h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Bluudy BT!!!

We move house on Tuesday. We were told that we needed to give BT 10 days notice of the house move, then it would be a day or two after that date that our land line will be connected.

Has this happened? Nope!

It will be the 8th September before they will come round to fit our land line.

Now, I'm not overly bothered about having the land line, but we need this for G's place of work.

G works in theatre at the hospital. On Saturday 2 September he will be on day call. This means that any emergencies that come through, the slack will be taken up by G. If G is late in getting to the hospital, this means the operation could be delayed and in worse case scenario's, someone could die because of the delay in getting to the hospital.

My anger is about the inflexibility of BT. G has to now rely on his mobile phone for the hospital to contact him on. What if we lose the signal? Or the phone breaks? This then means that the hospital cannot contact G directly to inform him of an trauma emergency.

I have tried to explain the importance of having a landline to BT, but they refused to offer me any help.

Actually, that's not strictly true. They offered to bring the connection date forward by 2 days. This still isn't good enough! We need it for when G is first "on call"!!!

Use ntl instead. We do. Never had a problem with 'em. The only problem we did have was when BT wouldn't transfer our existing number to the new ntl one.

We can't use ntl either. It would be good if we could, but we can't. The house we're buying is brand new and on a brand new site. ntl aren't allowed to go onto a new build until 10 years have lapsed from the site selling it's last house. This means it could be up to 13 years before ntl can access the housing estate and lay down the new wires.

Hi VV

I can't stand that BT outfit either. Doesn't seem to stop me spending all my money with them though

My thoughts are: 1) the hospital must have some sort of contingency in the event that they cannot contact G (there could be a BT fault on your line for example). I've managed far less important on-call services, and we always had some sort of standby arrangements.

and 2)Can G swap his on-call duty?

Icy

He could in theory have a bleep with him. He's had one before. They can then bleep him during emergencies, but again, it all depends if something happens to the local signals, then they can't contact him. That's the whole point of having a backup. The back up is his mobile phone, but since we won't have a landline on his first oncall, then we don't have a back up for the mobile phone. *sigh*

G can't change his date for the oncall either. He wasn't supposed to have any holidays next week as the quota for holidays is full, but because he offered to do the saturday oncall, this meant that he only actually had to take 1 day annual leave for next week.

is there posibility to get legal advice with help of G's hospital?

thread with tv consumer programm exposure!

How about you give them the landline number of a neighbour or nearby relative as a backup for that day?

We will be the third people to move into the site. I don't know them and would feel awful for asking them for their phone numbers!

We won't have any family nearby either. The closest will be mum and dad and it will take them around 25 minutes to drive around to our house. *sigh*

I've been intouch with ofcom and they said it was up to BT's discression to do it quicker.

I think the only thing G can do is to go to work and stay there for the 12 hours he's on call for just in case.

We really cannot rely upon a mobile phone as the only way of contact.

at BT

I do not know if you tried this:
if you call demand to get a manager. do not take no for answer, but stay polite!

Well you've tried everything you can, so you shouldn't feel guilty about anything.

I think the onus now is on the hospital administrators who manage the callout service. You should inform them that although you will take all reasonable actions to be contactable there may not be a backup method for contacting G on Saturday. Let them decide if they want to take the risk. Alternatively if they want G to attend the hospital all day, then they would be obliged to pay him overtime for so doing.

*nods in agreeance with Icy*

It's not your fault the line isn't there, so the hospital can't lay the blame on you. But no doubt it will come down to staffing, as always.

Sorry VV, there isn't anything helpful I could suggest. I hope you'll manage to do something about it

Hey just give me a contact No for BT, I feel the need, the need to slap someone who makes my mates life, crappy!


RJR

at BT

Ooooohhh!

You're lucky not to talk to her directly on the phone!!

Are your ears still bleeding l'il?

evening all

Traveller in Time not in any backup duty
"I have done work 'on call' for years, lucky I was allowed to give 'them' the number I was available to use. Worst case he will have to stay at the hospital, they often have a 'nurse appartment', we have stayed there too, on occasion .


Stange situation indeed, only the 'main' provider can give you a landline, but can not. And the other providers can connect you but are not allowed. "

That is craptastic VV.

We were in a similar situation once.
We waited six weeks for a phone line.

We got permission to use one neighbors line as a party line for emergencies during that time period. We did not use the line otherwise so they always answered it.

The phone company was able to set that up with another permission when they could not do anything else to help speed up things.