Any problems tonight?

[Niall]

Well as my upload is still over 1mb I'll wait to see what happens. 12mb down is good enough for me really, but if it carries on dropping I suppose I'll have to report it again. Although I doubt BT would do anything if an ISP reported a possible fault with the green box at the end of the road!

[Niall]

Well my noise margin seems to be increasing by 3 every four days, for god knows what reason, since the engineer came out last Monday it's increased from 5.4 to 12.2. My attn up and down hasn't moved, but my speed has dropped from 14k profile to 11133. My mums phone line once again has loads of noise on it.

Bizarrely she tells me that the engineer actually told her that something in the exchange or box is melting the fuses I'm sure she's got that slightly wrong, but she said something was melting and running over the circuit. I'm wondering if BT are just totally BSing people

So now it looks like I'm going to have to play a waiting game until my line reduces to cr*p again, looking at it, and also contact IDnet about the fault on the phone line again. The two must be connected because as soon as her phone line goes cr*p, my speed starts decreasing (same line into the house, split outside).

Oddly, I just picked up my phone to check for noise, and it seems okay, but on picking up the handset the upload noise margin dropped from 6 to 2, and back up to 6 when I put the phone down. I really have no idea what's going on anymore

[gyruss]

Niall,
This is just about the same symptoms as i had, the noise on my phone line was unbearable to the point where i could hardly hear people when they rang me,  and my profile was going up and down more than I was happy with at all.

In the end it took a total fail of my phone line and a call raised with bt for a voice fault to get them to fix it.

So far mines ok, but i'm not going to hold my breath because after the 4 year fiasco i've just been through this 'happy time' can last only moments.  No idea what fixed mine though, but whatever he fixed he went to the box by the side of the road to do and not anywhere near the demarcation point at the house.

Hope you get sorted.

[Niall]

To me it seems they are swapping things around. My line was bad, BT did something that did nothing to dive it other than stop line dropping, then my mums phone stopped working. They fixed that and my line speed dropped further. They then finally fix my line and now my mums line is really badly noisy and my speed is dropping.

Ah well, a waiting game it is.

[gyruss]

Any other issues with the phone and broadband?   On mine whenever i had phone calls, my router red lighted on me.

Could well still be a HR Fault, or earth issue even.  Sadly they do not make all BT engineers equal and you hopefully will get someone really thorough one of these days :/

[Niall]

I never had the line drop on calls or anything like that. I'll have another nose when I get home tonight, to see what the noise margin is.

[Niall]

Well I've sent off another ticket to IDnet. I've gotten home to discover my noise margin is 15.1 and my speeds have dropped to 9555, and my mums phone line sounds like someone is eating crisps on it, while my phone line itself is near silent.

I'm sick to death of this now, it's getting beyond a joke. Why can't BT check the work they do before reporting it's fixed? Do these engineers not know how to do their jobs properly? I've asked for them to sort this without an engineer coming to the house as the last visit confirmed there is no problem at this end....

Oddly, my mum has just said she tried phoning IDnet before and got the message that the call couldn't be transferred. Also, her phone is now pretty much useless as you can't hear the person on the other end!

[Rik]

Good luck.

[Niall]

Got a reply from Brian again. A new ticket has been opened as that last one was closed as you'd expect. He didn't answer my question querying whether they can cross reference the fault my mum is seeing, with mine. Don't know if they can, but pooling info would seem to be sensible. That being said I don't know if my fault is with the voice line or broadband, and my mums clearly is with the voice line.

Ah well, time to wait to hear BTs latest lie.

[Niall]

Noise margin has dropped to 9.9 but speed has now also dropped to 6mb. Awesome. The attn up/down hasn't budged at all through all this.



Apparently my mum has now emailed IDnet support (last night) so hopefully both faults will get looked at, at the same time. I phoned her land line from work on my mobile before and my god, the noise on the line! It was so bad and so loud that I couldn't stand it and couldn't leave a message

[Niall]

Well I'm friggin livid at the moment. My mum had just had an email back from IDNet, and BT have told them the line is fine it must be my mums phone. **** SAKE!

