Church and State blog: British Telecom: Declan's complaint to the CEO of BT about the handling of the bad TV reception we have been accustomed to getting of late through our BT YouView box (WITH TREBLE UPDATE

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

British Telecom: Declan's complaint to the CEO of BT about the handling of the bad TV reception we have been accustomed to getting of late through our BT YouView box (WITH TREBLE UPDATE - Day 5 26/5/2017)

UK Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ)

It's not just our Church and State website that's under attack (74 blocks on public access to the site this month; 16 blocks last week; 1 block so far today) despite the fact that a leading web hosting provider, SiteGround, is paid $1,000 per year to host our site and manage the server. This afternoon Declan wrote to British Telecom CEO Gavin Patterson to complain about the handling of the bad TV reception we have been accustomed to getting of late. BT is one of the world's leading communications services companies. Yesterday BT Customer Care informed Declan that he will be charged £129.99 on his next BT bill if their engineer reports today that our fault has nothing to do with their network but is the result of our home wiring, our equipment or their network has been damaged within the boundary of our property. This is Declan's email to Patterson:

Gavin Patterson
CEO
British Telecom

Address removed for email

24 May 2017

Dear Mr Patterson,

Yesterday British Telecom informed me that I will be charged £129.99 on my next BT bill if your engineer Alexander finds on his visit this afternoon that my fault has nothing to do with your network but is the result of my home wiring, fault with my equipment, or your network has been damaged within the boundary of my property.

I have informed your Customer Care Team that the fault is intermittent TV reception through your YouView box. This afternoon I am not experiencing reception problems through your YouView box or through the property aerial, so I do not believe a case can be made that the fault is the result of my home wiring or fault with my equipment, or indeed that your network has been damaged within the boundary of my property.

I trust that I will not be charged £129.99 on my next BT bill and that this frustrating intermittent TV reception problem through your YouView box can be resolved.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey
Managing Director
Network for Church Monitoring

"Let me recommend an important web site - churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out." - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

22 May: British Telecom: We pay BT £65.53 per month but Declan is told that there is nothing they can do about the bad TV reception we have been accustomed to getting of late (WITH UPDATE - Day 3 24/5/2017)

DAY 4 UPDATE 25 May (12.50pm): This is our fourth day in a row dealing with BT. Declan has been told by BT Customer Care that none of his repeated requests for the engineer's report has registered on their system. The engineer assured us yesterday that we would not be charged for his visit, and that BT would have no problem providing us with a copy of his report this morning. In fact, the engineer was so helpful that it would be our intention to ask for him again if the fault persists, so long as his report contains no surprises. We are all hoping that the frustrating intermittent TV reception problem we have been experiencing of late has been resolved, although the engineer explained that only time can really tell. Now Declan's request for this report is being dealt with by BT Executive Level Complaints (Consumer), but it appears that we may not see the report until next Wednesday, if at all. Of course Declan will make a Subject Access Request (SAR) for the report if he thinks he has to; we just can't understand what is so special about a supposedly run-of-the-mill report, and what it is about Declan's straightforward request for same that BT Executive Level Complaints are finding so difficult to handle. Declan has just received this email from Trevor Potts on behalf of BT CEO Gavin Patterson:

Hello Mr. Heavey,

Thanks for your email to Libby Barr. I'm sorry to learn you’re having problems with your BT service.

Our team are now dealing with your case and will own to resolution.

So we can understand your issue please give us a little time to investigate, a dedicated case handler will be in touch by Wednesday at the latest.

Before then, if you’re a bit worried or something's changed just drop us a note at elc@bt.com or contact us on 0791 888 4688

Best wishes,

Trevor Potts
Executive Level Service Team; BT Consumer

DAY 4 UPDATE 25 May (10.16pm): Following our first internet cut as BT customers this afternoon, Declan wrote back to Trevor Potts requesting assurance that we will not be charged for the engineer's visit yesterday. Declan attached a double-signed note that the engineer left us before leaving our flat. The engineer first wrote that there would be no charge for his visit, and then added that he could not say that we had damaged any BT equipment or that the fault is the result of our home wiring. Declan copied BT CEO Gavin Patterson into the email. Our contract with BT commenced on 28 May 2014. The internet cut this afternoon lasted 26 minutes (from 1.39pm - 2.05pm).

