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.