BT - the deafening silence continues

So I've heard nothing from them - no further phone calls, no emails .
So ive  re-sent the email in case the original got lost.

My New Desktop

On a pleasant summers evening , the view isn't bad

Now you see it , Now you dont,

We have had an Eglu for many years . We  started with  one of the very early ones  ( I think we had No. 6 off the production line)

and then things changed and we got a bigger one and put it on our own platform

and then we got an Eglu Cube and at one point had 10 hens, rescued  by the British Hen Welfare Trust 

Initially we weren't going to take the Cube to Orkney, thinking it would be too windy, but after talking to some hen keepers on Sanday, which is a bit flatter and probably a bit more exposed than where we are , we have changed  our view and we are going to take the Eglu Cube up North, so its been dismantled and stored and in due course will go in the trailer.

So now you see it

 and now you  don't 

BT - the deafening silence

So , I received a message on my phone on July 17th at 1615 from  a Complaints manager wishing to discuss the contents of an email they are sending me. Sadly I was at work , so couldn't take the call.

Its now 5 days later but there  has been no email. I'd better remind them I suppose.

And I've had a response to the Data Subject  request - sadly the disk is Orkney, and im not and  so depending on the size of the data files it may  have to wait until Im there.

Relocating the trees

Well, in the valley there are some trees -  being east-facing it gets enough protection to allow the trees to grow to about 10 feet ( and to be big enough  to get in the way of the  truck!).


We have had trees at the allotment in Newcastle, whoever takes on the allotment may not want 50 trees and you cant really sell them.
So we  decided to take them with us. The idea that we are going to try and grow apple trees in Orkney has led to raised eyebrows ( to put it politely !)  from Orcadians.

After being heavily pruned , we spent a day digging them up , and then in groups of 2 or 3 ,wrapping the roots in damp straw  and putting them in a sack.  As moving day is busy we had to do this a week before moving.




So they were then kept in the now-empty hen run. Stacked up and regularly watered, we were lucky that it wasn't too hot, but  a few of them  were wilting after 3 days, but we persevered with the straw and watering, and when the day came , they were staked in the trailer and off we went.

I was asked at Aberdeen if I had livestock in the trailer but they still checked when I said  " no , just trees".



 On arriving in Orkney we needed somewhere to 'store them' whilst deciding on  suitably sheltered areas.
So we found a sheltered area 'out the back' .

and heeled the trees in.

Heeling in trees

• dig a shallow trench
• lay the tree roots in the trench
• cover the roots with soil ( and we used the straw that had been used to transport the trees)
• water well.

BT - ducking and diving

So this drags on - the dialogue of the deaf. BT are 'sorry for any inconvenience caused '. Inconvenience is a mild term for the hassle !

So i have exchanged a few emails with them , pending a data subject access request response and a cheque for £10, to see what they think happened and who said what and when.

the latest version from BT is that the phone call on the 28th ( after we had moved in, and intended to be the phone call that activated the BB ) was to 'place the order' . But I've got an email from them , generated on 6th June that thanks me for the order and gives me the connection date of 4th July.

So we will have to take this a line at a time.

I've corrected them about is the date i placed the order - the 6th June and not the 28th . I'll have to forward back to them the email that they sent me if they continue to be a bit confused. I've asked them what information I was given on the 8th June. Thats all . So hopefully no scope for obfuscation.
we shall see

A tale of 2 Tescos

Here's the Tesco that we were used to in Jesmond ( well, at least until Waitrose opened up just along the road)

And this is the one in Kirkwall

On our first visit to Tesco in Kirkwall we were unable to buy

-Pear Juice
-Organically reared chicken
-Toilet Rolls from recycled paper

pretentious , moi ?

Arriving

So after a night  and a good breakfast at  Aultnagar, we set off  to our new home.
A brief delay whilst the final  financial bits were checked and verified - the whole thing being relatively painless compared to house-buying in England , thanks to  Euain Penny  of Lows -  and  then the  house was ours.

And then the van arrived.

A branch of the tree has to be sacrificed - the advantages of an Orcadian remover is that they had visited or knew the site and warned us that this might be  inevitable - and sadly it had to go

Word gets around

So someone from Orkney was visiting Bakewell in Derbyshire.
We  don't know how many newcomers week arrive in Orkney. We've no idea  who Sandra might be. She  could be referring to us.  !

Crossing

We've done the long sea route from Kirkwall to Aberdeen, which is overnight so its not too bad.

 Board at about midnight, head down and sleep as soon a possible and then arrive at Aberdeen at 7 am and drive home. 
This time we travelled north from Aberdeen. And here's the ferry,Hjatland as we wait to load

And we got the cars and trailer on the ferry 

Its a calm crossing, the captain said. So seeing as we had missed lunch driving north we went to get something fairly substantial to eat. 

Now is “its a calm crossing “ 
- an accurate statement so you can enjoy a decent meal when the ship leaves
- means the furniture doesn't need to be tied down 
-they always say that.

We assumed the first option.  After a couple of hours we didn't feel or look too great. I spoke to the crew who said it gets a better after the ship rounds Peterhead, sill about 30 mins away.

 Shortly after that we did feel a bit better, having relieved ourselves of the dinner we had eaten earlier. 

And looking around, we weren’t the only ones feeling like this.  But we only felt a bit better. Migrating to the middle of the ship helped and finding a couple of reasonably comfy chairs we managed to doze for the next couple of hours. 
        
Orkney came into sight shortly after 1030pm (daylight lasts a long time this far north at this time of the year), we docked at 1120 and the short drive to the B&B  and proper bed, followed by a proper breakfast.

