BT: The Saga Continues…

 Computers, Internet, Life  No Responses »
Dec 182012
 

This is getting longer than the Star Wars Saga now*… Following on from my initial moan about BT and my second blog post about it I thought I’d give an update seeing as they have annoyed me yet again. And I still have no Internetz.

On Saturday morning (5 days after BT should have installed my broadband) I submitted a support request to @BTCare who had already said that if I didn’t hear from someone by Friday at 8pm to get in touch directly with them. This is what I sent:

Hi. Still waiting for my Broadband to be connected and not happy with being lied to multiple times with promised call backs that don’t materialise. Also been billed for broadband when you haven’t even installed it yet!

Full details can be found here: http://maft.co.uk/musings/2012/moving-to-bt-not-the-best-start/ and here: http://maft.co.uk/musings/2012/bt-bloody-terrible/

Sorry, it’s too much to rewrite it all again!

Hope something can get sorted. I am really not happy.

 

That same afternoon evening I received this reply from ‘Paul S’ of @BTCare:

Hi,

Thanks for getting in touch and sorry to hear about the problems, I’ve checked this out and the what happened is that the broadband part of the order was cancelled by Wholesale meaning it had to be reissued, if you have been told anything other than this then I apologise. The order has now been replaced and an expedite request issued, a response to that should be received on Monday and at that point we will know when the service will start.

I am hopeful that the response on Monday will be a good one based on the history here so I will let you know what’s happening then, you may also be contacted by another team that are monitoring the issue for you but that’s just so you know. Sorry this happened in the first place but chat soon, one last thing, we are aware of certain restrictions on dates so that won’t be a problem, take care.

Paul
BTCare

This actually got my hopes up. It was as though someone at BT actually cared that customers we being ignored, lied to and being treated like poop. The promise that there would be a (hopefully good) response by Monday actually meant I stopped thinking about it for the rest of the weekend and all day yesterday (Monday).

As the day drew on and I still had no call from BT I was beginning to revert back to thinking that they just don’t care… It’s now 8am the morning after I was supposed to hear back from BT and still nothing…

Last night I had a little whine on The Twitter:

To which @BTCare replied:

Forgive me for being cynical, but wasn’t I promised this before? You know, someone actually getting in touch with me about the service I’m paying for that STILL hasn’t been installed??!!

It’s getting beyond a joke now, I’m only sticking it out as I probably have enough ammunition now for a fairly hefty discount for the best part of a year!

 

*Footnote:  By my calculations the entire Star Wars saga is 797 mins (all 6 episodes). As of 8am Tuesday 18th December 2012 187 hours have passed since BT should have installed my broadband. In that time I could have watched the entire Star Wars saga 14 (fourteen) times.

BT: Bloody Terrible

 Computers, Internet, Life  1 Response »
Dec 142012
 

Follow on from this post

So 8pm came and went, I called them and spent 40 minutes on the phone to India but couldn’t actually get anywhere because the orders and billing departments were both closed. So they have requested a call-back for me between 10-11am tomorrow… I wonder if THAT one will materialise?

As you can guess, I’m pretty mad – even more annoyed at the number of broken promised from BT. I mean, really, how hard is it to activate a phone line before an engineer comes?! They managed to get the hub to me on time… not that I can use it…

Moving to BT: Not The Best Start…

 Home, Internet, Life  2 Responses »
Dec 142012
 

On Friday 23rd November we exchanged contracts and agreed a moving date of Friday 30th November. On that day I also ordered BT’s Infinity 2 60MB Fibre Optic Broadband Package as my previous supplier of 60MB broadband, Virgin Media, don’t do our new address. After ordering I was told they couldn’t connect it all up until Monday 10th December. A bit annoying, but I could live with tethering on my phone.

Monday 10th came and my son had been admitted to hospital the night before however Mrs-MaFt was at home for when the engineer arrived at 8.45am. This is when the problems started… The engineer couldn’t do anything because, it turned out, BT had not activated the phone line. He had another job to get to but said he would try get back later in the day or, at the latest, he would come the following day and get it all done. Slightly more annoying but I could live with a one day delay. So, later in the day I get a text message and an email confirming the phone line is now up and running… but no broadband engineer was to be seen. That’s OK, he said he would come back the next day.

