Current eCo Broadband problems

BT Wholesale's ordering system (used by ISPs to place orders for ADSL) is currently suffering a major fault, which one person the BT Wholesale provisions desk admitted to.

Over recent weeks, orders placed on lines have been rejected with a nonsensical error: ADSL order cancelled, reorder as provision. This doesn't make sense, as the original order was a provision order.

One BT wholesale monkey admitted that they are seeing a great deal of these errors, and admitted that their ordering systems were being migrated to a new platform, and some orders were getting dropped in between the systems. Except it's much worse than that.

We've found that some orders are being canned on the eCo frontend, but not on the backend systems, or in some cases, only partially cancelled on the backend systems. Numerous orders have resulted in an ADSL tag appearing on the line (which means that it's impossible to attempt a second order without getting it cleared), or even an apparent ADSL sync, but no ability to login.

Of course, BT Wholesale managers are making all manner of excuses for their botched system's screw-ups. We've had:

• There's open orders on the line, they'll need to talk to their voice provider. Blame circle tactic.
  
• There's a tag on the line, you'll need to talk to the tags team. Again with the blame circle, and one that can take the tags team a week or more to clear - and during this time who gets the blame from the customer? That's right, the ISP.
  
• Sir, the order was cancelled. Yes, of course it was cancelled. You're screwed up system cancelled for no reason.
• It looks like the telephone exchange is out of capacity. This is a lie. The exchanges rarely reach capacity, and are normally upgraded long before they reach saturation.

Of course, even pointing out that it seems highly unusual that you've just had 5 orders in a row go down the tubes is greeted with an instant:

There is nothing wrong with our system. The order was cancelled because [insert mystical reason pulled out of the manager's ass].

I should also mention as a side note, that an additional problem that appears to have cropped up is that "modify" orders (those are orders which change the speed, contention or care package on a line) are intermittently causing instantaneous cease orders (cancel the line, no more DSL).

So, if you've just ordered ADSL/broadband, and your ISP has told you that BT are cancelling it? Don't blame your ISP.