BTs incompetence

[stupee33]

Hi all, decided to give this forum a try as nothing else seems to work.

Had BT fibre for roughly 2 years now & the first 18 months I had no bother at all.

However, this last 5 months have been a nightmare. I’ve always had a small crackling on my line but nothing too bad, since June I’ve had trouble with my WiFi cutting out. Sometimes it’s fine for 3-4 days but then we have days like today when we’ve had no WiFi & no phoneline from 8am until 6pm. They’re working fine just now but for how long I don’t know.

I’ve had 5 engineer visits, replaced my master point, I’ve disconnected all secondary points, unplugged all Ethernet cables, I’ve had a new router & tried an engineers router & bought new BT phones but still the problem persists.

I’ve raised 4 complaints but when the line & WiFi are working for a few days then they close my complaint. I have had the direct number of someone at BT for the last 4 weeks or so, I’m unsure of his job title & I genuinely think he’s trying his hardest to get it sorted but it seems to be getting worse. He’s giving me a call again tomorrow because the last engineer visit was yesterday & still the fault persists.

I signed up for the best hub & most expensive package just so I could have decent WiFi. On a good day I’m getting 30MB download but a few weeks ago we were getting 220 KB

What’s bothering me is, on the first engineer visit I was told that their was water ingress at one of the green junction boxes just over 1000 meters from my house & that’s what’s causing the problem & I’ve been reading a few forums & moisture or water ingress is the reason for crackling lines & faulty WiFi. I’ve mentioned this to everyone I speak to from BT but they just keep fobbing me off.

If they know about the water ingress issues then why don’t they repair it?? I think the amount of money they are making from mug customers like myself then they can afford to replace it.

Apologies for the long winded rant, I’m at the end of my tether & don’t know what else to try!!

[stupee33]

I never mentioned this in my original post but I have spent hours & hours on the phone to BT over the last 5 months going through all the line tests etc.

[NeilO]

@stupee33 Please use the 'click here to contact the mods' link in my forum profile to send in your details and we'll be happy to help. You can find the link by clicking on my username.

Thanks

Neil

[iniltous]

If it's a problem in the external network , then it's not 'BT' as such that are tasked with keeping the network in good order, it's Openreach , that doesn't absolve your provider from responsibility for getting the problem fixed, but it shows that it wouldn't really matter who your provider was ( Talk Talk , Plusnet, Post Office etc) the 'line' issue would be there regardless.
You mention 'the amount of money they make' , OR get around 30p a day from the provider for the line you use for broadband and phone, this amount is fixed and is the same for all providers ( Sky , TT etc) so although you may pay around £20 per month 'line rental' nothing like it is 'given' to OR for maintaining the network

[Starwire2000]

If there was water ingress in a PCP, aka what you call a green junction box then the Openreach Network Services Engineers would be all over it like flies on **bleep**.

If waters flooding a PCP then it’ll risk flooding the E-Side Network Cables, which a lot use Paper Insulation and we all know what happens when paper gets wet. These cables go upwards of 0.4/3800 pairs, they go faulty and you’ve potentially just knocked out half the phone lines in an entire Town.

[stupee33]

Thanks for the replies,
@ Neil the mod I’ll be in touch soon.

I wasn’t really wanting to go into how much BT makes just wondering why a company that can post over £2 billion profit in 1 year can’t provide me with a service I’m paying for. I totally understand & can accept that faults can be difficult to identify & repair but it’s now almost 6 months I’ve been putting up with this & it’s starting to really annoy me, my wife & my teenage son.

The water ingress at the Junctin box was just what the first engineer told me & from what I’ve been reading on this & other forums seems to be a cause of similar issues to mine.

I’ve had a call from my point of contact at BT today & he’s saying that the fault has been escalated & I’m getting another engineer visit tomorrow.

After my phoneline & WiFi came back on yesterday evening the WiFi dropped out 2 or 3 times but all day today it has been fine.

Fingers crossed!!

[Andy_N]

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@stupee33wrote:
I never mentioned this in my original post but I have spent hours & hours on the phone to BT over the last 5 months going through all the line tests etc.

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Hi.

If your phone crackles during a call, then you need to report it as a phone fault. Do not mention broadband etc, because the wrong people get involved.

Once the crackling has been fixed, usually a perished cable or water ingress into a joint, then the broadband should effectively be fixed as well.

[stupee33]

Hi,

The guy that’s taken ownership of the fault at BT did say he would treat it as a phoneline fault to start with as he could hear crackling when he was on the phone to me, so the 4th engineer who came out, about 10 days ago was a line engineer. Was here for at least 90 minutes going through loads of tests but never found the fault. Within a couple of hours of him leaving it was playing up again.

The last engineer who was here on Saturday was a broadband engineer, it’s the 2nd time he’s been here & again couldn’t find the fault.

He did mention that he had checked & could see just how many times my router is initialising so understands that I’m not exaggerating.

👍🏻

[stupee33]

Just an update on the fault I’ve been putting up with for the last 6 months.

Had my 6th engineer visit on Wednesday 17th & I believe he changed the fibre ports?? As I work away from home 2 weeks at a time I missed him by a day.

My wife was saying that the first couple of days all was fine but come Saturday afternoon the router goes orange & my phone line drops out. Only for a couple of minutes & it’s all fine again.

Then this afternoon Sunday 21st around lunchtime that’s the WiFi off & on again for a couple of hours.

Obviously the fault is still kicking about somewhere & not been properly diagnosed or repaired.

I’ve tried phoning my case handler this afternoon but no answer & I’ve left voicemails. I’m offshore working 12 hour shifts so very difficult to get hold of me.

I’ll keep you all updated with how this turns out!!