The following has been provided by Peter T as a local resident, rather than in his capacity as a Blog Team member
Apologies for hijacking the blog for a personal rant about BT’s appalling customer service. Foolishly I allowed the allure of faster download speeds to outweigh others’ warnings of BT’s bad customer service. I made my arrangements for my recent move on the basis of BT’s advice and commitments on ensuring no gap in my broadband provision. Some 15+ hours of phone calls later, after some eight assured connection dates between the 30th of March and the 17th of April, some five agents and managers failing to ring back when they promised, never speaking to the same person twice, conflicting and inconsistent explanations of what the problem is, repeatedly being cut off when placed on hold and over two weeks of no broadband, I was told yesterday that because of capacity problems in the exchange BT are unable to connect any new Broadband customers in the Parwich exchange before 31st of July 2015.
Because of the delay resulting from BT’s repeated assurances I would be connected, I have now lost the opportunity to re activating my old broadband provision, and may lose my old phone number (unless I either cancel my broadband order or take out a second phone line).
So by doing what BT advised would ensure I had no gap in Broadband provision, I am now looking at a 16 week plus gap in my Broadband. (Unless that is I can find another provider who is able to connect me sooner; so far two providers have said that the BT capacity problems would result in similar or longer delays in them connecting me.)
Peter T
We are trying to contact BT for more information on the implications of other new customers.
PARWICH.ORG 
Hi Peter. We moved to Parwich last month and we felt like we were reading our life in your BT rant. My husband and I work from home so connectivity is a must. BT promised us there would be no issue and the installation date was set for 23 March. 16th April and still we are being messed about. Other providers explained the exchange issue long beforw BT admitted what is wrong. We have now gone with a satellite company and we finally have internet. The customer service team have been helpful, the call centre is UK based and so far so good.
As my husband says surely BT are in breach of contract and this should be addressed. He also has other words about BT that can’t be printed here!
Your experience mirrors mine. I had the same dialogues with BT and 45days after the due date it arrived. What day did it come April Fools day! But at least I now have it. Good luck with getting connected
Having contacted the CEO of BT, our MP and the local press, I now have been given the direct line for someone in the BT Chairman’s Office who will head up dealing with my connection and investigating my complaints. Heaven at least not to have to fight with voice recognition, number selection without a relevant option, and repeatedly starting from scratch with new agents who fail to achieve anything.
Their engineers are reviewing the capacity issues in the exchange. She can not give me a timescale for this, but will get back to me on Monday with more concrete information. She can not understand how I was given the date of the 31st of July. Also they have said they would contribute towards the cost of a 3G dongle to access internet in the mean time. There remains the problem of getting my old number transferred to my new line.
However, she did not accept that I should have been told of the capacity issues when placing my initial order, and said that any offered connection date was provisional, though she did apologise for the inconvience I am experiencing.
So an ongoing struggle to see whether BT can connect me quicker than another provider, or if I follow Caroline and her husband and switch to satellite.
Well done Peter in getting a direct line number to the Chairman’s Office. Is this something you could share with other frustrated ‘potential’ BT Broadband users? Meanwhile, why you are waiting connection you can while away the time reading the endless mailshots from BT suggesting we should switch to High-Speed Broadband (which is about as likely in Parwich as mains gas or the discovery of a gold mine)
John, here is where I got the contact details for the Chief Executive Officer
http://phonebt.com/bt-complaints/
Gavin Patterson responded within a couple of hours arranging for their ‘Executive Level Complaints’ to contact me within another few hours. Whether this will help with the capacity problems at the exchange remains to seen, but at least it removes the frustration trying deal with a call centre.
Sorry to hear of your problems Peter.
A year ago I gave up with TalkTalk because of incredibly slow broadband speeds especially in the evenings and weekends, which they could not fix.
I am now with W3z who I think offer a brilliant service- talking to a human in Derbyshire rather than Delhi if there are any problems and having an answer straight away. They offer a constant speed of 20Mbps. – on this website http://www.w3z.co.uk/speedtest/ I receive a speed of 17-20 Mbps at any time of day or night .
Connection is made via a small dish on my chimney – it does not use the conventional phone line, so I had that disconnected and use Vonage http://www.vonage.co.uk/ as my phone line (VOIP). Again great service and excellent value- £7 a month for free UK calls, no line rental and all extras such as call waiting included- as well as a brilliant answering machine service that sends an approximately transcribed email whenever there is a phone message, and the ability for calls to my home number also to ring my mobile simultaneously.
