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Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

cfclarke7
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Registered: ‎21-05-2018

Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hello all.

 

I will start very simply, that i am not happy with my service of late. I do not claim to be a tech/internet whiz but I know enough, and what my family and I have put up with recently is not up to standard.

I am a customer of the Unlimited Fibre Broadband Extra or however it is called, and 50% i receive what I am told. As I understand it(and please correct me if i am wrong), this is UP TO 76 Mb, which equates to 9.5MB. The fact that i dont think i have ever had more than maybe 2-3MB is irrelevant as althought that is not as promised, that is not what i am upset about.

 

My connection drops. A lot. Daily. Logging in to my router to reconnect it to the internet anywhere from 3-10 times a day is not something i signed up to, and when i am out of the house it leaves my family with no internet access. Anyone, specifically plusnet, can log in and see my router logs and you will VERY clearly see that my connection drops with unreasonable frequency.

 

I have had a replacement router, i have had an enginner come out and inspect the cables in/out of my property(which, may i add, was maybe the 3rd guy i had and he was the only one to actualy do anything. he fixed no less than 3-4 connections/boxes from my router to the outside terminal(?) and said he could not understand how we were even geting a signal with the setup we had.

 

Since his visit, which was around october/november, at first we had no problems for a long time, not with speed nor with connection. however, through NO change internally or externally, everything has dropped significantly. Seemingly at random, the tv will stop, my ps4 will kick me off, our ipads/phones will stop, the router goes orange. Cue 5 mins of havoc before i can manually reset it to reconnect. Why does this happen? if it can reconnect, why did it drop? I dare say that if they drop service for 1million people in the country collectively for 5mins how much resources does that save? Because there sure as hell isnt anyone on the recieving end to deal with this problems as whenever I call i am redirected, fobbed off, or plainly disregarded as not knowing anything and that it will be fixed. 

 

This is unacceptable. Again, please correct me if im wrong but I am paying for a service which i expect to recieve. I can deal with the slow speeds, however frustrating that is, because as a whole it is a drop in the ocean compared to the tidal wave of dropped connections i endure.

 

 

Tonight i called the helpline, after finding no help online, knowing the the lines are open until 10pm. my call started around 9;30, to which i was told the waiting time would be 15mins. I listened to the godawful hold music and that numpty apprently pleading regret to me being on hold for a total of 61mins before i gave up at 10;30 and went on to write this post you read now.

 

I would appreciate any help or advice concerning this issue i have as it has 'been dealt with' several times now but always ends up the same and my family and i are at our wits end with this at the moment and i darent use it as a threat but we are indeed looking elsewhere. I personally would much rather offer my loyalty and my money to a company that would offer me the same respect in return rather than take my chances elsewhere but i am fully prepared to uproot and take my family's business elsewhere.

 

Thank you for reading

 

Kind regards

 

Callum

31 REPLIES 31
Mav
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Moderator's note:

Thread moved from Broadband to Fibre Broadband.

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Baldrick1
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Welcome to the forum.

If I may precis your rather long post:

1. You are on the fibre extra 78Mbps package.

2. You receive about 16-24 Mbps

3. You previously suffered from connection drops but this was cured last October/November.

4. You still suffer from slow speed and the dropping connections have returned.

5. You and your family are unhappy with the service that you are receiving.

 

What speed should you be getting, what do you get if you put your phone number in here?  https://www.dslchecker.bt.com/.

Have you done a quiet line test by plugging a wired phone in, dialling 17070 and selecting option 2?

How are you checking your speed, wireless or using an Ethernet cable between router and computer?

Is your router plugged into the master socket?

Are all the junction boxes on the BT side of the Master socket and hence the responsibility of BT?

Are any of the junction boxes outside where water could get in?

 

 

 

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adamwalker
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

 I've just been having a look into this for you. 

 

Line tests don't show any obvious issues, given that we did look at a phone fault with you last year it would be worth trying the quiet line test that @Baldrick1 mentioned.

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 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
cfclarke7
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Registered: ‎21-05-2018

Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi @Baldrick1 , thank you for the reply.

 

I would like to apologise for the tone of my last post as understandably I was rather upset at the time, and also thank you for taking the time to assist me. I also apologise for the long time between replies as I have been very busy with work and also wanted to ensure the problems were continuing before I went any further.

 

Please see attached jpeg for my results on the bt website.

 

No I have not performed a quiet line test as advised as I do not currently have a landline phone. I can do this test if need be though by using a neighbor's.

 

I always check speed or perform any downloads etc with a wired connection, and with no other devices using the wifi for anything major. My router is plugged directly in to what i assume is the master socket, it is the only box in the house that the router can connect to, with the grey DSL(?) cable.

 

From the master socket, heading to outside, there are at least 2 'boxes' inside the property that i know of however I do not know their purpose. There is another, larger box on the wall outside which redirects to the other properties and also to the big mast outside. When the engineer visited last autumn he spent a fair amount of time with all of these boxes, and it was all 3 of these that he was shocked at, bearing in mind we have had previous engineers come and install or 'fix' these boxes before.

 

I hope this information may aid you or anyone else in trying to help me.

 

Kind regards

 

Callum Clarke

Baldrick1
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Whilst the BT engineer might of been shocked at the state of junction boxes that appear to be the responsibility of BT I am probably more shocked that he didn't replace them, or better still rewire your connection to eliminate as many as possible.

Whilst you may not normally use a wired phone you can buy one from Argos for about £7. It's a valuable fault finding tool and can always be kept in a cupboard for emergencies. If you find a phone fault such as noise you report a phone, not broadband fault. This tends to get higher priority attention.