DAY 5 UPDATE 26 May (10.55am): Where is all this going? No assurance as yet from BT Executive Level Complaints that we will not be charged for the engineer's visit on 24 May, notwithstanding the engineer's written assurance that there would be no charge for the visit. Yesterday Declan also wrote to Tracy Reid of BT Executive Level Complaints requesting that she delete erroneous fault details for 25 May. He copied BT CEO Gavin Patterson into the complaint. He sent her this follow-up email this morning:

For the attention of Gavin Patterson, Chief Executive, British Telecom

Tracy Reid
Executive Level Complaints (Consumer)
British Telecom

Address removed for email

26 May 2017

Dear Ms Reid,

I refer to my email to you yesterday and again respectfully request that you please delete from my online account fault details for 25 May 2017 under the title Phone fault 02084703021 - Completed (please see attachment). The diagnostic run reads:

"We have run a line test and we cannot find a problem with your line. The problem may be with your own equipment so we need you to carry out some tests. To get help with that click on the 'Help Section' on top right. If you have already checked your equipment and still have a problem then please call 0800 800 151. If you have made an appointment already the details will be shown below. There is no need for you to do anything further."

Please note that I have never reported a fault with my phone, nor do I have a problem with my line.

I am even more worried now that BT intend charging me for the engineer's visit on 24 May to resolve my frustrating intermittent TV reception problem of late, notwithstanding the engineer's written assurance that there would be no charge for his visit because he could not say that I had damaged any BT equipment or that the fault is the result of my home wiring. In addition to deleting fault details for 25 May 2017, please could you also reassure me that I will not be receiving any extra charges on forthcoming bills for anything so far.

I am deeply concerned that I may need to seek legal advice as to how to proceed in this matter. I am however still hopeful that these two issues can be resolved amicably by BT Executive Level Complaints (Consumer) without any undue delay.

Yours sincerely,

Declan Heavey

M: 07880437681

DAY 5 UPDATE 26 May (12.45pm): Declan phoned BT Executive Level Complaints following his email to Tracy Reid above. He was unable to speak to her, and no one from BT Executive Level Complaints has returned his call. Most certainly we are worried at this point in time. The reluctance of BT Executive Level Complaints to provide us with a copy of the engineer's report aside, why is it so difficult for them to assure us that we will not be charged £130 for his visit on 24 May, particularly in light of his written assurance that there would be no charge for his visit because he could not say that BT equipment had been damaged or home wiring impaired? At the moment our TV signal strength through our BT YouView box is stable at 92%, and signal quality is 100%. The engineer told us that any signal strength above 50% is acceptable when it comes to home wiring! Do I now have to publish his note too? Are we going to be told that the engineer's double-signed handwritten note is of no value to us and has been overridden by a false and fabricated report that renders us liable to £130 on top of our next £65 monthly bill? Are we looking at the Small Claims Court here?

DAY 5 UPDATE 26 May (5.52pm): BT Executive Level Complaints have still not confirmed whether any charges have been raised on Declan's account by the engineer, nor have we been provided with the engineer's report, nor have we been provided with any explanation as to why a phone fault we never reported cannot be removed from Declan's online account. We guess they are closed for the long weekend, so damn it the engineer's name is Alexander Boyce and I am now going to publish his double-signed handwritten note which we will use to contest any charges that have been raised as a result of the report that he has submitted for BT's senior engineering team to investigate. It is quite clear from this note that Boyce provided us with written assurance that there would be no charge for his visit because he could not say that we had damaged any BT equipment or that at the time the fault (viz. intermittent TV reception through our BT YouView box) was the result of our home wiring:

From My Picks:

20 February: The Central London County Court: District Judge Avent dismisses Declan's claim against the Greater London Authority-commissioned St Mungo's that alleged the falsification and fabrication of data against us (WITH UPDATE 16/3/2017)

'Let me recommend an important web site churchandstate.org.uk. Operating out of London this well-designed and exciting web site covers church-state, population, climate change and other issues. Check it out.' - Edd Doerr, President, Americans for Religious Liberty

Church and State

MAYOR OF LONDON RSI PROPERTY
DAY 406 IN A WEEKLY PERIODIC TENANCY
SUBJECT TO A SECTION 21 NOTICE

(SEE PARA. 3 BELOW)

1. Our 308 Honorary Associates include 20 Nobel Prize laureates. Declan and I are engaged in a project that deals with the publication of issues significant to social policy in a number of key areas, e.g., climate change, population, futurism, atheism, and free speech. Established as Network for Church Monitoring, a non-profit company limited by guarantee, our main publication, found at the website, Church and State, calls attention to subjects, not the least which have been critical of the interaction between religious and secular institutions. We have been the target of numerous threats and actions, e.g., the former resulting in threats to Declan's life, and the latter, which have led to vandalism. The various incidents are on record with the police and other official agencies.

