BT Broadband - advice

Have you had BT out to check all your wiring/filters and have they tried your connection from the master socket?

What speed is your modem/router synchronising with the exchange at and what are your line statistics? (this info should all be in the modem or routers configuration tool).

From everything I've read about BT Broadband whilst the technical service is good when it works, they're so huge that it can be hard to get past scripted call center people who don't actually know anything - might be simpler just to get a MAC code and change to an ISP with a clueful technical support department.

Hi Paul,

Thanks for your response. Wiring/ADSL filters all are fine. In fact all was working well until I opted to upgrade to 8Mb.

quote:

What speed is your modem/router synchronising with the exchange at and what are your line statistics? (this info should all be in the modem or routers configuration tool).

Not sure how to check router sync with exchange/line statistics.

Any suggestions for an ISP?

Thanks,

Dave

Getting any technical support from BT is like stirring cold syrup. I got to an Indian call centre and was advised to buy a new computer, so I cancelled the subscription. The hint of an care or apology was from the accountsd department, when I cancelled...

Bulldog (part of Pipex) looks promissing...

BT will eventually fail unless it can get its product support right. When it is working it is fine, but hopeless otherwise.

Just my experience, from Fredrik

Hi Fredrick,

Were you locked into a 12 month agreement when you ditched BT?

Thanks,

Dave

quote:

Originally posted by David Greenwood:

Not sure how to check router sync with exchange/line statistics.

Any suggestions for an ISP?

What make/model of ADSL modem or router are you using?

With most there is some sort of software utility, or web page where you can set various settings and see statistics such as line speed, attenuation and signal to noise ratio.

If you're totally sure nothing at your end can be responsible you are in the hands of the ISP (even if it is a BT issue it's up to the ISP to liaise with BT wholesale to get it sorted). It depends on your usage, but the ones I'd suggest looking at would be (in no real order) Zen, Nildram, UKFSN, Newnet and AAISP.

Since your line is already ADSL enabled you should be able to migrate for free, and be on a monthly contract which makes it pretty simple to change if/when your needs change.

If you're in an area where LLU/Cable is possible there could be other options but I'm not too familiar with those.

quote:

Originally posted by David Greenwood:

Were you locked into a 12 month agreement when you ditched BT?

Dear Dave,

I had perfect service for 15 months in Hereford with initiation no problems, but BT completely mucked up establishing a new service here in Worcester, over the last five weeks. I would call them a shower, and I don't mean the watery sort!

In fairness Bulldog is cheaper, and you can pay by DD instead of Credit Card on-line, which I don't like, and so don't have a card!

BT have lost much trade because of this sort of thing, and Bulldog are really on the ball according to friends of mine who have had it connected over the last twelve months.

Unfortunately BT's 12 month contract could be a real nuisance if they mess you about during that initial contracted period.

My personal advice to anyone not with BT yet, would be to avoid it like the plague.

ATB from Fredrik

I have just "upgraded" to BT Homehub from the 2 meg Speedtouch modem. My line checker said I should get up 3 meg where I am.The best I have seen is is 2.9 worst is about .700. Downloads seem to be consistantly around 1400 kb/s. I fully agree the "help" desk is a waste of money it takes at least twice as long to get any where because I have to keep asking the assistant to repeat what he has just said.I had to call 3 time on one day and we went through the same check list every time. Why can't they note what has gone defore? we visted 3 times because they could not fix my problem straight away and said they would find out and ring back.I later found out they don't do ring backs. I then went through the operator to complain that the help desk was a waste of space, they connected me to a supervisor who listened to my problem that I could not understand anyone. So she connected me to "someone who would help."THE BLOODY HELP DESK IN INDIA" I ask you what sort of bloody service is this?
My understanding is if you are not getting the service as advertised the 12 month lock is invalid.

To reassure you - BT also run a CRM consultancy - what is CRM - Customer Relationship Manageent - includes keeping a track of ones customers and their intereactions with you.

