No connection since BT worked in cabinet.

[#1]

My broadband has been down since Monday, when BT worked in the cabinet at the end of the road. Having done all the tests prior to calling and being told that the issue was with BT, I got hold of a latop yesterday so that I can dial in. When I did, I saw that a ticket had been returned to me with "No fault found" and invited me to add information.
Last night I added as much information as I could to the ticket and stated that the problem is not what I consider intermittent, the line drops every two minutes, almost like clockwork, but there there is no change to the synch speed, which you would expect to keep dropping until a stable but slow connection is maintained.
I added all this last night at 20:40, then this morning at 7am, I added router logs that show the router synch speed and drops through the night.
I'm feeling a bit out of the loop here with no updates on what's happening, or even if there is any action on the fault. I wonder if any of the staff here could have a look for me and let me know where we're at with the fault.
Ticket number is 23490216. Thanks in advance.

[#2]

Hi Phil,
Sorry for the delay in responding to your ticket.
I've now raised this with BT for you.

[#3]

Thank you James. Just to reiterate what I mentioned in my notes, my neighbour has suffered the same issues - BT are giving him the run around. Going in with my spare router now.

[#4]

I have to say that I am now not happy with this issue. Despite getting a 24 hour head start on my neighbour with reporting the fault, he's got the jump on me. He's with BT broadband, not that that should make a difference, but he's had calls every day since reporting the fault and even now has an appointment booked for Monday.
What have I got? Well, about ten minutes ago I got a call from the CSC to tell me that BT have passed the fault back, because they think they have fixed it....
My ticket had this to say

Quote

Uptime 0 86400 69276 Wed Nov 28 00:00:01 GMT 2007 Multiple This circuit is up for an average 80.0% of the time.

OK, the line might be up for quite a time, but every two minutes it drops - takes 30-40 seconds to resync, then another 30-40 seconds to log back in to Plusnet, which leaves me about 40 seconds to get in any data transfer, which doesn't leave me much scope for usage does it?
It beggars belief that BT can even pass the fault back, surely they can see that the synch is dropping with alarming regularity, and the apparent Rate Adaptive ADSL is making no attempt to adapt it's rate despite thousands of resync events since Monday.
How can BT Broadband deliver a better fault response? I didn't think that was allowed?

[#5]

Quote from: Phil_E

How can BT Broadband deliver a better fault response? I didn't think that was allowed?

The wholesale supplier is not allowed to give them a better response than they would give to PN.
BT Broadband are of course perfectly entitled to react to the situation more satisfactorily than PN do.
Looks like the CSC have let you down on the response you got.

[#6]

I actually feel I was let down earlier in the week too, when I was told in the initial fault report call  that the matter had been passed to BT. I managed to borrow a laptop later that day to dial in, only to find that since 7:35 in the morning, the ticket had been returned waiting for my response as there was "No fault found". (The fault was reported at around 7:20).
I found this about 8pm the same evening, so responded to the ticket explaining the fault in detail, as I did in the morning, and that it was still occurring. Then, at around 7:30 the following morning - when there had no response to my update, I added router logs to show the line dropping every two minutes.
By three that afternoon, there had still been no reply, so I came in here and James kindly gave the ticket a prod - so I guess I can understand why my neighbours fault has progressed further than my own.
The trouble is now that it is late on a Friday afternoon - BT will no doubt be packing up for the day and there will be no movement on the fault till at least Monday - no doubt by which time my neighbour will be all up and running again.
The thing I find really hard to believe is that BT can pass the fault back as fixed - surely they can see the resynchs on their systems. Then again, I'm not sure the ticket should have ever been passed back to me on Tuesday morning - I'm almost certain Plusnet can see repeated logins from my account even if their initial tests show no apparent fault.
It's very frustrating sitting here on a borrowed laptop, at 40kbs trying to do anything other than read my ticket status.

[#7]

Phil,

Quote

Uptime 0 86400 69276 Wed Nov 28 00:00:01 GMT 2007 Multiple This circuit is up for an average 80.0% of the time.