They said that about my completely buggered line. I don't care if the line is fine, there's a ******* fault which is why we're reporting it. Jesus Christ what a ***** joke.

I'm still waiting to see what bullshit BT come up with about my fault.

[Niall]

Right, slight correction. I've just accessed my mums email account (glad I set it up) and support have asked my mum to check her phone and use an alternate handset to make sure it's not that. The phone still has immense noise and is unusable. So I suppose that means another engineer will be needed. Hopefully they'll sort out the issues for both lines. I doubt it though.

I swear to god this shambles is making me ill, I'm so blood angry all the time at their incompetence, fobbing off IDNet who can only jump through hoops. Always having the threat of charges is really pissing me off. It's like being accused of something despite there being numerous records of problems.

[Niall]

My phone is still getting the same problem on my mums line I've just been told via text, so another email to support by my mum it is.

[Niall]

I'm starting to lose the will to live now. I've been waiting for a reply from IDnet since raising the ticket, and had no reply. I've just accidentally opened my IDnet email on my phone (which only works when I'm connected to wifi), and support had replied to that account despite me specifically asking them to reply to my hotmail account.

I think people are just taking the piss now.

Guess what? BT say there's nothing wrong on the line. I swear to god I feel like punching someone in the face. Does no one listen anymore? Does no one keep records of fault history tickets? Do BT not track the work they've done? EVERY TIME it's "there's no fault on the line". WE KNOW THERE IS NO FAULT ON THE LINE, THE FAULT IS IN THAT BOX AT THE TOP OF THE ESTATE. The engineer has even told us so and reported this last time.

What hope have I got if absolutely no one is bothering to record and pass on information? Now support want to arrange a visit and I don't have a day off until February now. Does this mean I have to have a sh*t line until next year because BT can't check their own damn equipment?

Jesus christ, it's pathetic.

[Ardua]

Got a reply from Brian again. A new ticket has been opened as that last one was closed as you'd expect. He didn't answer my question querying whether they can cross reference the fault my mum is seeing, with mine. Don't know if they can, but pooling info would seem to be sensible. That being said I don't know if my fault is with the voice line or broadband, and my mums clearly is with the voice line.

I know that Simon at IDNet is a frequent visitor to this and other forums where IDNet Support is mentioned. Given the issues that Niall has raised, it might be helpful to other IDNet customers if Simon could explain how Support progresses complex technical issues such as this with its wholesale provider. For example, what level of technical logging is undertaken within IDNet to ensure that BT does not treat each event as separate event?  Does IDNet offer BT its thoughts on the likely cause of the problem? What follow on action does IDNet take if it is not happy with BT's fault progression and the outcome?

[Niall]

All I want is for BT to send the engineer to their equipment at the top of this cul-de-sac and replace whatever they've already told us is broken. It seems that they only told my mum this, not BT and not IDnet. No one is feeding information back to me, apart from last time I was told what the Dside link was. There's clearly problems worse than just that, and it seems to me to be far too coincidental that they fix my phone line and my mums goes abysmal. The fact that BT just blankly replied that there's no fault on the line is just friggin insulting. Surely to god IDnet told them that the engineers that I and my mum had out have already ruled out the physical line from the house is fine. If they don't believe that then they should fire the two engineers they sent out in the first place.

Once again I'm under threat of charges from BT as they've done nothing to fix the issue, and to compound the insult, so is my mother.

While support have been very helpful, when I'm left getting more and more stressed out, when I don't get an answer to a question I've asked in an email all I feel is that I'm being completely ignored and support are just going through the scripted fault process. I've asked twice, or possibly three times now if both faults can be looked at, at the same time (and have emailed again tonight asking) and this question has not been answered. So far, the only question I've had answered is "what is a Dside link?", to which I got a helpful link with the info I needed.