Take a look at the ADSLGuide forums at

ADSLGuide

you will find other peopple with variants of your problem and you may even find the route forward for you.

There is no reassurance to be made over BT. They are overlarge for their capacity to manage the situation. Headless chickens try to help and failing! And what is worse they are careless and thoughtless about it.

In fairness when they are a quarter of the size they are today - if they are still trading - they may just about have the mangerial skills to deal with the situation, which is certainly out of hand at present.

Use their services only with the most considerable caution in my view...

ATB from Fredrik

BT are a really crap communications company .

They persistently fail to respond to email and royal mail, and telephone is really unsupportive.

Here are my letters to them

We are sadly very disappointed by the service we have received from BT Yahoo Broadband.

On 21st January we received an Email telling us we could have BT Yahoo Anytime Plus.

We subscribed to this and a few days later received our modem. We installed the modem and the software – would not work. After several calls to the helpline we were told we would be phoned back in a couple of days once some checks on the line had been made.

No call was received, and again we telephoned the helpline to be told the line would be checked and we would be called a couple of days later. This time a return call was received and evidently we are not able to get this service after all and apparently 90% of our postcode can’t get the service!. So we had wasted a whole lot of time on phonecalls to yourselves and installing.

We reverted to our previous dial-up for internet which for a week or so worked fine. One week ago however, this did not work. Our dial-up redirected us to a ‘special area’ of your services to identify the problem, and we are now unable to dial up because your records show us as a Broadband customer, which we are not because the service is not available to us.

On going through the correction of the problem service we were then connected to a pay per minute service rather than the service we had previously used. For us this would be an expensive option.

We have made attempts to contact you, and have been given a call back, however, over a week on, we have yet to speak to anybody since we both work and are not easily available to talk to. Furthermore, without using the pay per minute facility, we are unable to access our Email or the internet.

Payment for an internet service, should be on the basis of actually receiving some service shouldn’t they? And it is sad to think that a company who are supposed to specialise in communication cannot provide communication with it’s customers!

We await your comments.


Yours sincerely


Nunber 2 after no response.


Having contacted you so many times and following our previous letter (copy enclosed for your information), to which incidentally we still have not had a reply. We have however received from yourselves a standard letter saying you are sorry that we have decided to cease our broadband service. We cannot get a broadband service and never had one because you cannot provide it! We have now changed our service provider and remain very unhappy with the service we have received from yourselves.

Why lead someone to think they can get a broadband service and have them spend an enormous amount of time waiting for information from you?

Yours sincerely



They make me want to scream!!

This episode occurred 18 months ago.
This was the start of many further telephone calls to very unhelpful BT drones , eventually we got a good dial up service with AOL as we could not get back onto BT Yahoo anytime. Fro 12 months I received a monthly broadband stement saying BT owed us £1.13. DO not pay this bill etc

Lots of trees later this morning I have recieved a cheque from them. I do hope they stop sending me letterssaying my closed account is now on a nil balance. O the joys of techology in the hands of BT!

David

sorry about the ranting.

I really do sympathise with you, but my best advice is get out of it if you can. give your business to another more deserving company.

David,

I understand your frustrations - rant as much as you like! I commenced my contract with BT in May 06 so I am about to hit six months in to a 12 month contract and during that time my bandwith speed has no where near to 2Mb. I do not beleive BT has met its side of the contract and I will contacting them stating this. I need to do some more homework on the contract before I start my battle with them.

Watch this space.

A further rant - how the h*ll can BT get away with upgarding my service and the performance reducing?? Now I'm no rocket scientist but reduced performance ain't no upgrade.

What I would like to do is opt out of my contract (with no penalties) and find a better provider.

Thanks to all who have replied to this post.

David

You might be on 8 meg broadband but your contention may be sky high so at peek times you get hammered. Plenty of people have fallen into this trap.

It is also an issue of quality of the line from your house to the exchange, whether it is made from copper or aluminium, the Signal to noise margin, the interference from electrical devices eg faulty street light time clocks, faulty Sky boxes, faulty Freeview boxes. Water in the cable, badly wired pairs or invalid pairs between you and the street cabinet.

