BT Broadband

[+Wanderer]

OK here we go...

For the past month or so my BT Broadband connection has been chit. The connection drops out for 30-40 seconds every 5 minutes or so. It then reconnects without me doing anything. Ruddy annoying if you're live streaming or on Skype. But clearly a fault anyway.

Have been online (when I can!) and looking at various blogs and forums it seems I'm not the only one with this problem. No obvious solution posted other than to change provider.

I've been connected, successfully, with BT Broadband since 2007. Now it's a total waste of time.

Today I had 30 minutes in a helpline queue then a reasonably helpful 30 minutes with a nice chap in India. (It would have been 10 minutes but he insisted on saying everything 3 times for some reason.)

They've checked the line and are now sending an engineer on Wednesday.

I don't expect any on here to give me a silver bullet solution but has anyone had the same problem? Did it get resolved? Should I be expecting to change supplier in the near future? Would a new modem help? Will I give the engineer tea or coffee on Wednesday?

PS. Any suggestions for exceptional broadband suppliers?

Edited July 12, 2010 by Wanderer

[DALNEIGHCALEY]

I'm experiencing the same problems , complete pain in the arse . I'm thinking of changing to sky .

[SMEE]

I cant offer any help other than to say..in the few years i have been with BT...i have found them top Banana when it comes to dealing with technical issues. Also, I am pretty satisfied with the broadband service in general.

[The Mantis]

I've been with them for years. Partly because I've heard horror stories about some of the cheaper ones, partly because there's hardly anything else available where I live. Sometimes I ask for a migration code which prompts them to offer me a ?5 monthly discount for the next year. Getting the discount to appear on my bill is another story though.

My experience of their telephone support is really shyte. I try to argue with them by email. When I refer them to these emails over the phone (like when they have offered me a discount in writing) they don't have a scooby.

Anyway, to answer your question: for a year or so I've been getting intermittent warnings from my web browser saying 'you are not connected to the internet' and this lasts a few seconds then I refresh the page. I've meant to investigate it further as I wasn't convinced that BT was dropping the connection- my email browser seemed unaffected. However if the computer was left unattended for a bit, the email would go offline.

[Jay_7]

I've been with BT for a while now because unless your with TalkTalk, it's all BT equipment ISP's use in Inverness anyway.

Can't complain. Well I can - I think it's disgusting that we're going to be one of the last places in the country to get fibre optic broadband rolled out to the street cabinets.

[MrsICTFC]

I am with BT and it has been doing the same thing! Right pain however, we did have SKY broadband and it was so much slower so this cutting out for me is so much better than the speed we got with SKY. They promised more and it was poor.

[+Feb82000]

am with talk talk its good,but on sat night it shut down for about 3 hours round the uk

[+Wanderer]

I feel this is tempting fate but here goes.

Engineer arrived on time having called in advance that he was on his way. Did a million checks and concluded the 3.5 year old modem was the problem. Installed a new one with wireless (yummy!) and hey...problem apparently fixed. Just been on Skype for 30 minutes and not a dropout.

Many of our big (though mostly foreign owned) businesses get a lot of bad press, but BT, from the call centre to our friendly engineer who was in the house for an hour, did a grand job today. Top marks.

I'll side with Smee on this one...for technical support they really did the job.

PS. It was tea, milk and 2 sugars.

[+DoofersDad]

How long have you got?

To cut a long story short. When we moved here we asked BT to transfer our Broadband account. We were informed of a go live date. No Broadband. New neighbours told us this was a Broadband black spot. BT orders told us Broadband was connected and we should speak to their tech people. BT tech people said they couldn't help because orders hadn't processed it yet. Back to orders who said they had. Contacted 3 other service providers who in less than 15 seconds were able to tell me from phone number or postcode that we wouldn't get Broadband. Told BT this who responded to say we could get Broadband because they had connected us. BT said we must have a faulty modem so sent another one. Surprise, surprise, it didn't work. BT then sent an engineer (not a BT employee) to test the line. Engineer said that he didn't know why BT had sent him as you can't get Broadband here. Engineer submitted report electronically to BT from our house. A week later BT informed me that they would not be able to pursue the matter until they had the engineers report. About 2 weeks later BT phoned to tell me the engineers report showed I couldn't get Broadband. They then phoned twice more to tell me - I said I knew that. Meanwhile they had been billing me and making threatening noises about me not paying my bill. I said that I wasn't paying for a service I wasn't getting. BT said I was getting Broadband because they'd connected me. During this period I spent well over 20 hours on the phone mostly waiting in interminable queues, then speaking to someone who had no details of my account and who then tried to tell me I had to phone the tech people or the order people or anybody as long as it wasn't them. I insisted on speaking to supervisors but nobody would take responsibility that they were charging me for a service I had never received and which they were not technically able to provide. Bills continued when we changed the phone service to the excellent Talk Talk. Finally after about 3 months they agreed I had been overcharged. I wrote a letter of complaint which was in bullet points and still ran to about 9 pages. The reply was an acknowledgement and a promise to pass my letter to the sections concerned. No apology.

In my experience BT have managed to take organisational incompetence to staggering new lows.

The reason we did not have Broadband was that BT could not be a**ed to update an old exchange on the Black Isle even though HIE had offerred to pay the full cost. We now have a wireless link through Avanti which is beamed across from Tulloch Castle and whilst pricey, it is very reliable.

BT - Bloody Terrible.

[DornochCaley]

It has is issues, but overall, i think BT is the best. There are some really poor providers out there.