Weeks of frequent disconnections

[#1]

Hi,

I'm really reaching the end of my tether with PlusNet and this is my last shot at trying to get some help. I've been with PlusNet for around 2 years and not had a single issue until around a month ago. My connection would suddenly drop, the orange light would start flashing and the router would go through the cycle of flashing orange/showing the orange broadband sign and then reconnecting. This has been happening a number of times practically every day for more than a month now. sometimes it happens once and then it's OK for a while, sometimes it will happen multiple times one after the other or within a short space of time. Support carried out a visual raduis and this showed nearly 100 disconnects between the 12th July and the 6th August, not sure how many but I imagine another several dozen has been added to that number in the 9 days since then too, I've had around 6 disconnects since the last engineer visit on Thursday afternoon (13th).

I've raised a fault, been told that they can see that there is an issue but they don't know what it is, I've had three BT engineer visits, each one has tried a different fix, although they can't narrow down the fault because it's intermittent and they just end up leaving and telling me to keep my fingers crossed and hope it worked, obviously to no avail.

I've tried factory resetting the router, I've spent money trying to replace anything within my house just incase something here was causing a problem, I've replaced the network cables, tried using a different router (BT smart hub 6 - worked fine until the same disconnection problem happened so I switched back the plusnet router) and the first engineer replaced my main socket as this was an older obselete socket that needed to be upgraded anyway and I'm still having the same problem. It happens at random times of the day, with different devices connected/disconnected so there really is no clear pattern or reason that I can find. It's also been fairly common for my connection speed to fluctuate after each disconnect (both Upload and Download, but mainly impacting Upload), with my Upload speed varying from 20mb (my usual speed) down to 0.1mb and anywhere inbetween.

The fault has been open for nearly 4 weeks and sometimes I'm having to chase the customer support team multiple times to get them to respond and they just arrange another engineer appointment and go back to ignoring me. I really don't know what I'm supposed to do here. Any help/advice/reccomendations would be really welcome.

Thanks,

Dan

[#2]

@DanielC  Welcome to the forum.

Intermittent faults are a nightmare to find. All that you can do is to get Plusnet to escalate the fault within Openreach. Unfortunately finding this sort of problem depends very much on the skill and diligence of the particular engineer.

Have you noted if there is a pattern to the problem? For example, is it worse when it rains? Alternatively, when it's windy? In this case have you looked around to see if any overhead cables are touching tree branches?

[#3]

There doesn't seem to be any pattern at all, I've had pretty heavy storms here the past few days and that doesn't seem to have had any impact, it's just as likely to disconnect in the middle of the night on a cool/clear day and there are no trees anywhere near the overhead cables.Here's the visual radius PlusNet carried out a week or two ago, note the two longer breaks on the 22nd and 31st coincide with two of the engineer visits when they unplugged me for a while.

[#4]

Hi @DanielC

Sorry to hear about this ongoing issue. I can see that this case is being dealt by our faults team on this ticket. I've passed this fault back to Openreach in their system and left note on ticket to raise escalation once next appointment will be booked.

Please accept apologies for this inconvenience.

[#5]

Hi, I am experiencing exactly the same sort of problems except that I've yet to get to an engineer visit. 

I have been living in the same property the entire time I have had PlusNet (I signed up in 2006) and began experiencing problems in the spring of this year.  The problem randomly improved for a few weeks during the month of June but is now back and worse than ever, rendering my broadband almost unusable.  

I have tried all troubleshooting steps that you can think of (trying multiple routers, etc.) to no avail.  There is no weather condition or consistent "variable" that triggers this, the problem just comes & goes completely at random.  It happens 24/7 with no pattern; we can have Internet for a couple of hours before a drop, or we can have it for perhaps 15 seconds before a drop.  The disconnections happen with such frequency as to render our Internet virtually unusable, and we have to resort to using 4G hotspots which is obviously expensive.  

Unfortunately I am hard of hearing which makes it difficult to talk on the telephone, and I note that PlusNet have discontinued their live chat service.  I cannot find a way of raising a ticket and have signed up to these forums frankly in desperation and hope that someone from PlusNet will respond.  

As I say, I have been a PlusNet customer exclusively since 2006 and until recently the service has always been excellent.  Regretfully that is no longer the case.  

PLEASE can somebody from PlusNet provide me with some assistance?  I would be enormously grateful for the help.  

[#6]

So remarkably after posting about my issue on a couple of threads here, my Internet miraculously became stable again and has worked absolutely fine ever since...

...until today, 3 weeks later, when the problem has started all over again.  There is no common factor to when it happens, only that the problem will occur, persist for some time, then rectify itself, then reoccur, and so the cycle begins anew.  It triggers totally randomly and I'm at a loss to explain it.   

At this point I am feeling very frustrated, and would ask if someone from PlusNet could please take notice of this issue and attempt to rectify the problem, for once & for all?  

[#7]

Hi @Yewtree24

Sorry to hear that. I have looked into your connection and there is no fault on line when tested. I can see that there were quite few drops earlier this week but line is stable again.

Results of tests are showing Bridge Tap which usually is caused by extension sockets/internal wiring and speeds on your line can be below estimates due to this fact.If not already, please connect your router directly into test socket.

Together with our network partners at Openreach we will try to provide you with the best speeds possible. If you feel this is not the case, please raise your speed fault online at faults.plus.net