Anyone work for BT/Openreach?

[Arthritic Toe]

Broadband has been out for a week now. It is absolutely impossible to get any information out of BT as to when and if it's ever going to get fixed. There is absolutely no way to escalate the problem past the offshore help desk who call me back every now and then and ask me if it's working. I get the impression nobody is even looking at the problem. The phone line is fine but there is no DSL being sent through the line. Anyone know of any way to contact someone at BT who will actually take action? The call centre seem to exist just to field calls until the problem fixes itself or the customer dies of old age.

 

[pornomagboy]

Mine has gone tonight

 

[Super Steve Earle]

Mine barely working since came back from hols early las
t week. Phone erratic on BT landline too.

 

[Rugrat]

Broadband has been out for a week now. It is absolutely impossible to get any information out of BT as to when and if it's ever going to get fixed. There is absolutely no way to escalate the problem past the offshore help desk who call me back every now and then and ask me if it's working. I get the impression nobody is even looking at the problem. The phone line is fine but there is no DSL being sent through the line. Anyone know of any way to contact someone at BT who will actually take action? The call centre seem to exist just to field calls until the problem fixes itself or the customer dies of old age.

My neighbour works for them, will ask later

Your experiences with customer service are similar to mine with Vodafone. For the first time in 15 years I ported my number, but the voicemail file has been "lost" and I'm totally confident nobody is doing a thing about it. For some obscure reason they can't just set me up a new voicemail so that seems to be that. I spend half an hour a day on phone to be told "it's been escalated" which I think means little more than a hopeful "abracadabra"

If anyone works for Vodafone I'd be thrilled to hear how I get someone to actually do something

 

[Silk]

Have had a series of problems with broadband/ wireless router. After several fruitless phone calls to BT customer support have decided to look elsewhere.

 

[Iggle Piggle]

Who supplies your service?

 

[Lethargic]

We are the opposite broadband fine but lost the phone, their response "it must be your phone" well it isn't our phone tried alternatives, checked cabling, etc all fine. Their response that will cost you £126 for us to send an engineer, anyone have sky broadband in the Horsham area and if so any good?

 

[The Birdman]

I had a bad experience when I changed to infinity broad band the outside contractor they sent messed up the connection nothing worked so they sent a BT/openreach engineer and he sorted it out the contractor had not connected me correctly at the box and the house had to be rewired he did a good job. The moral of the story outsourcing to save money doesn't always work.

 

[Rugrat]

We are the opposite broadband fine but lost the phone, their response "it must be your phone" well it isn't our phone tried alternatives, checked cabling, etc all fine. Their response that will cost you £126 for us to send an engineer, anyone have sky broadband in the Horsham area and if so any good?

I had it and had all sorts of problems, eventually gave up and went to BT infinity, with TV and been perfect since.

No matter how much it's debated they can all be crap when things go wrong, it's pot luck.

See my earlier post, I switched from O2 to Vodafone 3 weeks ago and have experienced the most diabolical negligence ever since, after 15 years with the same mobile number now appears I've lost it forever due to their negligence. Others will say worked brilliant for them

 

[Silverhatch]

Broadband has been out for a week now. It is absolutely impossible to get any information out of BT as to when and if it's ever going to get fixed. There is absolutely no way to escalate the problem past the offshore help desk who call me back every now and then and ask me if it's working. I get the impression nobody is even looking at the problem. The phone line is fine but there is no DSL being sent through the line. Anyone know of any way to contact someone at BT who will actually take action? The call centre seem to exist just to field calls until the problem fixes itself or the customer dies of old age.

Call offshore help desk and say you want to terminate your contract and want to be put thru to customer loyalty team. This should get you thru to a uk based anti-churn team who are usually very knowledgable and willnescalate complaints.

 

[Arthritic Toe]

Call offshore help desk and say you want to terminate your contract and want to be put thru to customer loyalty team. This should get you thru to a uk based anti-churn team who are usually very knowledgable and willnescalate complaints.

Thanks for that - and other replies.

I'll try that one. Trouble is I'm going to be moving house in a month or so, so I don't actually want to terminate it and move to someone else. The phone line is working and clear. It just get the impression that the DSL has been accidently switched away from my line during the immediate maintenance following the storms a week ago. There is absolutely no mechanism to escalate and have anyone actually do something to patch the dsl back in again. This is a massive pain as I work from home and relying on a 3g dongle in a low signal area, which keeps dropping out.

I will definitely not be using BT at the new place - or ever again in fact.

Iggle Piggle
Who supplies your service?

Its BT with home hub.

 

[Rugrat]

Thanks for that - and other replies.

I'll try that one. Trouble is I'm going to be moving house in a month or so, so I don't actually want to terminate it and move to someone else. The phone line is working and clear. It just get the impression that the DSL has been accidently switched away from my line during the immediate maintenance following the storms a week ago. There is absolutely no mechanism to escalate and have anyone actually do something to patch the dsl back in again. This is a massive pain as I work from home and relying on a 3g dongle in a low signal area, which keeps dropping out.

I will definitely not be using BT at the new place - or ever again in fact.



Its BT with home hub.