2. There are no less than 63 Nobel Prize laureates on the Church and State website from 20 Honorary Associates, eight articles, nine book excerpts and 33 petition signatories. (For example, one Nobel laureate signed our Nobel petition in support of human embryonic stem cell research and gave us permission to excerpt from one of his books.) Our list of associates also includes 18 US National Medal laureates, and six Turing Award laureates (the equivalent of the Nobel Prize in computer science). We have published one article and excerpted from the books of seven members of the British House of Lords. And there are 31 knighted professors on the site from 13 Honorary Associates, one book excerpt and 21 petition signatories. These figures are despite the never-ending assault on our email (this link reveals the targeting of our emails to, among others, a close colleague in Washington, DC as well as space advocates and Nobel laureates).

3. This is Day 406 for us living under the threat to life of a 'no fault' eviction by Peabody Trust.[1] We live in a Mayor of London's Rough Sleepers Initiative (RSI) property. Peabody's appalling new terms of tenancy have forced us into an unstable weekly periodic tenancy that poses a threat to Declan's life and inhibits our ability to exercise our rights. Declan accumulated quite a history with the Housing Ombudsman Service before he received the Ombudsman's decision not to investigate a referral from Lyn Brown MP on jurisdictional grounds. The Ombudsman was asked to consider whether or not our tenancy has been renewed like for like; and whether, if not, it should be in light of the landlord having accused us of not signing a like-for-like agreement. The Equality and Human Rights Commission will not accept a referral of discrimination from Ms Brown, the Commission's helpline (EASS) having grossly distorted the complaint against Peabody. We no longer have pro se access to the courts (see next paragraph).

4. This eviction matter came before District Judge Ruth Fine at the Central London County Court on 30 June 2020, when both counsel for St Mungo's (the charity in effective control of our tenancy) and Declan presented their positions. Declan lost the case and was ordered to pay £1,850 in costs. A publishing colleague in America cleared these costs within 24 hours of my blog post about this hearing for strike out on a related issue that was the essence of the claim, i.e., that St Mungo's would take a phone call to confirm that we are clients of the Mayor of London's RSI programme. Within a week of the hearing, St Mungo's had agreed to take this phone call for us both, the Court having ruled that they were not obliged to do so despite our circumstances. This time we escaped bankruptcy (counsel for St Mungo's asked for £3,407.50 in costs), but consider that to seek pro se access to justice in the courts has become far too dangerous for us. Declan currently has before the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman the decision of the Information Commissioner that allows St Mungo's to continue processing coercive support plans without our knowledge or consent and that also poses a threat to his life.

5. When it comes to traffic, we have had 10.7 million hits in the past three years on Facebook; however, I left the platform on 13 March 2021 for one year rather than risk being banned for life. It is indisputable that with any sort of level playing field Church and State would have far exceeded 2.5 million hits last year. In addition to a large variety of blocks without explanation, Facebook had so severely restricted our Page's distribution by October 2020 that it was almost as good as an unpublished page.[2] Currently, we are up to their 85th block since 1 December 2015, and as usual without an explanation. This block records as one half of their 3rd double block in the first five weeks of this year that lasted 60 days. Our traffic has also been curtailed by over 2.5K blocks on access to Church and State since 26 July 2016, including 29 full distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks since 17 May 2019 that have lasted for as long as 54 hours at a time.[3] About 70% of our hits are from Americans.

"This is precisely the hard hitting kind of response needed to clarify the unfair way Facebook is treating your highly reputable site." Don Collins, Founder, International Services Assistance Fund, Washington DC

Last updated: 26/06/21

_________________________

[1] Once a fixed term has elapsed, the landlord has the option to seek eviction even if the tenant has upheld their obligations in full (though of course the landlord must still apply for and obtain a county court order).

[2] 17/10/20: We have permission to publish this ISAF letter of 30 September to Facebook COO Sheryl Samberg. Facebook has so severely restricted our Page's distribution since 4 September that it's almost as good as an unpublished page

[3] Since October 2019, we have been defining a full DDoS attack as having such a high volume of up to 4-minute blocks on access to Church and State that we don't bother recording them all.

Church and State blog

Wednesday, May 24, 2017

British Telecom: Declan's complaint to the CEO of BT about the handling of the bad TV reception we have been accustomed to getting of late through our BT YouView box (WITH TREBLE UPDATE - Day 5 26/5/2017)

About me

My Picks

Church and State

Blog Archive