no phone or broadband and appalling customer service.

[widders]

I can totally empathise with this customer's frustration.  We have been at our house now for 9 years.  In that time I have lost count of the number of hours I have spent on the 'phone about our appalling broadband.  Two engineers have been the last one saying there is no problem.  Tell my daughter that when she is trying to work online for her A levels.  This is now desperate but I have given up. 

Why am I writing in now??  Well because I am being hassled by my family yet again about your provision of broadband and I am utterly fed up with all the effort to get our 500 or 600 k broadband line sorted. I am getting in the neck from my family big time.  BT will not speak to my wife because she is not the bill holder and, on top of all this, our next door neighbour has really had to get persistently get nasty and get an engineer to sort out their line from the same pole - apparently they now have speeds in Megabits not Bits.  I've had enough and totally sick of being out in the country at the end of a copper line with a faulty broadband connection for nearly a decade.

Can't tell you how long it has been for me to get this posting uploaded - BT you should be ashamed of yourself.  I am entirely expecting nothing to be done about this.

[widders]

Does anyone know how to get rebates from BT for this shocking service??

[iniltous]

What speed is estimated for your address ?, ADSL is a rate adaptive system, the longer the 'line' the slower the speed, that's just physics. BT are (presumably as you a posting on a BT Consumer site) your ISP, but the 'line' is the responsibility of Openreach, and it would appear that BT have already sent Openreach out at least twice, and OR have given your 'line' a clean bill of health...so BT are presumably in a position where they have a customer (you) who is unhappy with their service, but BT's supplier OR is saying nothing is wrong....there are two possibilities , one is BT are reporting a genuine fault to OR , but OR are 'ignoring' that fact, or there is no fault, so OR are correct, and in effect saying you have an unrealistic expectation of performance given your distance from the exchange. A neighbours performance can be informative but only up to a point, is the neighbour in question really close (say less than 10 metres from their property to yours) served from the same pole ( and something you won't know) routed in exactly the same cables back to the exchange, what's more, if you get 0.6Mb/s and they get 1Mb/s, that's not really a huge difference (although in percentage terms it is) What is your in home set up like ( neither BT or OR are responsible for that ) , is you router plugged into the master socket test port , thereby eliminating extension socket, TV boxes, alarm connections etc. if possible can you obtain your router statistics, this should give an illustration of what the 'line' is capable of, and unfortunately it could be that the distance from the exchange that your property is ( and that's obviously never going to change ) is the overriding factor regarding the achievable speed. If that's the case , all you can hope for is that when the proposed 10 Mb/s universal service obligation for broadband becomes 'law' you benefit from that

[widders]

Thank you Iniltous for such a quick reply. EVERYTHING you say has been discussed with BT/OR before. We have been told not expect a huge increase in speed until Phase 2 of the line pole-to-property re-wire. The router works directly from the main socket. It's not just the speed - broadband just 'drops out' for extended periods. My neighbour lives directly attached to us in a semi. No. 2 Old Letton Court Cottages. She is more than happy to talk to any engineer who visits!! You can see their connecting wire like ours goes to the same pole. Their issue was the same but they have had an experienced engineer from OR to sort it and they now have 12Meg/sec. They are now able to watch films, the up layer
And browse all at the same time. The issue was the way the phone engineers had set up the main socket. I have pointed out to one engineer that the main line to our house joins to a bakelite junction (1) and then to a main socket. So it appears my neighbour's problem was the same as ours. Like ours it had been so unreliable but using his experience of how the old wiring was installed the engineer cured the problem. I have to say I do not know how this can be resolved if BT/OR think there isn't a problem. We do need another engineer to properly look at it. I am assuming that, if the wiring to main socket hasn't been done properly, then we won't have to pay. I certainly won't be doing that for rectifying a poor installation that has given us such grief. My neighbour did not have to pay.

[widders]

That should be iPlayer!

[iniltous]

If your neighbour gets more than 12x the speed you get then it cannot just be distance, there are things you can do yourself to make your line as ADSL friendly as possible, if your socket is NTE5 type master socket, plugging the router into the test port achieves the same thing. I'm not quite sure what 'Phase 2' of the pole to property rewire is , but if there is work ongoing by OR , you obviously may need to wait until that work is completed , the engineer OR send should be capable of changing a drop wire from the pole to your house , if a change of the drop wire is required, only if the pole is classed as a 'D' pole ( a red letter 'D' attached to the pole indicating it's dangerous to climb) should stop the OR person from doing this...then they use a hoist to access the pole top. If the route to your home has many poles , and many spans of overhead cabling, then it could be an uplift of more than just your connection is needed and wouldn't necessarily be done by the engineer who visits you, but a work gang, again, if this is in hand, however frustrating , it could just be a case of waiting until this plant uplift is completed. Quite often, a BT Mod will offer to check what's going on and update you with progress (if your fault is still ongoing) , if they make the offer of help, I would accept, as even if they cannot speed up the process they should be able to give you a progress report. I would check that your last fault report is still open , and if not, report the fault again, but .if you dial 17070 from your landline and take the 'quiet line test' option, listen for any noise ( this is best done with an ordinary corded phone rather than cordless) if any noise is present, report your line 'noisy' to your landline provider (BT) , even though BT are also your ISP , report it as a landline fault not a broadband fault.

[iniltous]

Forgot to say, if you do a quiet line test, make sure it's from the master socket test port, again to eliminate any extensions, extension wiring or anything else that may be connected to the line

[widders]

Thank you once again. Each time we ask for the issue to be looked into, we have to start from scratch. We have no faults 'open'. What would be you advice on getting an engineer out? I believe my neighbour had to resort to refusing to pay her bill to get someone to properly look at it. OR might be the technical people to sort faults out but it's BT who get our money.

[widders]

Will do.

[NeilO]

@widders Welcome to the community and thanks for posting, I'm sorry to see you're having problems with your connection. To help us diagnose any issues can you post back with your router stats. And the results of the broadband speed checker ensuring to remove your number.