BT Line repairs

[#1]

Do BT give preferential repair service to BT customers?
Lots of lightning damage in our area during early December and a neighbours line was struck and their master socket damaged on the 11th December, which was reported and ticket raised with PN on the 8th. All the neighbourhood has some loss of phones for a while but this neighbour still hasn't had a engineers visit.
BT manager on local radio said they had a backlog as some customers had been struck again after repairs with some having 3 repairs carried out.
I suppose its understandable that they repair their own first but rather annoying.
She intends to try our local MP Carmichael who is currently in touch with BT over various local issues and see if he can get things moving.
I was lucky and though I lost the phone line a few times during the recent storms with what turned out to be exchange faults, PN had it sorted out quickly. The last fault I phoned PN with resulted in a BT engineer call me direct after only 30 minutes to say that he had rectified the problem - that was what I call quick
Mick

[#2]

Hi,
Interesting experience.
Presuming that you mean BT Retail, they shouldn't do.
I'm glad to hear that it was resolved quickly for you though. Sounds like the weather has wreaked havoc in your neck of the woods.

[#3]

It is something I wondered about last year after Digital Region collapsed (I won't bore you wih th details but you can Google it if you're really interested. 
I was with Origin Broadband on a DR connection because BT/OR had not seen fit to fibre enable my exchange,  The cut-off date for DR was 14/04/14 and was known about 12 months in advance but Origin believed they had a process to migrate customers from DR to a BT fibre service where available.  However - that plan (which had BTOR as partners I believe) fell through approximately 1 month prior to cut off.  This left a VERY large number of customers still on DR connections at cut off, and who required the tags removing from their lines in order to take up other services.
Despite knowing about this well in advance, BTOR dragged their feet and appeared to only work on those lines that they wanted to and did not seem to have any plan at all.  Someone manged to get hold of an email address for the CEO of OR (or at least his office) and a number of us wrote nicely worded emails asking if our specific cases could be looked into.  Quite a few had replies within 24 hours and had tags removed 24hrs later.  I was staying with Origin Broadband and not migrating to BT and did not even received the courtesy of an acknowledgement or reply and eventually waited 5 weeks to be reconnected to the internet.  Some stories were worse than that - you go figure!


 

[#4]

BT have her repair flagged for the engineer to complete the job but he hasn't come over on any of the three ferries so far today so I cannot see him coming on the later sailings today.
I have loaned her my iphone which she can use as a wifi hotspot but I wonder whether if its against the rules & regs to allow her access to my broadband using wifi?
If it is ok she is only 1/2 mile away with clear view over a bay and I have wifi adapter & small yagi antenna.
BT customers that have had problems have got free divert to mobile phone but her phone just gives continual engaged and not even an announcement saying it is faulty.

[#5]

Just seen the neighbour who informs me that she has received an email from PN to say the fault is now rectified, but it isn't and no engineer has been. The master socket is burnt out so it will definitley need a house call.
She says she is going back to BT so I said that I thought that she may be better to leave her broadband with PN and just transfer the line rental, which I think she thought that was what she would do.

[#6]

Now I have another neighbour who I advised to go with plusnet and is having problems. Her phone stopped ringing on incoming calls but was ok for outgoing calls and was reported on the 12th of December but still not repaired. Her neareset neighbour had exactly the same fault at the same time and their's was repaired two or three weeks ago as it was an exchange fault and required no engineers visit.
.
No prizes for guessing that her neighbour is a BT customer.

[#7]

Pure coincidence I'm sure 

[#8]

Quote from: jorvikmik

Now I have another neighbour who I advised to go with plusnet and is having problems. Her phone stopped ringing on incoming calls but was ok for outgoing calls ...

Tell her to dial 17070 to check that the automated voice reads out her correct phone number, as it wouldn't be the first time that someone has had their perfectly working line accidently or otherwise swapped for another one by an incompetent 'engineer' at the cabinet ...

[#9]

We've had a couple of instances lately when we've had phone services issues (one line with Sky and the other with BT). In both instances, we've had engineers come within hours of reporting the faults. These are normal lines with no enhanced fault service.
I know with Plusnet, the chance of this happening is next to zero. They have access to the same Openreach appointment book, but it can take days for someone to pick up a fault and even longer for an engineer to be booked.