Wasting customers' time and money - what does it matter if you have a monopoly?

If you take over a rental house without having made contact with the previous tenants to do a formal takeover of the phone line, chances are you will have to arrange a new phone connection. And that not only costs money, it means that you have to be at the premises for all of a nominated half-day, in case BT engineers decide that they need access.

They won't decide whether they need that access until the actual day. So if you aren't living at the house at the time (perhaps, like my daughter, you are a student trying to get Broadband fixed up in time for your return at the beginning of the autumn term), you have to travel to the property just on the off-chance that the engineer needs to call in.

No worry that this can mean big wasted costs for the customer - BT isn't paying and you haven't any other choice. Whichever ISP you sign up to for your Broadband, in many places, you have no option other than a BT phone connection, and that means you have to carry the costs of BT's producer-focussed procedures.

Could BT change to being customer-focussed? Could they perhaps check out the line a few days ahead and decide then whether they will need access to the property in time to tell the customer whether they needed to be at the premises or not? Clearly they could, but they don't. It is simpler for them to do it the current way, whatever that means for the customer. In my daughter's case, the text to say "all done" came through just after she had started her outward train journey, when it was too late to save wasting 40 miles of lift from Dad, 140 miles of train travel and most of a day.

I know one company that I won't suggest she applies to work for as a graduate!