W3Z charge by usage so I normally pay £21.99 a month for 10Gb.
Well Peter , it seems BT are at capacity, as of my comment to you on facebook.
Time to give up the ghost and kick them into touch, like Martin C said I believe W3Z , plusnet, Tèsco are all pretty good . And of course they are all faster than Bt if you are not connected. All the best in your quest Terry P
We use Bentley and Walker and it cost £200 for the installation and then £50 for 40GB but there’s different packages for your needs. You can add 1GB at a time for an additional sum if you do exceed whichever package you go for, as well. We don’t have a phone-line though so W3Z looks interesting if you need this as well, which we aren’t fussed about.
They really shouldn’t call themselves British Telecom as we haven’t been able to speak to a single person in the UK and those we did speak to clearly had a script they were reading from and couldn’t answer the most of our questions. If you do want to take it further with BT we’d be happy to add our story to any complaint because it is ludicrous. I can’t believe the person you spoke with didn’t accept that we should have been told about capacity issues etc. When we placed the order, we were very clear about our needs and this is for business. If we couldn’t pay our first bill because we lost work through their ineptitude, I bet they would kick up a fuss!
I did comment before about w3z in Tissington we had no joy at all with BT. and Sir Richard brought w3z into the village now no problem
We/I have used Zycomm’s w3z for my wireless connection for years and years now, including wifi for the holiday cottage. They have always provided a prompt, personal and reliable service. I don’t really take an interest in the systems, and decided to send an email to Zycomm, pointing them to the ‘Nightmare’ blogpost. Here is what they told me (in an email within 2 hours of my email…):
“Local Derbyshire Wireless Internet Service Provider W3Z ,based in Ripley, now with 4000+ satisfied customers in Derbyshire alone would reitteratate that it can provide its GUARANTEED 20 Mb/s Superfast Internet Service to many Residents of Parwich and surrounding areas. W3Z is part of the Zycomm Communications Group based in Ripley since 1979. W3Z does not need to use misleading phrases such as ‘Up to” as instead, it uses real meaningful phrases such as ‘Guaranteed’.
W3Z boasts the Chatsworth Estate, Tissington and Haddon Estates amongst its extensive customer base. In the last 12 months after providing its service onto Pride Park Derby it has taken 40+ business customers off BT in that area. W3Z is now active on Derby Cathedral providing service to the Derby Cathedral Area businesses.
W3Z deliveres the service by wireless rather than underground wires which have suffered from years of corrosion. It is completely unaffected by weather and is the ultimate in relaibility. W3Z offers local 24/7/365 telephone support with only ‘Derbyshire’ being the acceptable language!
Once a customer of W3Z you can give up your BT phone line, save up to £17 a month on that and subscribe to http://www.vonage.co.uk. You only pay £7 a month to Vonage and there is no longer any BT line rental. Instead Vonage uses your W3Z link as its ‘phone lines’ and gives you unlimited access to all 01.. 02… and 03… numbers for no additional call charge. You can download a free APP on to your mobile called Vonage Connections and this allows you to use your mobile phone when connected to any Wi-Fi network to make ‘free’calls to those UK landline numbers over your Vonage account without using up any of your mobile account credit.”
PS: I don’t use ‘Vonage’ myself but may look into this.
Lynda Keyworth raises an interesting prospect. If Sir Richard brought w3z into Tissington, could the company provide a community scheme on advantageous terms for Parwich?
I don’r know whether Matt H. who, if I a correct, was the parish council “broadband champion” can throw any light on where BT and Derbyshire County Council got to with improvements to connections , speed and reliability?
A snippet from the Derbyshire County Council’s website in case you were not already aware of these developments:
http://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/business/community_broadband/default.asp
“Digital Derbyshire is a £27.67 million programme to deliver the county’s biggest ever broadband transformation.
Digital Derbyshire Partnership
The council is spearheading Digital Derbyshire and has signed a contract with BT to make fibre broadband available to a further 88,000 premises across the county, bringing access to more than 95 per cent of homes and businesses by 2016. The project builds on BT’s existing commercial fibre deployment in the county.”
Oh well, what can I say, time for a coffee and biscuit….
According to Digital Derbyshire site superfast broadband for Parwich is “under progress” and due in 2015. We shall see.
I certainly would like to see superfast broadband in Parwich, but with age and experience I have learned not to believe or trust anything that I have read .
