Noisy line and poor broadband? Read this

ComplexP

I've already posted this into the vents and warnings area but am posting it into several other forums now because I feel very strongly that this information needs to get to as many people as possible.

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I want to tell you about my two years of problems with BT in the hope that anyone in a similar situation will learn from my experience. It is quite a long story but if you are experiencing slow broadband speeds and noise on your line you should read on.

My wife and I live in a rented house and the broadband connection has been dire since we moved in regardless of which ISP we were with. We'd get constant connection drops and the speed was locked at about 1/20 of what it should have been. At the same time we'd often hear broadband signal noises on the phone line when the ADSL router was plugged in.

BT told us that because the noise went away when we unplugged the router it must be the router or the ADSL filters that were to blame. This is a common misconception held by most BT call centre staff. In reality, a line fault can actually be causing symptoms like these (known as a high resistance fault) but I only learned this after replacing all of my equipment and doing my own research.

I then noticed that the line would still crackle slightly even when the router was unplugged and the phone plugged directly into the test socket. At this point I raised it simply as a noisy line and did not mention broadband.

They ran several remote tests on the line and declared it was 'perfect' so an engineer would have to be sent out.

What followed over the course of the next 20 months was no fewer than 3 individual Openreach engineers who came to the property 3 separate times (on weekdays obviously, costing me holiday each time) and each time they ran test after test and declared there was nothing wrong that they could find. This was even though they could hear the noise.

Things eventually came to a head when I decided to hit it from the broadband side and raised a broadband fault through my ISP (Plusnet). Now something that I did not know about is that a broadband fault has to be dealt with by a broadband engineer and these guys are quite a bit more thorough than your standard line engineers. Also, BT will ONLY send out a broadband engineer at the request of an ISP, not an end user.

I was basically told that this guy was very expensive and that if there turned out to be no problem or that it was being caused by something I did that I would be landed with a hefty callout charge and in their opinion I shouldn't risk it. I stuck to my guns and insisted that a broadband engineer visit the property because I was still convinced there was a fault on my line.

So, this was the 4th engineer to visit and instantly I knew he was different. For a start he recognised that the noise could be caused by a line fault not just by my equipment. He then actually went up the pole outside my house (something none of the others had bothered to do) and found that where my line connects to the pole the connection was completely loose. A LOOSE CHUFFING WIRE!!!

He reclamped it and my line and broadband has been clear and fast ever since.

So remember, the line tests BT carry out are NOT 100% accurate and should not always be taken as gospel. Be warned though that you need to be 110% sure that you have eliminated your own equipment as cause because the callout charges can run into the hundreds of pounds.

Also, remember that 'normal' line engineers seem to have a bit of a blind spot when it comes to tracking down actual physical faults on your line (breaks, tears, loose wires etc). So if it's something that is effecting your broadband raise the fault through your ISP and keep hammering at them to get a broadband engineer to your house on your behalf.

I'm not quite at the end of my sorry little tale though, because yesterday I noticed that I had been billed £125 by BT for the 3rd engineer who had apparently reported that he could find no line fault.

I obviously disputed this, pointing out that the 4th engineer (regardless of him being a broadband engineer or not) had actually found what was a glaring line fault that the 3rd engineer had missed and I was not going to pay for what was essentially his oversight.

Initially BT tried to fob me off with their usual rubbish but I've had 2 years of learning how to deal with these people and they eventually agreed that the money should be refunded.

I told them they were lucky I wasn't pursuing them for compensation for my days off work and 2 years worth of poor line quality and slow broandband speeds. Theoretically I could argue they've cost me well over £500 in the last 2 years.

spaceboy

I had a similar problem with BT 3 years ago, took 3 months and countless phonecalls to resolve. They always blame your computer etc first you have to keep pressing them.

ComplexP

spaceboy wrote: »

I had a similar problem with BT 3 years ago, took 3 months and countless phonecalls to resolve. They always blame your computer etc first you have to keep pressing them.

