Di Blackman, of Lockhouse Farm, Dunsford, writes:

I note with interest your article in The Business section of the Mid-Devon Advertiser (September 30) about BT and how they have recruited 165 more engineers to improve services. I thought I would let you know that it is not working!

We moved to Dunsford near Exeter on August 26 from west Sussex. My husband is disabled which is compounded by a heart condition. We ordered from BT, on August 15, a transfer of our phone and broadband services and they agreed to activate these at our new address in Dunsford on August 30. We were keen to get these up and running as soon as possible especially given that we have no mobile signal in Dunsford and my husband relies heavily on them.

Neither service was activated on August 30 as promised and there has followed more than six weeks of utter hell for my husband and I. We did manage to get our phone line activated by September 6 following more than three hours of phone calls with the BT call centre in India.

To date, the broadband service has still not been activated and is causing my husband and I significant distress. The broadband service has been ‘ordered’ by the call centre to be activated on seven occasions and each time it has failed to be connected. It was supposed to have been activated on August 30, September 2, 6, 20 and 26 and most recently on October 7. I have evidence to support this. The reasons we have been given for the failure range from ‘your order has got stuck’, ‘your order has been cancelled by Openreach’, ‘your order has been cancelled by BT Wholesale’, ‘there is no capacity at the box’, ‘the line from the box has a fault’, ‘the line needs a booster’, ‘your order shows as having been completed so we will need to reorder it!’.

The BT service from the call centre has been appalling as you can never get to speak to the same person, they say they will call you back and never do, they cut you off for no reason and they will not escalate your complaint to a manager. I have sent three written complaints to date and made three further verbal complaints through the call centre.

None of the complaints have been dealt with and the call centre will not give me the UK contacts for me to contact someone here.

Someone, somewhere needs to break up this monopoly between BT, Openreach and BT wholesale. In my experience the service continues to be appalling.