Monday 5th, 11:30 BT Overhead Wires crew arrived, (not underground crew - see later),
and connected a signal generator to our phone socket -
with two vehicles, one with a cherry picker, the other with a manhole lifter -
- traced our telephone wires using a hand held signal detector.
The pair sticking up is our telephone line.
Unfortunately the man says there is a fault underground between here and the exchange,
we will have to wait for an underground crew to fix it.
Meanwhile John and Tony have been busy
boxed the flue and remade the ceiling,
installed the window sills
and fixed two doors that were not closing properly.
They left mid afternoon, and will not be needed till the plasterers have finished.
Next day Tuesday 6th, the plasterers arrived and delivered 70 plaster boards.
It was a hot day, hard work. That is Carl and Billy.
They distributed about 50 of the boards in the upstairs rooms
In the meantime Margie got on with treating the wood with osmo wood finish.
It is a sunflower oil base, iron oxide and organic pigments, just one very thin coat.
At 11:00 get a phone call to my mobile from BT to say telephone line is fixed,
go and check. We got a dial-tone, after 13 days! But still no Internet access :-(
Telephoned BT to get Broadband going.
Somewhere here got a message from, Orange my mobile phone providor,
to say I only had 60 seconds of call time left.
Before we moved I had over £50 of call time.
The calls to 0800 800 151, the BT fault line, from a mobile phone are not free.
So I have no land line,
no Internet access
waste half an hour, at least, almost every day for 13 days,
using a seriously defective fault reporting system,
based in the Indian sub-continent, (don't get me wrong, I think people from there are
wonderful, beautiful, skilled, polite, pleasant, but in an awful situation.
They cannot help me. BT inflicts this awfullness on them and me, the their customer.)
Time and again I feel like apologising to them for our crap BT.
My distress, frustration, anger, must be sensed by them, even though I try to not to express my feelings.
The British Telecommunications Fault Reporting Service is seriously defective.
Anyway, we have a dial-tone, so I can dial 0800 numbers for free. Great.
Now we want Internet access like we had before we moved, and are still paying for.
so dial various numbers like:
Broadband Help 0845 600 7020, rubbish, loads of blabber about access to help via a web page,
and turn your router off for 3 mintutes and try again,
and recorded messages about problems in Glasgow they are dealing with,
I am in Newcastle - as they can see from the telephone number I am calling from.
Anyway, after various other numbers, 0800 328 1606, 0800 169 0199, 0800 800 150
press * and then 3, for compensation,
I get through to the Indian Sub-Continent, again,
where I explain that I have a telephone socket, that works! But no Broadband Router Socket.
After consulting with his supervisor, whilst I am put on hold listening to some wall paper music,
and fearing he will not come back, he does come back! To say a filter unit will be here in 4 working days!
That will be Tuesday 13th June 2006, we moved on Wednesday 24th May 2006.
Am I expecting too much?
We had several sheets of 25mm polystyrene left over so I cut and fit them between the battons
upstairs on the North and East walls. Just as extra insulation, better than throwing them away.
The other thing that needed doing was installing sound insulation in bedroom walls.
The specified sound insulation is a double layer of plaster board on each side of a wall.
(The room on the left is potentially a downstairs bedroom for someone unable to manage stairs,
and the one on the right is the living/dining room.)
Plaster board is 13mm thick, so a double layer is 26mm (an inch),
so two double layers is 2 inches of plaster board. That should do the trick.)
But on some walls we are having the bottom part clad in wood below a dado rail
and you cannot put a double layer of plaster board on that side.
So I am installing 100mm of Rockwool in those walls.
It was about this time that I decided we should try to get a new telephone line to Brookside Lodge,
even though we may not move in for 2 months. If it takes this long to move a line,
how long to provide one? After several false starts I am informed that what I need is
a Line Plant Enquiry Order.
A lass in the UK, takes my details, checks my credit rating, whilst I am online,
no wall paper music, does not transfer me somewhere else, does not lose me,
or transfer me to anyone else, does not lose me, or play wall paper music
and then lose me, and start all over again asking what telephone number I am reporting,
what is the house number, (we have no house number), what is the Post Code, we give it,
they do not see it in their computer data-base.
No problem with BT Sales, they can take money from anywhere, they can set up a Direct Debit,
assign an Account Number, new telephone number, sort out what Options I want, sort itomised billing.
Sort out everything to take your money from you, just one person to deal with.
A complete contrast to when you are paying money to BT and have a problem,
it is almost impossible to get it fixed.
And do you Know?
Next morning a BT person was here sorting out how to get a telephone line to our new house.
(It needs a new 9 meter pole, because the new regulations specify there has to be a 5.9 meter
clearance above a roadway.) No problem he says.
It is quite remarkable the difference in service one gets.
Once you are a customer and they have your money, you are crap.
But if a new customer, nothing is too much.
It was on Wednesday evening that I remembered we had the Broadband from BT box in the shed.
Went there, found it, found two Filter Units. Plugged one in the telephone socket, connected router,
got Internet connection!
(This is the other one, I broke it open to see what was inside.
It is not a cheap unit. It has 3 large brown capacitors, 3 inductance/transformer components,
about 20 components in all, no chips, Made in China, as everything is these days.)
Today I telephoned the boss Plasterer to say, "He could start."
We now just stand back and let them in. He says it will be Monday next week.
So we have Friday, Saturday, and Sunday free from the new house.
We will not know what to do with ourselves.
Maybe look at bathrooms, kitchens, and wet rooms.
Hope that after the plasterers the devastation is not too bad.