AS I suggested earlier - take a look at the forums on ADSL Guide where people often raise this issue

quote:

You might be on 8 meg broadband but your contention may be sky high so at peek times you get hammered

To be fair it is not just BT that has this problem. Mind you most people have to have a BT line to get these other Broadband companies product.
My old modem provided me a consistant 1.1 meg. This new "upto" 8 meg is very variable.
It does beg the question what are the French,US and Japan doing different when thay have BB up to 100's of meg. Is it just they have fibre in the local loop?

My problem with BT had absolutely nothing to do with the speed of their connection which seemed more than adequate to me while it worked, but rather the attitude and understanding of their technical help desk (and switch board opperators) when the system failed to function as promissed, and paid for.

I am sure the usual problems with an ancient and under-invested system of phone lines applies to all the companies who use the existing system (which was once our porperty as members of the General Public, before before the familly silver was sold off as I remember) of phone lines and exchanges.

Thanks goodness in that case that in the process that BTs monopoly (as the GPO) was at least broken so that as consumers we are not stuck with their haughty and hopeless attitude to putting things right when they are wrong.

I seem to remember a time when we were told that the miners were holding us to ransome, but now it seems that the only thing that stops the share holders of such companies as BT ot NPower holding us to exactly the same ransome is that at least we can choose another supplier. A thought which seems not to have percolated through to many of the unfortunate and badly paid employeees of BT at the thick end of the trade. No doubt the bosses are still paying themselves huge bonusses, telling their share-holders how wonderfully they are doing.

This attitude comes, of course before a fall! I would not invest one penny in BT on their showing in terms of decent service, but fortunately, I managed to remain sanguine right throughout nearly three hours of wasted time on the phone before I simply gave up and tried again to get through to the accounts department.

As I said, the only apologetic or regretful voice I heard was from the accounts department as I cancelled the service.

ATB from Fredrik

quote:

Originally posted by David Greenwood:

What I would like to do is opt out of my contract (with no penalties) and find a better provider.

A few things that leap to mind.

Firstly. BT (and any other ISP) will have worded their contract very carefully that they supply an "Up To" 8mbps service.

By BTs standards anything above 400kbps is deemed acceptable, though I've no idea how this would stand in consumer law.

You might have more luck seeing if there is a section in the contract about if the service is changed to your detriment - usually this allows you to leave so you could contend that the service now is not the same as the level of service you received when you joined them.

I'd still be very interested in any line stats you could get as it's possibly BT have cocked up the Max upgrade.

Other than the speed, how stable is the connection?

quote:

so that as consumers we are not stuck with their haughty and hopeless attitude to putting things right when they are wrong.

When you got free maintenance and next day service or better.

quote:

In fairness Bulldog is cheaper, and you can pay by DD instead of Credit Card on-line, which I don't like, and so don't have a card!

BT have lost much trade because of this sort of thing, and Bulldog are really on the ball according to friends of mine who have had it connected over the last twelve months.

Fredrik

I had a service with Bulldog which I attempted to upgrade to their 8mb service. Several months went by, their service reduced in price and, if memory serves, their advertised speed increased, whilst I was stuck on a £30 tariff for 2mb broadband! They refused to lower the charges to the then current advertised tariff because they were unable to provide the new improved service despite me living not far from one of the high speed central London exchenges!!

Eventually, after many hours over several months attempting to resolve the appalling service, I ended up having to involve Offcom who, at the time, were involved in an investigation into Bulldog, such were the levels of complaints. There was press speculation at the time that they may have their license revoked, certainly they 'voluntarily' stopped advertising their service in the press due to their lack of ability to deliver.

Even after terminating my service I was unable to have broadband from another supplier because Bulldog refused to remove something or other at the exchange. Eventually BT enforced the changeover. (Incidentally I was with Bulldog for well over a year, therefore I wasn't breaching any minimum contract period agreement.)

