Comedian gets BT boss to fix his broadband

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 31 Jul 2008 at 10:30

Comedian Dave Gorman has found a surefire way of getting your BT broadband connection fixed - email CEO Ian Livingston.

As we reported on our blog two days ago, the comedian's BT broadband connection had completely failed for five days, with Gorman eventually left to rely on a dial-up connection.

Gorman's blog provides hilarious details of the incompetence of BT's support desk, with staff repeatedly failing to diagnose the problem, and blaming a "system error" for a "cock up" which saw them provide engineers with the wrong information to fix the fault.

The comedian eventually asked to speak to the complaints manager's superior, but was repeatedly rebuffed with the blunt reply: "I'm your last port of call."

Not satisfied, Gorman decided to take his complaint to the very top and emailed CEO Ian Livingston. Lo and behold, the connection was repaired within hours.

"I don't know if this last e-mail tipped things over the edge or whether the process was already in motion... what I do know is that about three hours later I received a call on my mobile from a man called Chris who told me he was one of BT's Business Improvement Specialists," Gorman claims.

"Ian had called him and told him to fix things. I reckon that when the CEO wants something fixed he speaks to someone with a bit more clout than those I'd been dealing with... Chris was the first person I spoke to who appeared to know what he was talking about."

The BT boss even agreed to look into Gorman's suggestion that a dial-up connection should be provided as a backup for all broadband connections as a matter of course, although stopped short of backing Gorman's inspired suggestion of despatching USB mobile broadband sticks to customers whose connections have failed. "I don't think it's fair to directly quote any correspondence but the gist of it was that most of its broadband issues are sorted quickly, that the suggestion regarding dial-up would be passed on but that the USB-modem suggestion was probably too costly."

So should all customers follow Gorman's example and write to the BT boss if they want their connection fixed? "In most cases you don't have to email our CEO and in most cases the problem would be sorted much quicker," a distinctly unamused BT spokesman told PC Pro.

We suspect that, in most cases, it also helps to be a well-known celebrity...