CharlieOneSix
The potential charge I have quoted is correct for customers of BT Retail.
The charges you quote are the ones Eclipse will charge you - I guess they will have added a considerable profit margin!

Openreach charge the service providers £99.00. What the SPs charge their customers is up to them!


Firestorm
Don't blame the call centre staff for not being told that there has been a cable theft. That information is usually only passed on to the SPs by Openreach a couple of days after the event. Don't forget that they are call centre staff and not highly trained technicians. Blame the system!

Nope. Blame the company.

Call Zen or one or two other ISPs as an end-user and you'll get through to in-country level one support staffed by well trained individuals willing to think outside of the box.

Call any ISP that outsources their support to the Far East and you'll get through to an individual who insists on going through the script line by line and who is paid on ticket closure and penalised for escalations.

For even the most modestly technically competent amongst us, the latter is incredibly frustrating as you spend 20+ minutes of your life going through the motions for the benefit of the call centre agent.

Mixture
Not all BT call centres are overseas. There is one here in Exeter dealing with both 1st and 2nd line broadband support for example. I just wish there were more!

My guess would be L1 UK are merely overflow for overseas. UK L2 may or may not form part of the active distribution depending on required skill set.

Good theory...... but not quite right.
Whilst the UK call centre staff are outnumbered by those overseas they are all part of the same "pot".
I can't imagine BT will ever get rid of the overseas call centres altogether as it would be prohibitively expensive. I'd suspect that the wage bill would treble for an all-UK call centre system.
The local BT centre manager tells me that they are currently re-aligning their service to bring more complex "Tier 2" work to the UK with the "Simple" Tier 1 support remaining in India.

Okay.......

So I am right then ? :rolleyes:

Meanwhile TalkTalk / Carphone Warehouse / AOL UK / Tiscali go the other way, recently shutting their second line / escalations team bases at Warrington and Preston, instead sending more work to Hyderabad

FWIW, the Indian hot bed for internet call centre work is Hyderabad, though there are others dotted around Bombay and Dehli as well
Supanet tinkered with a call centre in Pakistan, but that didn't work so well..

Sorry Mixture.... I meant that the UK BT call centres are not just overflow for overseas. Call the help number and you get through to whichever agent is free whether in the UK or not.

I'd still say the odds are better of winning the lottery than getting a UK agent. :E

But I'll take your word for it ! Happy new year.