From your description you have a filtered faceplate plugged into your master socket. You should be able to take the filter section off. Depending on the age of the socket the front section will either be clipped on or you need to remove two screws. In behind you will find the test socket. Everything upstream of this test socket is the responsibility of BT so this should be your test point.

First plug a wired phone into the test socket (no filter or router) and do the quiet line test (ring 17070 then select option 2). If there's background noise then report a phone fault. You will not get the best broadband until this is fixed.

Next plug a separate filter, you should have received at least one in the box with your Plusnet router into the test socket. Using the supplied leads between the filter and the router plus the router and your computer complete both the initial BTw speedtest followed by the further diagnostics (http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/). These results will be logged so that Plusnet can see them. Note that the speedtester is known to give false results with some browsers but works with Edge and Internet Explorer.

If these tests show that performance is below par then you have done everything you can to prove that this is a BT problem. If you get to this point all you can do is to keep getting an engineer back until the problem is fixed.

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HarryB
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi @cfclarke7,

 

Looking over your account, the connection does appear to have been dropping out 1-2 times a day for up to about 1 minute, however this is quite a bit lower than what you'd stated in your initial post:

 

That's not to say you're not experience more drops in use, but at that point I'd start to question if the drops are occurring on a wired or a wireless connection as it could be down to wireless interference or similar, as opposed to the actual connection itself dropping.

 

Having said that, the few drops showing on the account aren't exactly ideal

 

If you are experiencing excessive drops on both wired and wireless, I'd recommend reporting it over at https://faults.plus.net (After initial troubleshooting steps here: https://www.plus.net/help/broadband/connection-troubleshooting/

 

If you let us know back here once you've done this, we'll happily get that picked up and sent over to our suppliers for further investigation.

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 Harry Beesley
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cfclarke7
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Registered: ‎21-05-2018

Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi @HarryB , thanks for your reply.

 

 

I do admit i may have exaggerated a bit upon writing my initial post however i notice the week you have screenshotted is more recent. Assuming you have access to look further back, please do so over a longer period of time or at least for the week imediately before my post and I'm sure you will see why I am/was so frustrated.

 

I am not sure i understand what you mean with "..question if the drops are occurring on a wired or a wireless connection as it could be down to wireless interference or similar, as opposed to the actual connection itself dropping.", the drop occurs for everything. The router goes orange and the broadband light comes on, and its 50/50 wether it will reconnect itself if i leave it long enough or if i have to manually go to http://192.168.1.254 and force the restart.

 

Thank you for your advice, I will make a post in the other area with a brief description and a link to this thread.

 

Kind regards

 

Callum Clarke

cfclarke7
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Registered: ‎21-05-2018

Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi @Baldrick1 , thank you for your reply and advice.

 

I will perform the quiet line test and follow your intructions and will get back to you with the results.

 

To clarify, are you saying that after the numerous BT engineers that ive had, that between them they should've fixed the apparently terrible wiring? Of course, I havent personally seen inside any of those boxes and wouldn't dare touch them for fear of BT charging me the £100+ that they do, so I cant comment on the state of them other than what the final engineer told me. So rather than just fixing, he could've rewired the whole thing? It sounds like this whole area's connections are just patchwork on old lines.

 

Kind regards

 

Callum

Baldrick1
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

What I said was that I was surprised that an engineer should comment that multiple serial boxes were in a poor state and not replace them. Obviously I have not seen your wiring but if the single connection to your home goes via several junction boxes then getting rid of them removes all those potential failure points and hence improves reliability and reduces future maintenance costs. 

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Gandalf
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi Callum.

Do you see more drops than indicated below?

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
cfclarke7
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Registered: ‎21-05-2018

Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

 

Hi @Baldrick1

 

I have performed the quiet line test as advised. You were correct that I had a filtered faceplate, i unscrewed this to reveal a single socket that would be used for a landline phone. I connected the phone, dialed the number and chose 2 when prompted. There wwas definitely background noise. A kind of crackle, shall we say, similar to when you are on the phone to someone who is outside and the wind is going in to the mouthpiece. It was semi-faint, i admit, but i could hear it over my TV and my family(ha). It was most certainly not silent.

 

I then, leaving the faceplate off, plugged the splitter/filter into the single socket. I connected my router and my phone, and then my computer to the router. all wired, of course.

 

I performed the test at https://www.dslchecker.bt.com , the results are attached as image,

 

I am about to perform the further test at http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ and will report in a few minutes.

 

Kind regards,

 

Callum Clarke

 

 

 

cfclarke7
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Registered: ‎21-05-2018

Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi @Gandalf, thank you for your reply.

 

I am not sure how to get an image report like you and HarryB have done, however I can get a purely text report after logging in to my router and choosing the right settings. i have not personally gone that far back as of yet because it is pages and pages worth of ups and downs and other stuff that mean nothing to me im afraid. Could you do a report, like the above, for the week ending on the day of my initial post?

 

Kind regards

 

Callum 

Gandalf
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Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi Callum. The visual graph is generated from the raw connection data on your account this side.

Here are your logs from the past 30 days:

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
cfclarke7
Dabbler
Posts: 16
Registered: ‎21-05-2018

Re: Unsatisfactory Service - Internet, Customer service

Hi @Baldrick1

 

I have performed the other test as advised.

 

I had a filter in to the master socket behind the faceplate, my phone and my router in to the filter, and my computer in to the router, all wired. no other device was connected, wired or wireless.

 

 

I have attached 4 image files, the results of the test. After performing it the 2nd time, the 1st appeared to be an anomaly so I performed 4 in total, please see below.

 

Kind regards,

 

Callum