BT Infinity 2 upgrade has left me without Internet...

Question

After what was supposed to be a simple upgrade from ADSL to BT Infinity, I have now been without any broadband at for a week and have been subjected to undoubtedly the worst customer service imaginable…. Here goes.  
Tuesday 6 June, an engineer arrived at my premises to perform a simple upgrade of my ADSL line to a faster fibre connection. After some time, the engineer claimed that it was all done and promptly left before I had a chance to check. I thought this was strange, but didn’t question him as I assumed there is no way a professional engineer would leave a job without properly signing it off.
How wrong I was, no connection whatsoever! Kicking myself for not insisting that we check before he left, I called him on his mobile, only to be told: “I dunno mate, I’m just the engineer”. Exactly my point, I thought – what an attitude to have! He then said he would call the help desk to find out if there was any reason for the lack of connection, and after some time called back to say that there was a problem in my area and everyone’s broadband was down – it should be back up in a matter of hours. OK, I thought – why would he lie?
A number of hours later – still nothing. So, I called an ‘advisor’. I was told that there was no record of a fault in my area - an outright lie from the engineer, to get rid of me no doubt (it was gone five after all!). The ‘advisor’ told me that the connection would not be live until midnight on the day of install. I thought this to be strange as this was the first I’d heard of this, seemingly crucial, slice of information.
Surely he wouldn’t lie to me as well? I awoke the next morning with high hopes of a working broadband service. Not likely.
Another call to an ‘advisor’ at 6.30am and I was told to expect a call back before midday with a solution. 1pm, still nothing, so I once again I manned the phone. An amazing, and very wasteful, 1 hour and 30 minutes later I had been sent around the proverbial houses, but was still no closer to a solution.
I think I must have been asked to “turn it off and turn it back on again” at least five times. Ever felt like smashing your head into a wall?
I tried to explain time and time again that, rather than treat this as a fault, it would make more sense to simply resend an engineer to complete the job the incompetent one could not… this was like getting blood from a stone. “But Sir, if we can just do a couple more tests”. At this point I had no interest in talking anymore, just send me an engineer.
By the end of the day (Wednesday 7th) I finally got a very reluctant ‘advisor’ to arrange me an engineer for Friday 9th June.
Friday arrives, as does the engineer. A far more competent chap than last time, who spent almost five hours trying to fix the line, but with no joy. I still find it absolutely baffling that this has all arisen from an upgrade.
After a valiant effort, the engineer gave up and said he would report it to the ‘tier 2’ team who would contact me, and he would also call back to confirm this.
Fast forward to Monday 10 June, and still not a peep from either the engineer or the ‘tier 2 team.’ I have no idea what BT think they are doing here, but leaving a customer in ‘limbo’ like this is ridiculous. Both my flatmate and I need an Internet connection for work and have been massively inconvenienced by this whole episode, soured further by BT’s seeming disinterest to get the problem fixed with any kind of haste or professionalism.
I understand there must be huge business benefits from moving call centres overseas, but sometimes it would be nice, particularly after going through all this, to speak to a UK based operator who would deal with my issue subjectively, as opposed to what sounds like reading from a screen - with ‘progress’ limited to whatever boxes one manages to get ‘ticked’. And, it will come as no surprise that as soon as I threated to cancel, I was switched immediately to a UK call centre, who although very helpful and apologetic, did nothing to help and transferred me back to, what I assume is, India. My head and the wall were getting quite friendly at this point.
After nearly a week without any Internet and numerous (very expensive) phone calls, I am at a complete loss as to what to do next, no one seems to be able to help me or offer a logical solution. Perhaps an engineer could come and reconnect my old line… maybe I am just not meant to have a fibre connection.
I do, however, feel that I should be compensated for the stress, hassle and phone bills. Not to mention the 6-days-and-counting that I’ve been without any BT service.  What do you think?

Answer 1

Yet another "victim" of BT's incompetent Indian call centre,
I think more a victim of BT's totally incompetent internal systems; and probably initially of Openreach's outsourcing to installation to companies that often provide untrained and lazy installers.
The mods should get things sorted. at: http://bt.custhelp.com/app/contact_email/c/4951 . But be aware they take 3 working days to reply: sometimes more if busy.  That is pretty poor in your situation.  They have a good record of getting things solved once they are on the case.
Good luck.