BT muppets continue to surpass themselves

BT update. Their muppetry knows no bounds.

Having informed my reader in my last missive that the earliest BT could send an engineer to move the phone line, from one room to another across the corridor, was June 15, even that date is now in doubt.

My latest call saw buck-passing at an Olympic level. Basically it comes down to the client (BT) having no influence whatsoever over its contractor (Open Reach).

What a sad state of affairs.

It seems Open Reach have still to confirm the move order (more than a week after it was placed) and the earliest BT would know if June 15 was possible is….June 9.

So, we are now in a position where Mil has been successfully moved into her new room (once Mil and Fil’s sitting room) and what was their bedroom is now empty of all personal possessions, leaving the care home free to redecorate and kit out for a new resident.

Apart from the phone, that is, which is still plugged into the now vacated room thanks to the understanding of the home, who are working round it.

It may seem a bit harsh, making Mil undergo this extra stress just weeks after Fil passed away, but the family felt it was best to get her settled into her “new” home before next week’s burial service and separate service of thanks.

Let’s just hope we will still be able to contact her daily by phone.

I have already started putting my thoughts together for an official complaint once everything has settled down.

Really looking forward to that, particularly as the chap I last spoke with at BT said Open Reach was not a “customer-facing organisation”. We’ll see.

Anyway, I must get on now. I’m really not getting out much this afternoon. Brother-in-Law GB (think of how Victoria Beckham described David on a chat show a few years back) is due to arrive soon so we can watch the mighty Arsenal against Villa in the FA Cup Final.

Large beers all around please.

Whatever you do, don’t bank on them

Bereavement is stressful enough without having to deal with muppets at certain banks and utility companies.

As our family comes to terms with Fil’s passing last week, it has fallen on me, you know, the one who doesn’t get out much, to sort some administrative matters.

All companies contacted over the past week have special bereavement teams to handle these delicate situations.

Barclays are definitely in the Premier League. Phone answered within a few rings, an understanding but not patronising employee, clear explanation of what was needed and all sorted in less than five minutes, including ordering a new chequebook in Mil’s name only.

He promised the account name would be changed within 24 hours – it was.

He said all I needed to do was pop into a local branch the next day with the death certificate, which he said would not take long. It didn’t.

I was only kept waiting for a few minutes and the process of verifying it with the details I’d given over the phone the previous day took seconds. In and out in 10 minutes. And all without an appointment having to be made.

Simples. And impressive.

I won’t go into great detail about the service received, so far, from Santander (two visits to the local branch to date, having to speak to the centralised appointments team (!), two different people seen, all three of us Lasting Power of Attorneys deleted from the system, account still not changed to Mil’s name etc. etc.)

The bank’s bad press goes before them and, based on recent experience, is fully justified.

And as for BT – if the company thinks the following is good customer service at a time of bereavement, then Santander should be winning national prizes for customer care.

It started badly - four calls lasting more than an hour in total of being told "you are in a queue for an adviser". Must be one busy advisor.

It improved slightly when they did transfer the account in to Mil’s name quite quickly. But then it continued to go downhill - as I was informed on May 22 that the earliest date that an Openreach Engineer can swap telephone lines from one room in a residential care home to another (Mil has to move across the corridor this weekend) is JUNE 15.

Yes, that’s right. Three and a half weeks. And note the mention of an Openreach engineer, not just "an engineer". Passing the buck early doors, by any chance?

BT and Santander – I award you the Dishonourable Order of Muppetry.

A personal tribute to Fil, also known as Tony

Apologies to my blog-reading friend, but I’m not going to be grumpy today.

Sad, yes, but grumpy, definitely not. You see, Fil died on Tuesday this week. To the uninitiated, that’s Father-in-Law Tony – SWMBO’s father.

Whilst I mourn his passing, I rejoice in a life lived well and to the full.

Tony would have been 90 had he made it to his birthday next month. He and Mil (Mother-in-Law, Elizabeth – you’re getting the hang of this, aren’t you?) had been married for 62 years and spent the last three and a half years living in a residential nursing home in Suffolk.

After volunteering to serve in India in WW2, Tony returned to the UK to follow in his father’s footsteps and train as a veterinary surgeon, qualifying in 1952.

