Box not working, told must wait 12 days for engine...

Question

I have a very old BT Vision box and over the last few weeks it's been slowing dying.  At least three times it completely erased all the recordings saved.  We would re-set it to factory settings and just carry on using it, but after about a week it would wipe the memory again.
I called the helpline to report the issue last week and the call agent was rude and patronising.  I explained the issue but he seemed to not understand me.  He asked 'Does it not allow you to record or does it not let you watch the recording?'.  I said, again, it does neither of those things, it works mostly fine but occasionally wipes the entire memory.  He tried again, this time speaking loudly and slowly as if to a particularly difficult child, 'No, does it not let you record, or does it not let you watch the recordings?'.  I explained again, and he then asked me to reset the box.  I explained, again, that I'd already done this several times and he said: 'Well that's why you've lost your recording then'.  After another 5 minutes of going around in circles (and re-setting the box once more) he went away for quite a while and then came back and asked if the recordings that had been deleted had had an exclamation mark next to them.  I ended up hanging up on him.
Anyway, I no longer have the option of ignoring the issue because the thing is obviously on its last legs.  It has since stopped and started mid-way through recording things (and then deleted them several hours later), frozen several times whilst on both BBC iPlayer and ordinary television, and made strange grinding noises.
I phoned again today and was told that they couldn't send me a new box, but rather I would have to have an engineer.  This seems a waste of time given how ancient the box is but I said ok.  They then told me the first date the engineer could get out was 28/12.  I said I thought this was disgusting but was told there was nothing sooner.  I know it's only television, but not having a working TV over Christmas is a real inconvenience and really not what you expect when you're paying this much money.

Answer 1

BBbox wrote:
Not quite the reply I had hoped for, but I see where you are coming from.  However, we are now singed up to a 12 month contract.  The trouble is that where we are now living the broadband can't come via sky without coming down the bt line hence going over to bt.  Does talk talk do the tv as well?
Stalk Stalk? Ohh err! NOT!
When you say its (the box) stopped working, do you mean you get just a blank screen? Not even Freeview?
Rank - Mostly Harmless.