I'm not saying the 8mb service I now have from BT is great, but it works consistantly and I am so pleased to be rid of Bulldog.

My understanding was that Bulldog were taken over by Cable & Wireless around the time of my problems. Things may have sorted themselves out with a new management structure but I would urge anyone to check them out thoroughly before committing to any contractual agreement.

I really do hope things have improved!

Peter

Hi,

Paul you quoted

quote:

BTs standards anything above 400kbps is deemed acceptable

- this mornng at 06.15 my bandwidth was 232 kbps
download and 331 kbps upload - not that great!

Before I 'upgraded' to 8 megs - I was on a BT package of 2Mb unlimited and my bandwidth speed was constantly close to 2Mb. My current service is reliable/satble - but slow.

Cheers,

Dave

Have you tried the BT Speedtest? The idea is that it takes the ISP out of the loop and tests the actual speed of your line (ignore that BT are also your ISP).

Speedtest Instructions

Also have a look at this page as it lists the various levels BT deem acceptable for a given sync speed:

ADSL Thresholds

As I said before, try and find what your sync speed is between your modem/router and your exchange - if you're synced at, say, 8mbps it wouldn't make sense to get such low speeds but if you check and find you're synced at 512kbps or something that is lower than you previously were, it would explain the low speeds.

quote:

Originally posted by David Greenwood:
Hi,

Paul you quoted

quote:

BTs standards anything above 400kbps is deemed acceptable

- this mornng at 06.15 my bandwidth was 232 kbps
download and 331 kbps upload - not that great!

Before I 'upgraded' to 8 megs - I was on a BT package of 2Mb unlimited and my bandwidth speed was constantly close to 2Mb. My current service is reliable/satble - but slow.

Cheers,

Dave

Dave,

How do you pay them? I'd seriously consider reducing your payment by the difference between your old 2Mb service, and the 8Mb service. This will build up a debt which will certainly get you noticed (save the difference just in case). You then have a 'platform' from which to make your case to them.

Ok, I accept their statement that they cannot guarantee 8Mb in all areas, but the simple fact is that you're paying more for a lesser service. That can't be right.

Phil

How ironic that I should miss this thread owing to being 'off-line' for the last 3 weeks due to problems with my BT Broadband.

I echo almost all of the comments above regarding the absolutely appalling service that BT provide.

I had been having problems for some months, being kicked off and having to manually re-connect every few minutes but stupidly left it. Finally about three weeks ago it stopped altogether and would not reconnect at all.

I rang the Broadband help number and got through to India. They took me through some basic problem solving and eventually concluded that their server was not recognising my user name and password and had locked me out. They said they just had to check my account to ensure it was not because of unpaid bills and would call back the next day.

Next day they called back, took me through the same diagnostics and concluded that they would need an engineer to re-set the username and password. This would take 3-4 working days.

5 working days had passed and still no word, so I rang them. Over the next week I then experienced a procession of different 'helpdesk' callers each day, all trying to talk me through the problem. It was like f**king groundhog day! In the end I was refusing to take calls from them when my wife answered the phone as they quite obviously had absolutely no idea how to solve the problem.

My wife called the customer service department and they said it was quite a common complaint with the 'old' broadband service and there was not much they could do. The only way they had cured the problem was when people had upgraded to the 8mb Home Hub service. So we did and it took a week to upgrade the service. Meanwhile the Delhi 'helpdesk' continued to call me, at home, on my works mobile....I had to tell them to f**k off!

Still, I got the Home Hub today and I have to say it's good. Very simple to set up and I'm finally online at home after 3 weeks.

Now starts the process in earnest to gain some recompense for all this shit.

Mark

My Homehub did have to "burn in" for a couple of days to stabilise. India said it would be up to 10 days I said "like up to 8meg BB". Some fell on stony ground.What really pisses me off is this buisness of going through the same things every time you call the help desk. Surely instead of reading their bloody check list they could enter a customer checklist page on their computer. You would then have a problem number to refer to and the next "helper" could see what has already been done. I'll just repeat that for english as a second language members.