In the end it was Plusnet who sorted it by getting a 'Broadband' Openreach engineer to the property effectively bypassing BT altogether even though I'm renting the line from BT and it turned out to be a line fault.

I only wish I'd done that from the start rather than waste months trying to get BT to sort it.

Inactive

Are you aware that, Plusnet is owned by BT..

ComplexP

Inactive wrote: »

Are you aware that, Plusnet is owned by BT..

Yes I am aware of that thanks but they still seem to operate very much independently. You would think that being owned by BT would mean that BT respond to them quickly but it seems to make stuff-all difference. They may as well be on separate planets based on the time it takes for the two companies to work together.

twhitehead

Some time ago I was told my ISP would be updating broadband in the area. We lost telephone and internet, telephone for 2 weeks and internet for about 6 weeks. BT blamed Tiscali, Tiscali blamed BT. The explanation (for what it was worth eventually) was that out of 5000 upgrades in our local exchange Tiscali had had 99.9% success rate, I had been 'unlucky'. The best suggestion of help came from a BT lady in Malaya who told my wife to take the master BT socket to pieces and push a screwdriver into the socket and see if that made any difference. Again we were told BT would charge for any callouts. To solve the problem I changed to madasafish and all faults stopped (for 2 years):rotfl:

AHAR

It's a shame you had so much trouble getting your problem sorted out.
Over the past couple of years I've twice had my broadband connection suddenly become very slow and unreliable. On both occasions the broadband problems were accompanied by loud crackling on the voice line. On the first occasion the voice line actually went completely dead but the broadband remained and then suddenly improved so it was obvious the noisy voice line had been affecting the broadband.
I reported the problem to my voice line provider which was Toucan the first time and then Pipex when they took over, and they sent BT Openreach to fix it very quickly without needing to access my house. On the first occasion I reported the fault during my lunch hour at work and it had been fixed by the time I arrived home!

ComplexP

AHAR wrote: »

It's a shame you had so much trouble getting your problem sorted out.
Over the past couple of years I've twice had my broadband connection suddenly become very slow and unreliable. On both occasions the broadband problems were accompanied by loud crackling on the voice line. On the first occasion the voice line actually went completely dead but the broadband remained and then suddenly improved so it was obvious the noisy voice line had been affecting the broadband.
I reported the problem to my voice line provider which was Toucan the first time and then Pipex when they took over, and they sent BT Openreach to fix it very quickly without needing to access my house. On the first occasion I reported the fault during my lunch hour at work and it had been fixed by the time I arrived home!

This is probably the case for the majority of people. I think if you're going to get a line fault you need it to be something really obvious. My problem was that it was a very subtle and intermittent fault which made it next to impossible to track down using the usual line tests.

It finally took the old fashioned approach of actually looking at the line (what a crazy idea!) to spot where the loose connection was. Go figure...

GunJack

Well posted Complex. This is quite a typical story over in some of the broadband forums I frequent, intermittent faults never get the best out of the Openreach bods, and I have myself ranted over this very issue recently.

Posting it on here may reach a slightly wider audience, which ain't a bad thing....

ComplexP

GunJack wrote: »

Well posted Complex. This is quite a typical story over in some of the broadband forums I frequent, intermittent faults never get the best out of the Openreach bods, and I have myself ranted over this very issue recently.

Posting it on here may reach a slightly wider audience, which ain't a bad thing....

Thanks GunJack, it's good to know I'm not alone.

I suspect that these types of problems are more widespread than BT would have us believe but it's just that most people accept the usual excuses of 'you're too far from the exchange' or 'it's your equipment'.

What really annoys me is that if this had happened to my grandmother she would most likely have been landed with a £125 bill (or worse) and STILL have a broken line.

AirCooledHeaven

I had similar problems. Turns out my fault was in the exchange. Problem is the guys sent out by BT (even at the ISP's request) are only authorised to repair faults from the exchange (not in it) to one's master socket. Eventually the 3rd engineer said " well I'm not supposed to but I'll pop into the exchange and sort it out". 1 hour later everything working fine.