Blacklisted by Bt

Allgonebye

I had problems with my internet for 9 months, sometimes dropping as low as 2mb on a stay fast guarantee of 45mb. Finally on the 4th visit and a senior engineer it was determined that it was in the junction box. There was a lot of back and forth, not pretty but very civil, they admitted it was there fault and its been great since.
 
With the end of my contract I shopped around but rang to see what they were offering and its half everything. My 53mb to 72mb is now 26mb to 32mb and my stay fast has dropped from 45mb to 24mb. Half of what I would be offered as a new customer. So time to move. Problem is everyone else was offering 53mb to 72mb until I put in my address or phone number then it would half.

I tried posing as three of my terraced row neighbours with BT and up went the speed, the final operative, sideways admitted that my number was the only one half speed on there screen! I check with other providers to find the same.
Finally I talked to someone from EE, that again offered me the lower speed but this time if he requested a change of phone number for me,  it would put my speeds back up.

I know I can take the easy route and change my home phone number but before I spend hour chasing up surgeries, dentists, banks, etc to update it everywhere is there anything I can do to change this? or is complaining over bad service now more than it's worth?

  

Neil_Jones

The system auto trains itself to supply the maximum speed your line can support over a period of time.

If you've had an issue with your line that affects the logic to return lower speeds then the system will think that's all it can support.  If it was capable of supporting 45Mbps then it will eventually move back there once stable enough for long enough.

Depending on where the fault was changing phone number won't necessarily help.  That doesn't necessarily move you around in the cabinet, its more likely to be a network switch configuration somewhere further up the chain.  If the fault was before that you can have as many numbers as you want, its not going to change anything.

Anyway you'll probably find the speed estimates are just that - estimates.  You may get better.  You may get worse.

mwarby

The only thing I'd add is the lower speed estimates may mean the ISP would opt to use a 50 down/10 up option with openreach, before they may have used/offered a 80 down/20 up option (maybe at same price, maybe slight premium).

Using the lower speed product with openreach would cap your upper speed, although if/when your estimate improves you could potentially move products