THE ORANGE LIGHT IS ON, DONT DESPAIR.

 AND….ITS LIKE LOOKING FOR A NEEDLE IN A HAYSTACK.

I am not at all sure that there will be light at the end of the tunnel for everybody, but if you are having problems with BT Broadband then do try to resolve any issues as efficiently as possible. There is always the instinctive desire to switch providers and look for greener grass on the other side of the fence, but that approach isn’t necessarily the most efficacious.  Bear in mind that in the U.K. at least, all the overhead infrastructure is maintained by the same outfit, BT Openreach, whichever network provider you use. When dealing with issues of broadband service in England it pays to keep a cool head and to go through all the necessary hoops in getting your issues resolved. Keep ringing them up on 08456006156 if you have loss of service.

By way of background information, I have been living at the same address , just 60 miles from London, for over 30 years. In that time we have had the same  residential telephone number  on the same line with the same provider, now BT, along with one other telephone line which has been used for business and has been in service for over 20 years. Absolutely no problems whatsoever until about 5 years ago, and the introduction of Superfast broadband , coupled with the increase in broadband demand from all the new homes springing up around the fastest growing town in Britain.When broadband first came out we subscribed to it without any major issues. On the availability of higher speed broadband in 2015 in our village–Superfast fibre broadband to within 1/2 mile of our house- we readily signed up to BT Business Infinity Broadband and were delighted with it to begin with. The husband could work from home, the children could go on the internet, films could be downloaded using catch-up TV, and the wife could start to think about doing B and B , or a semi- professional blog. Everything was great until November 2016—- apart from the occasional drop in service for anything between 1 and 12 hours at a time.

 Sadly, at some point things started to deteriorate. Sometimes the problem could be fixed remotely from India, which quite frankly amazed me, and sometimes an engineer would call and physically go up to the exchange in the village and sort it.

Then the catalogue of problems really started to escalate in March 2017. I have persevered with the patience of Job, and have dealt with an extraordinary BT Customer Service set-up, but never lost my temper, and made sure I kept a record of every phone call ,text and email. A big step forward was when  I  recently got my complaints dealt with by a Bt Business Extended Support Team. 4 engineer visits in 4 weeks–  yes, you have to stay home each time for  a 5 hour given window!- and finally they seem to have diagnosed the problem, which is a faulty router. On diagnosing our particular fault, the same phrase has been uttered from the lips of two separate engineers…”Its like looking for a needle in a haystack” . In the intervening  weeks I have had all internal wiring checked twice, including the router,and pronounced A1-, Overhead wires have been replaced externally to the lane outside the property and finally today , a new filter socket NT5C with MK4SSFP installed. Today’s engineer spent many hours testing everything and pronounced it all fine up to our router itself, which he finally deduced must be faulty. The broadband is still not working,…..

BUT…

I have managed to get BT to give me compensation for the days without a broadband service, ( one months free rental, and another claim pending) and a new router for free ,as a quid pro quo for renewing my contract with them for another 24 months.

In order to survive whilst the broadband issues are being resolved, we have got an EE dongle which is fab, although this only allows us to do emails and basic web- surfing, although it can get 4 G. Actually, it will probably be really useful on the boat!

My advice is to keep a record of everything, keep civil at all times and don’t be fobbed off with ridiculous claims or promises. Be really nice to all BT Openreach engineers that do actually come to your property after your numerous telephone calls to BT ,as it really isn’t their fault that the system of dealing with broadband failures is so convoluted , and make sure you charm them into giving you all the technical info that you can then later use as a weapon in your war with BT. And Write Everything Down as if you were an old -fashioned policeman.Know your rights as a Consumer, and if your router doesn’t work just after the expiration of the 12 month guarantee given by BT, then tell them that under the Sale Of Goods and Services Acts you have separate rights as a Consumer which are nothing to do with their own given guarantees…in short it might be reasonable to assume that a brand new expensive BT Business 5 hub should be expected to function properly for longer than 12 months!

Lets hope that we can all one day get the service we deserve.

MY GOODNESS ME!

Within less than 24 hours a new router has landed on the doormat, is plugged in , switched on, and everything works for the first time in a week. The only issue is that the broadband download speed has gone down from a heady 20 Mbs to 13 Mbs, but apparently that is to be expected for the first few days until it finds its most comfortable level. We shall wait and see.

Latest update, today 7th April 2017

Our Broadband download speed has come down to between 11 and 12 Mbs. We are supposed to be getting a minimum of 15Mbs with the BT Business  Infinity package that we have, but anyway this is about half the speed that we were getting before, even with the supposedly faulty router. I discovered that if you have to replace your BT Business Hub 5 router with another identical one, on the same BT Contract, then the speeds you get should be the same straight away with no settling down period necessary, which happens only with a new service being provided. I spent a long time yesterday, 6th April 2017, ringing up BT Business to complain, and spoke to 3 different people on 3 separate phone calls, only 1 of which was any help. She created a complaint reference and said that her manager would ring me back. Needless to say he did not, hence the other two phone calls. Eventually, I did get someone associated with the relevant manager to respond, and was told that I would be contacted the next day-that is today 7th April. Just as I was on the landline to BT AGAIN! my mobile rang, and I had a nice person tell me that the fault was  indeed booked to be repaired at the Exchange on Monday 10th April. That would be good wouldn’t it. Watch this space to see if it is actually sorted.

As an aside, when logging into my BT Business account to track the fault I had initially raised concerning the Broadband Speed, it seems like nothing is being done. Apparently, if you do get an official complaint raised, and get a Complaint Reference Number, then any issues you have will be sorted under that umbrella and are separate to any Fault Info on your account. Just in case you were as perplexed as me….

 

Wednesday 12 th  April,

All sorted after ANOTHER BTOPENREACH Engineers visit!

He reset our IP Address and we are now really back up to speed with our Broadband.

Long may it continue!