BT’s Executive Level Complaints (within the Chairman’s Office) have confirmed that:
So if anyone is thinking of getting broadband in the area covered by the Parwich exchange, it looks like satellite or W3Z are the only potential options for the near future, unless you can find an alternative supplier who is sitting on some space capacity.
PS Trying to interact with BT is a sure way of inducing insomnia. Complain about lack of Broadband to the ‘Executive Level Complaints’ and they will promise to phone you, but send an email instead, which you can read using your nonexistent broadband.
I asked W3z about there Parwich service – this was their reply
“We already have partial-coverage of Parwich, but since there is significant interest we would be happy to invest further to provide coverage to as many homes in the village as possible.
Satellite broadband is an option, but it’s expensive, high latency and over-subscribed (slow at peak times).
On the contrary, and as you know, our W3Z network is terrestrial wireless (across land) and fully engineered by us, which is why we can guarantee the 20Mbps speed at all times. We monitor all of our backhaul links pro-actively, so when they start to look busy, we simply upgrade the capacity. Continuous investment in a product is the only way that broadband services are going to stand the test of time, and we’re in it for the long run. Happy customers is our number-one priority.
Thanks again for your comments, I will discuss with our commercial director and get something more substantial organised for Parwich.
Encouraging remarks from W3Z whom I know have an excellent reputation for their wireless broadband provision. I’m assuming their partial coverage of Parwich is made possible by W3Z’s transmitters at Longcliffe (or Kniveton). I wonder whether W3Z could “piggy-back” on Arqiva’s existing, substantial, monopole TV relay at Brook Close farm overlooking Parwich? I’d go with W3Z in a heartbeat if I could grab their signal up at Alsop (W3Z kindly undertook a survey at my location but alas no signal could be picked up).
I am afraid we can’t work with Arqiva as they charge monumental levels of money for their representative to watch us work, each time we need access to one of their sites. The last time I think it was £1500 a day (or part of) just to ‘supervise’ my very experienced and ‘certificated’ staff employed by our BSI ISO9001accredited Company. On that last occasion we were working on a Local Authority radio system in Bedfordshire who thought it reasonable for us to pay that fee and pass it on to them. Arqiva also charge ‘several thousands’ per annum for mast occupancy. The only reason we can do W3Z at the price is the fact I have 13 hilltop radio sites in my ownership that W3Z can have a free ride on. The hilltop radio sites (4 of the 7 masts at Alport Heights) are owned by Zycomm Holdings Ltd and have been built up over the last 35 years since I founded the Zycomm Radio business.
Given the interest we have seen on this website from those of you in Parwich, not already with us, we will quickly review the situation and try our best to bring you as near as we can a total solution very quickly. On Thursday the Rt Hon. Sajid Javid, the Minister for Culture, (Yes also responsible for Superfast development in the UK) came to Ripley to see how we perform miracles. I have to say I was as impressed with him as he was with Zycomm and W3Z.
I agree with other comments here – Vonage, a US Company / Product works brilliantly over our network. Once a Vonage customer you can also download a free APP on to your mobile phone and make Vonage “free” calls over any Wi-Fi you can connect with – you don’t need to be at home in range of your own Vonage box. (www.vonage.co.uk)
Until this time the registrations of interest via our website http://www.w3z.co.uk from Parwich have been pretty low. At the Homepage you can express interest or sign up for service – the latter initiates the job sheet and a survey of your premises.
Once a customer on W3Z you can manage your own account yourself, on-line and turn your capacity up AND DOWN as required on a month-by-month basis. If you are going away on holiday turn it right down and ensure I do not become too rich at your expense. I believe we are unique in this offering.
I look forward to welcoming you on-board. You can forget the rest and any problems you may encounter will be rapidly answered 24/7/365 in Derbyshire Language wish a ‘splash’ of Shottle and Ipstones thrown in.
With us the book stops here!
Wishing you ‘Good’ Speed!
Ian Sneap
Chairman Zycomm Group
(Reared in Shottle – The Duke of Devonshire’s ‘Land of Milk and Honey’)
http://www.w3z.co.uk
http://www.zycomm.co.uk (Just revamped so not all links complete yet)
Ian, I would just add a grovelling plea to include Alsop-en-le-Dale in your plans. Since I work from home over the Internet, I can guarantee subscribing to a high usage plan! =)
Thank you Ian. It’s refreshing to see such a “can do” approach in the often rather the turgid waters of British “enterprise”.