I would do the Aberdeen crossing again – n=1 isn't usually  a good number on which to base long term decisions, but I certainly wouldn't have burger and chips trusting in a calm crossing. 
Anyway, we arrived    

Leaving

We are moving from a 5 bedroom house so we have quite a few possessions. They will need to get a big truck in. Thankfully Newcastle Council have bollards that we could use for a few days, so bollards duly picked up and deployed, we reserved some road space. June is the start of holiday time, particularly for those without children, so a warning notice had gone round the neighbours a couple of weeks beforehand. In spite of that a phone call got a car moved, we marked out our space on tuesday morning and sat and waited.

 5pm is home time so someone had to stand guard in case a tired commuter saw the wide open spaces and decided to use them.

 And the truck ( minus trailer – they thought they might not need it) arrived at 530 pm and got parked.

  

Colin and Barry set too that evening, so and with a break for a takeaway, shower and sleep , carried on the next day. Its a victorian terrace so rather than traipse everything through the house, the truck came up the back lane and loaded the garage contents from there.

Jesmond may be an urban and cosmopolitan but I suspect its not had a sheep trailer parked up before. Not carry sheep this time, but trees. Orkney is not renowned for its trees , but there are some if you look, particularly in the east facing valley we are moving to, so we thought it worth digging them up from the allotment and relocating to a suitable sheltered spot, if we can find one but as the van was going to take 2 days to get to Orkney we took them ourselves

.

So that was that – 2 ½ days and our life loaded into a van.

BT Broadband - inept, patronising and mendacious

Sorry to start with a rant.  Moving house is stressful , but the most stressful thing but this one has been BT and the age of the Broadband connection.  other interesting stuff will come later - but at the moment this has been the worst bit of the whole business of moving house.

F&J (previous residents) had BT broadband , so I thought the first stop would be BT. After contacting F&J they said their service was OK , with speeds of about 1.6MB/s – about par for rural Scotland. I had an internet chat through the BT website and got them, without too much trouble after the initial sales b*****cks of 'up to 16MB/s' to tell me that the speed I could expect could be 0.75-2.5, which tallied with what I knew, so I duly signed up. The confirmatory email gave a connection date of 4^th July. Why? F&J had a BT provided line and the BT home hub was being left in the cupboard, so why should it take a week? So I queried this in a phone call on 8th June and was told that all I'd have to do was make a phone call on the day we moved in (28^th June), and the connection could be initiated. Fine. Moving house is expensive, stressful and a hassle, so having access to online details, internet banking to ensure there is money to pay bills, important paperwork I had to do for work would make life a lot easier. So on Friday 28^th at about 1200 I made the phone call – to be told that I couldn't be connected and would have to wait until the 4^th July to even get working phone line. To summarise a very long phone call, they would see what could be done. Saturday 29^th am. Nothing. So another phone call (from a mobile with poor connection) – it was in hand. Saturday 29^th pm till no phone line, so another phone call – it was in hand. Finally the phone line became active at about 8.30 pm. So we fully expected the Broadband connection to go live shortly after they always say leave it until midnight) – so we went to bed expecting to get up to broadband. Sunday 30^th June, no BB so at 10am I called yet again and negotiated yet again the dreadful voicemail. This went through to technical support. They couldn’t do anything but would contact Admin and call me back. No call back so I rang again at 3pm but this time they couldn't do anything because the Order Management Team don’t work weekends – apparently not even an emergency or on call team. By this time I had got fed up with repeating the same tale to be met with a 'Connection on 4^th July' response, so before telling them anything I referred the to the call history and the call of 8^th June, which said 'connection on 28^th June'. By this time there were a couple of formal complaints abut this shambles of misinformation and prevarication from BT (references VOL-012-77843251977 and VOL-2693178044515) But in one my now twice daily calls I did get a bit more information about what probably happened. The phone line has to be activated before the BB. And for some reason it wasn't activated on the 28^th, so the BB couldn't be activated. And when the phone line went live on Saturday 29^th nobody had or could get the BB activated. And they have no way of sorting this shambles out, other than to keep repeating to me '4^th July', despite them agreeing that they had changed that date to 28 June, or promising a connection by midnight of the next day. Monday 1^st July led to me repeating the same tale, referring them to the same conversation regarding 28^th June and hearing the same platitudes about understanding my situation, hearing the 4^th July quoted ,but this ended with an assurance that I would have a connection on the next day. On the phone call of Tuesday July 2^nd, with no BB, I asked about the status of my complaints (see above) to be told they had both been closed. So I asked that they be re-opened ,as I hadn't received any sort of response to either the initial complaint about the connection or the complaint about not receiving the call-backs when I was told I would. But never fear , there are 4 people in the Call Centre who have taken personal ownership of this problem. Its a pity that this ownership never actually led to any communication or meaningful activity. And there are lots of people in the Call Centre who said they understand my frustration. I had to point out on many occasions that they most certainly did not understand my problems – online bills to pay and no way to access internet banking (no 3G signal up here, so the smartphone access kept timing out) and work deadlines flashing past the window, important contact details stored on the internet, and me jut sitting here listening to the drivel at the other end of the phone line. Anyway on the 2^nd July I received a fast-track reference number (2117) that my connection would be activated by midnight on the 3^rd. Having been here before, I rang up just to check it was all still on schedule, only for the '4^th July connection' mantra to be repeated to me again and again. So after repeating many times how the person at the other end of the phone certainly did not understand my situation, I ended up talking to the supervisors' supervisor. And 10 minutes after that conversation, I had a BB connection! .Admittedly only 1.6MB/s but better than what I had before. So it was just a matter of finding the right person who could toggle the correct electronic switch. I don't want people understanding my situation. I don't want platitudes from ill-informed people reading off a script understanding my situation , whne they most certainly did not. I want a BB connection But why did it take 5 days, 2-3 phone calls per day . Would I recommend BT to anyone ? . Have a guess.