It is one of central London’s most striking landmarks and dominates the skyline over Sheila Coombes’s flat in Fitzrovia. But for her, the very sight of the BT Tower – a mere three-minute walk away – adds insult to injury over what she describes as appalling treatment by the telecommunications giant.
Nearly six months since moving into a new-build apartment in her first property purchase through shared ownership, Coombes (not her real name) still has no BT internet access.
Working full-time in finance but studying part-time for accountancy exams, Coombes has been unable to study at home (when she needs to answer timed, online papers), and instead has to work in a local library late into the night, rather than in her new home.
“I moved into my flat in December 2015 and tried to apply for internet access from my move-in date,” she told Guardian Money. “I didn’t need or want a landline but was told I had no choice of provider and could only get it through BT. Six months later I am still struggling to get internet access and am just going round and round in circles.”
To date, Coombes claims to have sent more than 100 emails to BT customer services, BT high-level complaints, and BT chief executive Gavin Patterson, and also to the engineering company, KN Group, appointed by the developers to help new residents with broadband installation. In addition, she was forced to make numerous lunch time calls to BT customer services – in turn directed to Openreach – while taking time off work for both BT and KN Group engineers, who failed to materialise.
Openreach is the BT company that manages the landline infrastructure in Britain on behalf of all phone operators, but has been subject to intense criticism from some who have waited for months for connections and repairs.
“It’s been a complete joke,” says Coombes. “I was one of the first people to move in, before Christmas, and I hadn’t anticipated there would be any problems. There are 14 flats in my building, on six floors, and as far as I can tell there has only been a problem with the homes on the second floor. I have ended up asking people I meet in the lift if they’ve had problems. A lady who moved in on the fifth floor in March was connected straight away, which I found rather annoying.”
Coombes was told by a KN Group engineer that the developers were responsible for registering the individual postcodes of the flats, but if this was not done on time – as they said was the case – the residents would get no service. This affected and delayed the network installation, although it was not the fault of Openreach.
After numerous complaints to BT her case was escalated to executive complaints and she was promised separate poling and cabling work. “The lack of internet has greatly inconvenienced my life,” she says. “It is really not fun walking home at 11pm from the library from winter to spring. No one from BT has demonstrated any form of sincere apology or a proactive update on when things can be resolved. As I have heard from the other occupants in my block, I had no other option to pick another provider. I still do not have any internet and don’t know when I can be connected to the world again. It is an irony that I am just a three-minute walk away from the BT Tower.”
Coombes has since been sent a BT routing hub, which was scheduled to be activated last week – but which failed to work. It declined to explain what was causing the problems but a spokesperson said: “We’re sorry for the delay in providing [her] with broadband. We are trying to provide her with service as quickly as possible and an engineer’s appointment has been booked for 26 May. We will discuss compensation and a goodwill gesture with her once her broadband is installed.”
