BT Hub Flashing Orange On and Off for a Month Multiple Engineers Fail to Fix it

[Oliverhayes01]

Hello, I will detail how this month has been, on verge of leaving BT after being with them for 3 years as this month their service has been abysmal.

1st of March Friday I notice my hub is flashing orange and wont connect, I try factory hub reset, power cycle, doesnt fix it. Engineer booked for soonest available slot which is Monday 4th. Hub continues flashing orange for 3 days.

4th March a Cube Engineer shows up, he puts his phone tool into my BT 5C socket to test the line while hub is still plugged in and I see that it turns blue and connects. Then for some reason the engineer decides to pull socket out and replace it. When I mention that I saw the hub connect to internet before he replaced it he just says "No, it was a dodgey socket", great technical answer right?... However the hub is now blue and connected so I let him go on his way.

All is fine for about 2 weeks until Tuesday 19th March when I see hub is flashing orange again. Engineer booked for Thursday 21st. At around 10pm on Wednesday 20th the Hub turns blue and connects. On Thursday 21st at around 5am I get text asking if I need engineer still, I reply its fixed. 5mins after texting fixed the hub starts flashing orange again. I phone up saying I need the appointment still, but they say its gone and I have to wait untill Saturday 23rd now.

For next 3 days hub flashes orange. On Saturday 23rd 15 mins before engineer appointment it turns blue and I get a text saying that engineer cant make it because he has a "problem with his van". Even though it was blue I still wanted engineer to check it as I felt it would sporadically keep flashing orange still. So I phone BT and say that I still want an engineer to check it, they book soonest appointment which is Tuesday 26th.

Hub is blue from 23rd to the morning of 26th. I thought it must be stable now so I message its fixed and low and behold a short time after it starts flashing orange again. I phone BT for another engineer visit this time Wednesday 27th.

On Wednesday morning I phone up and try to cancel Wednesday 27th appointment and reschedule for Thursday 28th. A guy called Robert says "Yeah thats ok man all sorted for you". On Wednesday 27th engineer from Cube shows up still, I tell him they were meant to cancel but since he is here he can have a look.

Engineer puts phone tool into socket and uses laptop to reset my hub and it turns blue. He checks the line and finds no faults. Hub is fine untill today 31st March where it has again started flashing orange and I have an Openreach engineer booked for Wednesday 3rd April.

To me it seems that when an engineer resets it, it works, but when I do it doesnt. So if this is not resolved next time I will be leaving. I can add that not once was I offered any compensation and still expected to pay full bill this month even though I have had no internet for a total of 9 days  this month.

Any advice for how to fix it myself without waiting for engineers is appreciated.

[infinitywaiter]

First off, if it's been going on for a month as you say, then I hope that you've already put a complaint in for it.

https://www.bt.com/help/contact-bt/complaints

If you have reported it too, then you should also be able to track any updates, as mentioned in previous forum post here.

https://community.bt.com/t5/BT-Fibre-broadband/Flashing-orange/m-p/2334093#M350991

You can only try swapping the broadband cable if you have another one and factory resetting your hub and see if that works, however if it stays flashing orange and it is an issue like the socket or a line fault, it seems like it's an issue somewhere on your line upto your socket, then you can't do anything until an engineer completely fixes it for you.

It sounds like some have just done a quick fix and assumed it's all okay and gone away again without fully checking it all.

If it keeps happening and you're on Halo package and you've reported it, then they should have sent you out a mini 4g hub to cover you whilst it's being fixed.

https://www.bt.com/help/broadband/getting-set-up/bt-halo/learn-about-the-4g-mini-hub-for-bt-halo-cus....

Finally, if you were on fibre and coming from an ONT, then a lot of people have had the flashing orange light as they've simply not put the wire into the red WAN port or LAN port 4 if there wasn't one, unfortunately yours isn't a simple fix like that.

[Oliverhayes01]

Thanks for reply but why is it that both times the engineers came to visit they "fixed" it by just plugging in their phone tools and use their laptops to do a "standard reset" in the last engineers words. Even though one engineer swapped the socket and called it "dodgey" which I'm not buying and just makes me think he had no idea what he is doing.