Infrastructure assets, such as the Arqiva mast (given the tortuous hurdles it must have crossed to realise) should surely be shared, in the interests of local people (capital and on-costs distributed on an equitable basis). The “powers that be” need to bang heads together, or else we face a proliferation of unnecessary duplicative sites, especially in the context of a National Park, where planning is (rightly) very strict.
Good job Ian for all you have done for broadband access in our rural places. I’ll nominate you for an OBE – maybe even a knighthood if you can get your stuff up to Alsop en le Dale 😉
Anthony – MBE (20Mb/e Guaranteed) will be just fine, I don’t want to upstage my friend John Bradbury MBE for his years of devoted work in looking after Kniveton Churchyard. I would have to ask for the crusts to be left on the sandwiches in London – I found the sandwiches rather ‘twee’ on the last visit. Humble Pie would be very acceptable if HM wanted a faster service from W3Z. Contact me direct via email as we can do some in Alsop en le Dale already (from John’s at Winn Farm). I am just looking at the possibility of PIkehall if anyone is interested – I think I have found a solution?
For a business man (your tech credentials obviously help in this) you are a bit of a wag Ian. I’ll email you directly.
As for the practical problems presented by our hilly area, where line-of-sight really is the beast in terms of microwave propagation, all we need is a fleet of earthmoving bulldozers to flatten the landscape – simple. These doggone hills just get in the way of my lifestyle choices. Heck, I used to live in Norfolk, and we didn’t have these problems at all.
In the mid-1990s, when the Internet was in its infancy (for the hoi polloi) I paid an absolute fortune to BT, having to use dial-up modem and incur long-distance phone charges to the nearest Internet Provider – Demon in London. I called the Library in Norwich in 1995 to encourage the setting up of a local node. “Yes, we’ve heard things aboot that there Internet thingy an we are investigatin”.
How times have changed 🙂
Now I have seen the interest here I will get my ‘helpers’ to focus on a significant AP for Parwich – please give us 4 weeks. Then we can put a red cross on each BT pole?
Norwich – no thanks, I prefer these real Radon rich hills, they can get in the way but they are also very useful to serve communities from. South Derbyshire is very similar to Norfolk – flat and trees! Actually less trees in Norfolk.
We did the microwave planning for Wi-Spire in Norfolk. They need to use Church spires and or the Taclestone TV mast but don’t forget the maximum range at this frequency is 5-7KM. Not many people near Taclestone – they are all frying!
Can anyone get me a direct contact with Don F ? I need to sort him out in Alsop en le Dale. Then I can take him up on his kind offer and arrange Lyons Tea Rooms for the Reception after Buck House :)) Lyons – that shows my vintage?
We at Inglefield would also be interested in having decent broadband as I work from home and my partner does also at times. PLEASE!!!!
Inglefield? I recall (just) Lady Inglefield at Flower Lillies in Windley (Turnditch). Please enlighten me?
Ian
So sorry I meant the house Inglefield in Parwich! So eager to get our Broadband sorted I didn’t think.
Lady Inglefield’s son, Sir John Compton-Inglefield, owned Parwich Hall for a number of years. Inglefield is a house in Parwich that took it’s name from the family.
BT now report that the capacity issues at the Parwich exchange have been sorted. I have been given a connection date for my broadband of today (only the ninth since the initial connection date of 39/3/15). Will keep everyone updated.
Don’t worry despite BT’s latest promises we will press on, then let you know how to switch to Vonage (www.vonage.co.uk) over our network and make you £200+ a year better off. Once with us you can port your BT number to Vonage and carry on with that number on Vonage without BT wires and line rental charges. It works brilliantly! Your friends will not know there is anything different other than clearer and better quality phone calls.
Ian
As promised this week we are enhancing our Superfast W3Z Broadband for the Village. Our Engineers are installing an Access Point at Creamery Lane on Wednsday 20th of May and that should give good coverage to 85% + of the village by next week. Guaranteed 20Mb/s service and very low cost phone calls without BT line charges are there for the asking at http://www.w3z.co.uk – you can even transfer your existing BT number! Green Boxes can now position themselves with Green Goddesses !
How interesting. BT are quite frankly an.embarrassment when it comes to customer service. We have been lied to, fobbed off with excuses as we try to get connected to broadband at wath upon dearne exchange. Apparently there is a problem with some cables being faulty..and they need permission from the head of traffic before they can fix it. 2 weeks and counting.