No Signal in Barra HS9

[dmacleod28]

No signal on barra since friday app says problem will be fixed in 16 hours has said this since friday we pay a fortune a month to get a service and you are not providing it 4 masts on island 2 are down completely 1 only half works and the other is on the complete oposite side of island and provides nothing to my location. i work here 2 weeks of a month and now can only use my phone 2 weeks at home. customer service dont care they just say they only no what the website tells them!!

[Mod edit - removed full postcode, please don't share identifiable info in public]

[bristolian]

Network outages are, from time-to-time & with the best of intentions, unavoidable sometimes. Faults are always rectified as soon as possible, but exact resolution times can depend on a whole catalogue of issues - this is why they are only ever an estimate. Many faults are fixed a lot quicker than expected, some will be slower.

In remote locations such as the Scottish Highlands & Islands, there is the added complication of less overlap between serving sites, and also travel logistics if replacement parts or additional site visits are required.

[dmacleod28]

yeah but being lied to doesn't help a customer surely its better to say unknown time to fix than to outright lie saying 16 hours. why have the masts been left this long in disrepair as this must be the reason so many of them are down in such a small area!  is this because people in remote areas are less important than city folks?? is it because there is a small population on the island so no care is given as in the grand scheme of it we are not many in your system.

[bristolian]

You refer to "your system" as if I'm EE staff - I'm not, I'm a customer like yourself albeit with some direct experience.

I can assure you that outages in rural locations are given the exact same weighting as any other - if anything, urban locations have less due to more overlap between sites thus a single site outage doesn't always cause as much total loss of coverage. I can only imagine the complaints that could result if "we don't know how long it will take" was quoted instead - this is one point where networks cannot win.

Not sure where the comment about being lied to comes from, but CS agents should be providing the exact same info as is available from the website status tool. The complaints process is available for you to use, should you feel it's appropriate.

I don't know what the current situation is regarding short notice bookings on the Calmac routes into Castlebay or Ardmhor, but I dare say that could be included in the catalogue I mentioned!