What is a "fault"? Is it someone at BT that keeps disabling my account and prevents my hub from connecting, so I have to wait for these engineers to come and reenable it? This lack of transparency and explanations is why I ask on here if any network engineers can explain it to me please.

[Oliverhayes01]

Earlier when on phone with BT a lady called Danielle booked the engineer appointment for Wednesday April 3rd, she also thoughtfully logged it as a complaint for me.

I saw I had email few hours later saying complaint is closed with no explanation.

I tried to log a new one now and instead get this web page:

From RFC 2068 Hypertext Transfer Protocol -- HTTP/1.1:

10.4.5 404 Not Found

The server has not found anything matching the Request-URI. No indication is given of whether the condition is temporary or permanent.

If the server does not wish to make this information available to the client, the status code 403 (Forbidden) can be used instead. The 410 (Gone) status code SHOULD be used if the server knows, through some internally configurable mechanism, that an old resource is permanently unavailable and has no forwarding address.

What is going on?

[infinitywaiter]

Like I've said, look at the complaints page as to me it sounds like this issue could just keep going on and on until somebody has a proper inspection of your line etc.

https://www.bt.com/help/contact-bt/complaints/make-complaint

If they have opened a complaint on your behalf and it's been closed without a satisfactory outcome, then you can complain higher up than BT.

What if I'm still not happy?
You can contact the Communications Ombudsman to investigate your complaint if we haven't solved it within 8 weeks, or if you're not satisfied with our response. The ombudsman is free, independent service.

So have a look at Communications Ombudsman and decide if you want to complain further to them.

https://www.commsombudsman.org/

If you do, make sure you make a complete record of everything to do with this issue, and if you can take screenshots or photos as evidence of any complaints through the BT complaints procedure, in case they get removed by BT of off their system as closed.

[Cattus]

Same has happened to us this week. Cheesed!

[WSH]

I take it from what you've said so far that you're on FTTC/VDSL (Part Fibre as it's called today)?

Did the first engineer replace the socket or did you stop him....this is not clear?

Do you have any extensions running off that socket?

Edit:  Actually, now I think about it, a flashing orange hub is usually an authentication error.  If so, it is an error with your account, not the hardware.

[Cattus]

The flashing started last Monday. Supposedly, there were faults on our line and an engineer was up the pole to fix it. The pole is right outside of our house and didn't see or hear anyone.  The complaint was closed on Thursday and within 10mins of the phone call,  the hub flashed orange. It's been a little better, only flashing 4 times yesterday.  I sent the hub back to factory setting this afternoon and so far so good. Openreach has booked in to switch us to full fibre on 12th August. Hopefully this will improve things. New hub as well. Terribly frustrating though. Two years ago  something was wrong with the line leading from the pole to our house. We had no internet for 2wks and this was all over Christmas. We were well compensated but nothing can make up for ruining Christmas. 

[Oliverhayes01]

I'm with EE now.

I still occasionaly get the issue, but because I like to fiddle with and test things myself rather than place my hopes in a bloated and incompetent system I found a solution

For some reason, when it flashes orange and absolutely refuses to connect by itself, I have to plug in a ADSL filter into the Phone socket of the Hub, then unplug the ADSL cable from its socket in the hub and  plug it into the ADSL filter. Let it "cook" for a few seconds then unplug the filter and plug the ADSL cable directly to the hub again, and without fail it has fixed the flashing orange issue every time (except for when thunderstorm knocked out local area).

Any engineers know why this happens and why doing that little trick fixes it?

[WSH]

In the first post you were told it was a "dodgy socket".  I'm not a telecoms engineer but as an IT tech I would say this merely confirms that.  It suggests there is a problem with the filter in the socket causing interference to feed back in from the phone side and that is disrupting the connection.  Using the microfilter probably allows it to settle again, (until the next time).  Doesn't coincide with the phone being used, does it?