Going that extra mile – Martin and Co. Bedford

Neil Fraser, Managing Director of Martin and Co. Bedford transferred his telephone lines to us in 2006. As expected, the transfer went very smoothly. Shortly after, Neil announced his intention to move to new offices in central Bedford.

Our initial checks on the Openreach system showed he could take his existing telephone numbers to his new offices. Unfortunately, the system failed to highlight something very important – the numbers had originally been NTL numbers and had been ported on to the Openreach network. The significance of this is it holds up line moves from around 2 weeks to around 2 months. Worse still, even after we placed the order to move the lines, the Openreach system still failed to indicate to us there was a problem. It was only after two weeks, when Openreach still hadn’t confirmed an installation date, that we started to chase them.

Getting a straight forward answer from Openreach isn’t always easy but, after a day of chasing, we eventually determined the problem. This highlighted a far bigger problem – we couldn’t get Neil’s lines installed in time for his move. We were left with the unenviable task of relaying this information to him.

 

However, we did have a plan. We instantly installed two new lines into the new premises so Neil could make calls, and we also set-up Broadband. We disconnected all equipment from Neil’s old premises on the day he moved out and re-installed it into the new premises, all set-up to work as soon as Openreach moved the lines. In the meantime we set-up a call divert so all calls would divert to the new office. We kept the pressure on Openreach and a week after the move the lines were moved.

 

While the fault lay with Openreach, their carefully written terms and conditions ensure they seldom pay compensation for anything. This meant the cost of installing the temporary lines and paying the call diverts was all paid for by us. We do things like this because we don’t go back on our promises and we understand that not providing a service to our customers, even for a day, can have serious consequences.

 

In 2008, EMtel became the approved supplier for telecommunications for the whole of the Martin and Co franchise. The work we did with Martin and Co – Bedford, highlighted to them that if things do go wrong, we take responsibility and deal with it.