He and Elizabeth, who was also a veterinary surgeon, ran their own practice in what is now Blyth’s Meadow in Braintree, Essex before Tony retired early.

Feeling too young to stop work completely, but eager to be free of the pressures associated with running his own business, he took a job working for the British Horse Society as an inspector of riding schools.

Tony then went on to work for his cousin who owned a building and joinery business in Colchester. Tony was happy in the wood workshop where he made new friends and was able to enjoy a strict nine to five routine which was in sharp contrast to his veterinary work.

It was also the beginning of a deep interest in working with wood, particularly turning and carving, as Tony went on to make rocking horses for a retailer in London, helped design and make a sign for his then home village and then designed and carved nine other village signs around Essex.

Tony loved sailing and kept a boat at West Mersea in Essex for a number of years. He was passionate about the sport and even tried to teach me the finer points. Let’s just say that I’m more of a landlubber than a sailor.

He caught the travel bug while in his late 50s and over the next 20 years or so frequently visited his children and other members of the family who were living abroad, including Dubai, Australia, Gibraltar, Belgium and Germany.

It was a shame that Elizabeth did not share this interest but she never, ever begrudged his trips, happy to stay at home and look after the dogs and the house.

Tony, I salute you. I always enjoyed your company, particularly when we went out for “some fresh air”, pipe and B&H in respective hands.

You will be greatly missed and remembered with fond affection by all who knew you.

The right and the wrong way to celebrate

How the UK marked VE Day............................................................

No country does a celebration like the UK. Fact. End of.

I could bore you all (again) by listing scores of examples but I really only need the one – the VE Day shindig over the last few days.

Somehow we just seem to get it right. Remembrance, combined with dignity and pomp, correctness side-by-side with joy and having a good time.

............................................................and how Russia marked it.

I didn’t, I have to admit, see anything of how the United States celebrated the end of the war in Europe but I can imagine the sugar-coated, over-the-top speeches, the wailing masses and those stupid bands marching as if the musicians had ants in their pant.

However, I did see a little of how Russia marked the occasion.

It was like watching the news during the height of the Cold War, when the old USSR was determined to remind its country folk that it had a bigger one than the Brits or the Americans.

It’s all a little sad, really.

We remembered with songs, happiness and respect.

Russia just got its weapons out.

I’m so glad fate took my mother and me west from Berlin all those years ago.

If things had been different, I wouldn’t now be able to write this Blog.

Now there’s food for thought.

Respected, selected, call collected 

I can't ignore them any longer. I have to accept that they won’t go away if I simply refuse to admit they exist.

SWMBO would not disregard them. In fact, she has mentioned them several times recently.

No, she’s right – it’s high time I acknowledged the general election and the main players.

My politics tend to be confrontational. Not that I’m a member of some loony tunes party.

It’s just that if someone at a dinner party (remember them?) mouths off, or orrff in the case of the Tories, about some particular political persuasion or other, I’ll invariably take a contrary view.

So one minute I’m a red-in-the-bed Labourite, the next a true-blue.

I guess that’s just in my nature. I’m such a wind up merchant that I should have been a clockmaker.

It’s also partly down to my upbringing. Having been born in The Fatherland in those desperate post-war years which had seen aircraft keeping Berlin, the city of my birth, fed and watered, I heard too many horror stories about how politics can go wrong, especially if you have a view at odds with the ruling party.

I have done my duty on every available occasion for the past 40-plus years, apart from the time we lived in the Gulf and expats weren’t able to vote.

People who don’t exercise this basic democratic right are bonkers. I have heard associates say they don’t have the time. Rubbish. Polling stations are open 7am to 10pm and even the most dedicated worker should be able to fit in a five-minute trip to the local village hall or school.

I don’t even mind if people spoil their ballot paper – at least they have exercised their right to do so.

So, just two days to go. Who am I going to vote for? Well, that’s a secret. Democracy’s great, isn’t it.

In our constituency we have a candidate who is a neighbour, a decent man and someone I know would act in the interests of his constituents, should he be elected.

Unfortunately, he’s the right man but, in my opinion, in the wrong party.

So, my vote will go elsewhere. But at least I’ll be exercising my right.

PS: A bonus point to anyone who recognised that the headline on this piece is a line from Alice Cooper’s 1972 classic “Elected”.