The following morning I get this text message from BT:

BT SMS 1

What?! I missed the appointment? And you expect me to wait another 2 weeks??!! I was, as you may expect, pretty fuming. I could maybe understand having to wait another 2 weeks if we had actually missed the appointment, but considering someone was in all day even while our son was in hospital I think we did pretty damn well at keeping the appointment! So, I phoned them up to see what they were playing at. Basically they admitted it was their fault and they don’t expect me to wait two weeks until the engineer can come back. So they said they would fast-track it and try get someone out in the next few days – I confirmed that any day that week would be fine. They said they would check with the engineering people and get back to me later in the day.

‘Later in the day’ came and there was still no call returned – this was about 6pm. So I phoned them back. After going through the whole story again I was told that it was on my account that they would phone me the following day (Wednesday) so I queried why I was told it would be the same day when they called back. He also said there’s nothing he could do as it’s been escalated already.

The next day I got this:

BT SMS 2

Guess what? I was a little bit annoyed… Actually, no I wasn’t, I was VERY annoyed (with capital letters). As I was told not to phone them I went to The Twitter to have a bit of a moan to @BTCare who, to be fair to that department, seemed to be trying to be helpful. However as it had already been escalated and I’d been given a date/time that they would contact me by they couldn’t really do much else.

Yesterday to rub some more salt in my wounds they sent me a bill for my broadband services. You know, the one they haven’t actually provided me with. Remember I’m still not allowed to phone them so I went to their online chat to ‘discuss my bill’. Here’s the conversation I had (click to enlarge):

BT Billing Query

 

Five o’clock came and went with no return call from Syed Saaduddin. To be honest, I’m used to being let down by BT now that it didn’t actually annoy me that much. Perhaps this is their super new business idea – annoy their customers so much that they just drop dead in exasperation!

So now, here I am, sitting, waiting for BT to call me. They currently have just over 3 1/2 hours left to call me and give me a new installation date. And explain why they haven’t done anything that they promised. And why they are charging me for a service they aren’t providing. And why they seemingly don’t understand that the ‘T’ in ‘BT’ is, basically, for ‘COMMUNICATION’ – which they seem inept at.

I’ll update later tonight or tomorrow with whether or not they actually call me before 8pm. If you want a sneak peak though you can follow me on The Twitter via @MaFt where no doubt I will be doing some suppressed swears shortly after 8pm. When BT’s lines are probably closed…

 

FOLLOW UP POST: “BT: Bloody Terrible”

 

Self-hosted WordPress Users – A Tip About Photos

 Blogging, Sites, Work  1 Response »
Dec 142012
 

I’m just transferring all the media over for new client who is moving from WordPress.com to a self-hosted WordPress site (using my hosting company Salt & Light Solutions) and it reminded me to write this post…! The photos that had been uploaded to the WordPress.com blog were approx 4MB each (4272 x 2848 pixels!) – this causes a few problems when you transfer to self-hosted. 1) space issues, 2) bandwidth issues and 3) visitor experience – more info:

1) Space – each photo is 4MB – on WP.com this doesn’t matter, you get as much space as you need. As soon as you pay for hosting space costs money. On a self-hosted WP site too the image you upload is duplicated 4 times – you have the original photo and then 3 or 4 different sized versions of the image so a 4MB photo ends up taking up about 6MB of space once WP makes the different versions of the file that it needs.

2) Bandwidth – if your photo is 4MB then each time the full image is downloaded it uses up 4MB of your bandwidth (the data-transfer allowance, so to speak). Most browsers will resize huge images so they fit on the screen nicely BUT you must remember that the full 4MB image will need to be downloaded before the browser will do that. Again, on WP.com, bandwidth isn’t an issue but self-hosted: bandwidth costs money!

3) Visitor experience -  if your photos are 4MB each then this means that people with slower connections will have to wait a loooooong time to see an image. Multiply that by 20 times if you have loads of images loading on your home page and you will quickly turn people away from your blog.

So, taking all the above into account, what can you do about it? One option is to resize each photo before you upload it but, let’s be honest here, we’re all busy people and isn’t it just so much easier to select 10 photos from your digital camera to upload as a gallery than to mess about resizing each one? What if the magical WordPress fairies could do all this for you once you upload the photo? Yep – much better!

