following steps to rule out a problem in your property.

First check that you have every piece of equipment on your line going through an adsl filter. If you already have filters in place, we would like you to try the router from the BT test socket, steps are below.

NO WAY!!!!
I refuse to mess about with something I do not understand, and as Millitant says, I pay to get fixed!

My response to this is,

---

Dear Theresa,


Further to your email, may I advise you that if the upgrade of telephone sockets in private homes has taken place in the last 10 years, that my house has not been upgraded, therefore I reiterate that I will NOT be removing the front panel of my telephone socket as to my mind this is an unsafe suggestion.


I understand that my line rental goes towards the maintainence of my line by a qualified engineer, therefore your insistence that I undertake this job is beyond me, as does your colleuges threat of "If we send out an engineer it will cost you £35."
I am already paying for an engineer in my monthly direct debit.


IF an engineer attends my home it will be on the understanding it is a free visit, and all parts etc will be free.


If you wish to upgrade my telephone socket to a "Safe" panelled one, please make an appointment to do so, however this will be seen as free of charge service too, and no payment for such service will be forthcoming.


Until such time as I have a H&S approved safe telephone socket, I will NOT be removing any part of the box myself.


If any charge is required for the services, I will expect a full refund of my line rental to compensate for any charges.

[Sapphire]

Re: BT's dangerous suggestion.

Thinking back to when we had our broadband problem at the office and I phoned up, I was asked to do the same, on the pretext that if the engineer came out and it proved to be our fault then we'd have to pay £180 call out fee.
Of course not knowing better we did it, the engineers came out and suggested we go to Infinity (which is excellent I must add but even so we had to work from home for a week or two before the Infinity was installed and the problem rectified.