My man can't help, he's not on that side ... says best thing to do is get the email add for the chairman and send him a painful note

 

[Rogero]

Ok ,anymore to this story yet.I am on the edge of my seat.What is happening?

 

[beorhthelm]

We are the opposite broadband fine but lost the phone, their response "it must be your phone" well it isn't our phone tried alternatives, checked cabling, etc all fine. Their response that will cost you £126 for us to send an engineer, anyone have sky broadband in the Horsham area and if so any good?

so its the filter then.

 

[Arthritic Toe]

Ok ,anymore to this story yet.I am on the edge of my seat.What is happening?

I think I detect a touch of sarcasm.

 

[Arthur]

Drop Paul Barber an email about it.....he won't be able to help with your issue obviously but it seems the done thing these days.

 

[happypig]

I work for BT. I've done so for 30 years, all in technical roles and whilst I don't work in the exchange line/broadband area, I understand the technology and network topography better than most (and sadly far, far better than the "helpdesk").
The problem everyone has is that the helpdesk work on scripts which go along the line of: reset everything, change cables, send engineer (with a warning of charges if BT bit is ok. Because I understand it, when I have had problems, I've reset routers/checked cabling etc before I call but, dependant on the advisor, I have to "pull rank" and tell them what's wrong.


Moving on to the OP's problem, if you have dial tone and can make/receive calls, then the copper pair to the house is ok so try the following (apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs):
1. reset router - power off for a couple of minutes, power on, wait 2 mins and see if correct lights come on. If you have infinity with a separate white box, reset that too.
1a. In router config, does it say it's connected ? If it is, then the DSLAM could need checking in the exchange (that was one of mine)
2. are you using wired or wireless ? If wireless, try connecting a cable and see if that works. If infinity, change cable between the two boxes.
3. Have you swapped out the filter on the router ? If you have a filtered faceplate, take the front off and connect the router, with a filter, to the socket inside.
4. Did it stop working after a thunderstorm ? Lightning can blow sockets/filters/routers etc.
5. Can you borrow a router to check if it's that ?
6. Tell the advisor you wish to speak to a "second line support" technician because you want a line test and a woosh test (always say "woosh test". ALWAYS). If you get through to someone technical they will be able to actually look at the line and see if it's testing ok and then look at the status of the DSLAM and your router and see if they are communicating.

Finally, when talking to the helpdesk, be insistent (without being rude) and, if necessary, ask to speak to a supervisor.

Hope you get it sorted.

 

[Arthritic Toe]

I work for BT. I've done so for 30 years, all in technical roles and whilst I don't work in the exchange line/broadband area, I understand the technology and network topography better than most (and sadly far, far better than the "helpdesk").
The problem everyone has is that the helpdesk work on scripts which go along the line of: reset everything, change cables, send engineer (with a warning of charges if BT bit is ok. Because I understand it, when I have had problems, I've reset routers/checked cabling etc before I call but, dependant on the advisor, I have to "pull rank" and tell them what's wrong.


Moving on to the OP's problem, if you have dial tone and can make/receive calls, then the copper pair to the house is ok so try the following (apologies if I'm teaching you to suck eggs):
1. reset router - power off for a couple of minutes, power on, wait 2 mins and see if correct lights come on. If you have infinity with a separate white box, reset that too.
1a. In router config, does it say it's connected ? If it is, then the DSLAM could need checking in the exchange (that was one of mine)
2. are you using wired or wireless ? If wireless, try connecting a cable and see if that works. If infinity, change cable between the two boxes.
3. Have you swapped out the filter on the router ? If you have a filtered faceplate, take the front off and connect the router, with a filter, to the socket inside.
4. Did it stop working after a thunderstorm ? Lightning can blow sockets/filters/routers etc.
5. Can you borrow a router to check if it's that ?
6. Tell the advisor you wish to speak to a "second line support" technician because you want a line test and a woosh test (always say "woosh test". ALWAYS). If you get through to someone technical they will be able to actually look at the line and see if it's testing ok and then look at the status of the DSLAM and your router and see if they are communicating.

Finally, when talking to the helpdesk, be insistent (without being rude) and, if necessary, ask to speak to a supervisor.

Hope you get it sorted.

Fantastic info - thanks for that. I knew there'd be someone on NSC with the knowledge. There always is. For the record, it did stop after a thunderstorm, and I did all the above swapping out etc, including different router. It was clear though that there was no dsl coming through on the line - you can hear that by just plugging in a phone without a filter - there was a complete absence of that electronic 'chatter noise' which the filter removes from the voice line (I've just verified this by trying it again as they've just restored my dsl service!).

Anyway, as above, after 8 days someone somewhere has fixed something. Its back.

Thanks all - especially happypig. I'll keep this info in the event it happens again.

 

[happypig]

Anyway, as above, after 8 days someone somewhere has fixed something. Its back.

check the terms of service as you may be entitled to some compensation (I don't know about costs as I get free broadband as a staff perk)

 

[perseus]

Mine has gone tonight

Mine goes down very night. Planning a chnage. I've found complaints a waste of time. Operator on the otherend seems to think going down for an hour at peal periods every nighht was an acceptable service and if I changed I would not get any better.

BT Infinity not available.

Virgin alternative ?