That's a direct copy from the line test that was run.  It's not a CSC Responce, but us recording the result of the fault tester.
I will absolutely hold up our collective hands here.  We tried raising the fault automatically originally (much quicker and works fine 99% of the time) but this unfortunately failed.  The fault was then raised manually this afternoon.
BT have since returned the fault back to us stating that your log in records suggest that the fault is now fixed.  I can see that this is not the case and have now passed the fault back to them stating that the fault is intermittent.
Please accept my sincere apologies for not handling this accordingly sooner.

[#8]

Well, at least I know why my neighbour is ahead of me then.
However, there has been a slight change at this end, but I don't know how long it will last. When my router synced a few minutes ago, it did so at 992kbs, and it has stayed up for three minutes and counting.
Don't know how long this will last though, and I've lost a chunk of speed, but lets see how it goes for now. I'll keep you posted.

[#9]

OK, spoke way too soon - but BT may actually be up to something now.
Starting to get different sync speeds between 992 and 1856 - slower syncs hold the line longer but still not much longer than a few minutes. Still, that's better than what I've had so far this week.
I'm going to keep my fingers crossed that BT will work late into the night, and not stop until I get my (approx) 2500kbs connection back again....
Well, you have to hope don't you...

[#10]

If you dial 150 tell them you think their my be a fault on your line tell them its noisy and crackly an engineer been at  the box at the end off the road and its happened since then.
  Dont tell them its a broadband fault because they will pass you back to plusnet
See how you get on
puddy

[#11]

Sorry puddy, been away all weekend so I didn't get chance to reply sooner.
There has actually been a change, shortly after the exchange between James and myself. Around 6pm Friday evening, the sync speed started varying from the 1856 I previously mentioned. Finally synced at around 1200kbs at about 6pm Friday. As far as I can tell, the line stayed up all weekend (I've been away) - so the line is at least working now.
I've lost around 1000kbs speed, but I'm hoping that it will return over a (hopefully short) period of time.
James, if you're reading this, I've updated the ticket with this information.

[#12]

Thanks Phil.
I've replied to your ticket.  It looks like an increase in your target noise margin.

[#13]

Thanks for that James. As long as there are procedures there to get the margin back up, I am reasonably happy.
I'm still a bit annoyed that the fault only started after BT were ferreting about in the cabinet, but that is obviously beyond any control of mine or yours. I'm just happy not to be using dial up any more - that was so painful. In fact, I do have a suggestion on that. I think you need a cut down, almost text only version of the portal where people can keep track of faults when they are using dial up - have you tried the portal at 40kbs?
As for my neighbour - engineer is due this afternoon - the fault is still not fixed for him.

[#14]

Hi Phil,
That's certainly a valid suggestion.  Would be particularly helpful for customers browsing our website using a mobile phone.

[#15]

Always glad to give suggestions - the portal at 40kbs really is painful, honest.
Anyway, had to let you know that BT Broadband isn't better than Plusnet, and my neighbour wasn't getting preferential treatment at all. I bumped into him on my way out to work at one this afternoon and he told me the engineer had come and gone by midday. Not bad, the appointment was booked for 1pm-6pm, but hey, if he's early that's good, yes. Well, actually no - because he wasn't a broadband engineer, they sent a voice engineer who claims there is nothing wrong with the line.
Actually, his broadband synch has changed over the weekend - it was dropping every few minutes like mine was, now it's not sync'ing at all and now he has to wait for BT Broadband to book a broadband engineer for him.
So, good news guys, despite dropping the ball a bit last week, it's Plusnet 1 - BT nil.
I'd discussed this with my neighbour last week, that the resolution of the fault would be the deciding factor on whether I would continue to pay my £20 odd to Plusnet, or look for something cheaper. As it is now, despite the fumble, I'm fairly sure I'm going to stick around.
You want the reasons?
First, a UK call centre - and more importantly
Second - This place.
It was nice to be able to pop in here and get someone (big thanks to Jamesh) to give the ticket a prod.
Now one could argue that you shouldn't have to do that - but the fact is that you are able to do it, should the need arise.
I'm not back to full speed yet, but believe me, 1000kbs dramatically preferable to 40kbs. Looking forward to it going back up to 2000kbs, hopefully not too distant in the new year.