I failed to get the invertebrate check done yesterday and I'm going to have a rant.  Not a long one I assure you, but I am a grumpy old man!

For my sins I am Chairman of the community association that brings Internet broadband to the scattered farmsteads and hamlets in the upper Ribble valley.  We do this via a wireless network which connects to the big wide world at Horton Station.  Because of the number of subscribers we have on the network (well over 80) and the increasingly sophisticated use that they are making of their broadband access we need to do some major upgrading to the network.  A key component of this is to install additional phone lines at the station.  Have you ever tried to contact BT? Talking to BT must rank as the most surreal, frustrating and downright annoying experience I have ever encountered.  The company and its call centres are simply incompetent to the point of complete farce.

All we want are two additional lines.  What is the fundamental of BT's business?  To provide phone lines?  Wrong! Their main reason for existing is to provide work for the NHS by inducing advanced stress related ulcers in their customers.

Apparently I can have my two phone lines, but at the exorbitant cost of £10,000.00.  No breakdown of this charge is available and no explanation of the engineering work that can possibly incur such a charge may be given.  No one at BT seems remotely interested in taking any responsibility for helping to find workable solutions and yesterday I spent hours being passed from call centre to call centre before arriving at one operative who told me that 'I cannot understand what you are telling me as it's not part of my skill set, have a nice day' and hung up.  By the time I had spent hours talking to robotic morons I simply wanted to go away and kill something.

A letter has now gone off to BT's complaints dept which will probably languish in someones in tray for months before eliciting a reply along the lines of 'Thank you for your complaint however, it's not part of BT's skill set to be helpful to customers.  Have a nice day.

To return to sanity.  It's a glorious morning for a change so I am going to spend a happy couple of hours today doing the invertebrate check that I should have done yesterday.

Ian