As such I heartily recommend installing a plugin called ‘Imsanity‘ (just search in the plugin installer and you will find it) which basically resizes any photo you upload and removes the original massive photo. This then gets rid of all three issues mentioned above: space (the 4mb file no longer exists and will be reduced to about 0.3MB), bandwidth (each time the photo is loaded it uses 10 times less bandwidth) and the visitor experience (smaller file sizes means the site loads much faster).

Another advantage of Imsanity is that it can resize any photos already on your self-hosted WP site! One client who I recommended the plugin to freed up about 1.2GB of space!

I hope this helps some WordPress users who have made the switch from WP.com to self-hosted.

No-Beer November

 Family, Life  No Responses »
Nov 022011
 

Yesterday I embarked on my most recent challenge, “No-Beer November”. A couple of years ago I had a shot at “No-Shave November” but gave up after a week because it was far too itchy!

This time I’m doing “No-Beer November”. I generally don’t drink tea or coffee and the cupboards are usually stocked with Pepsi Max, which is too fizzy. How anyone can drink that rubbish is beyond me!

I noticed recently, however, that I would happily drink 2-3 cans of lager 3-4 nights a week mainly because it was there and, as mentioned earlier, I don’t ‘do’ tea, coffee or Pepsi Max. There were no plans to get drunk, nor did I even get drunk, on such a regular basis; I didn’t (and still don’t) class myself as being alcohol dependent or an alcoholic.

So why am I forcing myself to not drink beer for a month? I suppose a part of it is to prove the above point – that I don’t need beer to get me through half of the week. However, if I’m honest, the main reasons are that Wii Fit told me I was overweight and both Mini-MaFt and Mrs-MaFt told me I have a fat belly. It turns out I am vain afterall!

So, wish me luck – I look forward to losing a few lb’s and gaining a few £’s too.

 

 

NB – there is one pre-planned day off later in the month for the PocketGPSWorld.com Christmas Bash. It’s not a failure if it is pre-planned!

Is It All In The Genes?

 Everything Else, Family  1 Response »
Sep 122011
 

A while back I blogged about the possibility that I may have a defect in my MLH1 gene that increases my chances of getting bowel cancer. You can read more info here: Keeping It In The Family. The other month I went for a blood test and a few days ago I got my results.

Now, I’m not going to post my results here because there is one close family member who doesn’t want to know plus you’re probably not that interested anyway! But in the days before getting my results it got me thinking…

Continue reading »

BBC: “Broadcast Before Consent”?

 Facebook, Life, News, Twitter  15 Responses »
Aug 162011
 

I was quite shocked yesterday to read a short article from the BBC regarding use of images from The Twitter and The Facebook during the recent London riots. The article revolved around the fact that one Andy Mabbett complained about the BBC using photo’s from Twitter, and other social media sites, in their coverage of the riots without permission from the owners. The complaint (and subsequent response from the BBC) is here: http://pigsonthewing.org.uk/bbc-fundamental-misunderstanding-copyright/.

Apparently though, this response was incorrect so the BBC Editors set out to make an official statement of how they deal with such situations. You can read it here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/theeditors/2011/08/use_of_photographs_from_social.html

So, what was I shocked and appalled by?

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Stepping (Way) Out Of My Comfort Zone…

 Everything Else  1 Response »
Jul 272011
 

A few days ago one of my many Twitter accounts suddenly came alive. It was quite exciting. My little fun project, BradfordJesusMan.co.uk, had received more submissions and hits than previous weeks and months. @AtkiTeach tweeted the following:

@bettakultcha @racinghippo follow @bdjesusman – cannot believe I only just found this and site! As a Bradfordian, get Mr Jesus or site ppl!

to which @bettakultcha later replied:

@bdjesusman would love you to come and present about bradfordjesusman at #bettakultcha #Bradford

 

A few things struck me from these and a few other messages that were sent:

  1. Random people were starting to find my Bradford Jesus Man website which means word is getting around without me having to whore it on The Facebook or The Twitter so much.
  2. People actually loved the idea of the site.
  3. I was being complimented on the design and functionality of the site.
  4. I had no idea what BettaKultcha was…

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