Why is everything being made so difficult? Surely it's a simple case of reading a query and answering it. Why do BT check the line and say there's no fault when that isn't the problem I have, nor is it the fault I've reported, and BT have told us 4 times the line is fine? Exactly who do you have to speak to/deal with for BT to do their job properly and be given the information informing us what the actual problem is and why they're looking at problems that they should know don't exist.

[Ardua]

Niall - good morning. I standby my earlier question to IDNet; that said, as BT seems to be the problem then why don't you email the CEO at BT and outline the issues and your obvious frustration. It can do no harm. Almost to a Company, independent ISPs complain about the hold that BT now has over them but there seems to me to be an innate reluctance to do anything about it. I can think of a number of reasons why this might be the case.

[Simon_idnet]

Hi Niall

We do understand your frustration and we can assure you that we will not rest until we have resolved the problem for you. Most BT engineers are very good at reading our notes and are mostly grateful for the background information that we provide. However, it must be remembered that it is impossible for us to request the same engineer that you had previously and so we have to start from scratch with every engineer appointment in order to ensure that they do have notes detailing the background history (should they choose to read them). The only way that an engineer can finish the job, once he has carried-out remedial work, is to then visit your premises to test the line. He will therefore require access. You do not necessarily have to be home but there will have to be someone there who can let him in.

regards
Simon

[Niall]

Thanks for the reply

As I asked via email, the only way a visit is possible is if support arrange it to coincide with the one you're sending out for my mums issue. I literally have 0 days holiday now, until February. There's no way around it for me. I had to arrange the last visit while I had my pre booked days off.

Hopefully it'll be resolved via the email I sent last night.

[Niall]

X2 engineers now booked for the same morning. They'll both be looking at the same cabinet at the end of the road, but BT are retarded after all....

[gyruss]

This is the same frustration I was going through.   When you know there is a fault there which can be fixed, and when you know you've done everything your side of the demarcation point to make sure its not your fault causing it, all you want is it resolving so you can finally receive a decent and hopefully uninterrupted connection again.

4+ years i got fobbed off with this problem you describe, and i'm extremely I.T. savvy too, its my day job to look after IT hardware and networks, so when i was getting home i was trouble shooting my internet connection and litereally trying everything.  I bought 2 'brand new' routers, recabled my house with 2 completely fresh runs of twisted pair, and also replaced my faceplate with 2 different adslnation plates, and still my problems went on.

I know the frustration Niall, I was fuming many a time, and i was getting more red lights from my router than i was getting from the motion sensor in my hall everytime i walked past it lol

let us know how you get on, would love to see some resolution for you.  I would definitely be interested to know what if any interaction goes on between isp and bt for such faults if at all, as i got the impression that the ball was placed well and truly in my court for dealing with BT.

[Niall]

Well it's Wednesday morning they're both booked for, so we'll have to wait and see. The only thing that worries me is that I won't be here, so I'm going to have to get my mum to get the engineer to leave a note to say what the problem is so I've got some sort of record. It was bad enough last time when I was here. He just checked the phone for noise, ran a test on the line from this end, found nothing, said there was nothing wrong and then said the line would be dropping for a couple of hours. That's the last I saw of him, and it was only me querying IDnet support that got me any info. All we know is that the cabinet at the top of the estate has a problem, which begs the question why did they not fix it last time, the time before and the time before that, when they were here?

One thing I do know is that they won't be getting a penny from me for the visit, nor my mum as they've already told me there's nothing wrong in the house, so that's something at least.

[HoriZon]

Lost connection about 2 hours ago, rebooted router no effect. I'm synced just can't connect to idnet.

Area code 01759.

[zappaDPJ]

I think BT are having issues. My connection has dropped multiple times since 2.00am and I'm experiencing very high packet loss. It appears to be affecting a number of ISPs.

[Gary]

I think BT are having issues. My connection has dropped multiple times since 2.00am and I'm experiencing very high packet loss. It appears to be affecting a number of ISPs.

All ok here, just checked my logs and router has been up for about 509 hours, no drops at all