Getting very cheesed off now

[adamwalker]

glloyd,
Yes your appointment has been confirmed for the PM slot on Monday, I've updated your ticket with a few more details.
Adam.

[glloyd]

I think a lot of time is being wasted here checking and rechecking the line which it is know not to be the problem. The last checked showed the quality of the line to be 99.4% with an insertion loss of just 4db. My line come direct from the exchange so there are no cabs on the route.
Each time this fault has returned it has proved to be an issue with exchange equipment (not know which as it's never mentioned) and it's taken a few minutes to fix. What is needed is to find out which piece of equipment is playing up and fix or replace it.

[penfold]

Hi gloyd.
As you are aware, I have had the same issues as you near enough, and finally got them resolved, it seemed to be mains REIN coming from either one of my Homeplugs, or a cheapie mains extension.  Now go the router and phone plugged into the main double socket, with no extension, and removed the homeplugs.  All now OK, and uptime and stability are second to none.  I will try and narrow it down a little, when I have time to either the homeplug or mains adapter.  Not sure if its of any relavence to you, but thought I would post here.  I like yourself was absolutely sure it was a line issue, or exchange, and again as you when BT showed up the line stablised for a couple, of days. It may be worth investigating your power supplies and router connections, just in case.....
Hope you get your issues sorted quickly anyway.
Rgrds
Chris

[glloyd]

Hi Chris, Nothing had changed here when this lark started in December and each time it has been traced to faulty exchange equipment. The BT engineer can't even get there router to sync. The problem is they won't say what fault the find, just faulty exchange equipment.

[penfold]

No probs.  Sounds very much like BT need to get their fingers out then.....
Chris

[glloyd]

Well what can I say - What happened today you could not make up. An engineer turned up to fix an ADSL fault who on his own admission knew very little about ADSL. He was not even from this area but from Cambridge 40 miles away so did not know where my local exchange was. So what did he do? He changed the back plate and replace the RF filter that was fitted last week. To do the above I had to loan him some tools. Then to my amazement he asked to borrow my phone and  phoned some ADSL advice service to ask what to do only they did not seem to know what to do so transferred him to another department who did not know what to do either other than to remove the banding, oh and to ignore a high count of CRC errors as they don't matter.  The phone calls lasted at least half an hour.
During the two hours he was here I spent most of that time telling him how ADSL worked, how to check speeds and the difference between sync speed, line speed and download speeds. What CRC errors meant and god know what else. He even admitted to the person he was talking to on the phone I knew more about ADSL than he did. My wife was  sitting here shaking her head in disbelief.
I don't blame the engineers because they have clearly not been trained for the job they are expected to do and  do not have the equipment to do the job either. The engineer today said he had learnt a lot from me today and I'm the customer.
Has he fixed the fault? I doubt it because all he has done is what has been done a half a dozen time before. In fact he did less because he plugged no test equipment in at all but relied on me giving him readings from my router. Nothing was done at the exchange at all, he did not even know where it was.

[adamwalker]

It is clear that the engineer who visited yesterday did not instil confidence in you of course we will be addressing some of the points you have raised here with our suppliers.
In relation to the SFI asking to use your phone we are aware that Open Reach installation engineers carry their own handsets, however I will need to seek clarification on if SFIs should be doing this too so I will have to get back to you on that point. However the engineer's helpdesk lines are 0800 freephone numbers so you should not have incurred charges.
With regards to the engineer needing to borrow your tools this is even more of a concern to us, could you please elaborate either on here or on your ticket what tools they needed to borrow from you please?
With regards to checks at the exchange, realistically no requests were made as any relevant exchange checks have already been carried out.
As noted on your ticket here is a breakdown of what was done yesterday according to the engineer's notes:
- An uplift to the NTE5 (a determination of the cabling to your master socket)
- A reset of the filtering at the exchange (requested on one of the phone calls made)
- A check of the D side cable (the cable between your premises and the local street cabinet)
- A check of the E side cable (the cable between the street cabinet and exchange)
The above mentioned cable checks according to the notes did not reveal any issues and demonstrated that your line was terminated to the best available copper pairs.
You may note that unfortunately no REIN checks were done I'm afraid to say. In the interest of resolving this for you and bearing in mind that all other relevant checks have been carried out I am recommending as a next course of action that I escalate this case further to a management level within BT Wholesale and that we go ahead with a further engineer visit to get the REIN checks carried out.

[glloyd]

Hi Adam,
Yes I know BT engineers carry their own hand sets and have mobile phones as well  that's why I was taken by surprise when he asked to use my phone, not that it was a big issue. The tools he ask to borrow was a large screw driver and hammer which he  used to chisel out some plaster from the back of the  junction box.
As for the rest of the work he did change the NTE5 backplateand RF3 filter which was only fitted last week. No line checks were carried out, because (a) we have no cabinet, our line goes direct to the exchange (b) no test equipment was plugged in and (c) he did not know where the exchange was having never been to this area before.
To be honest 50% of the time he was here I was explaining how ADSL worked and how BT speeds worked.
To be fair most of these engineers are telephone engineers with very little training on ADSL and even less on ADSL2+ which was evident  by his conversation with me and the so called helpline which was of no help to him. Whilst of the phone to his help desk he asked twice for me to explain what the problem was to help him but both times he was refused saying I should do this via my ISP which of course was of no help to him. In fact at one time he thought he was talking to my ISP.
The fault has stilll not been fixed, I'm still getting disconnects and the speed is slowly dropping again after being reset.

[adamwalker]

Thanks a lot for the information I was asking for and your comments on this.
Whilst I'm in the process of escalating this further could you please let me know if you would be available for one further visit this week for the REIN tests I mentioned?
Adam.

[glloyd]

Hi Adam,
Yes available any PM, my days are reserved for BT these days ;D

[adamwalker]

Hi there,
A complaint is now logged with Openreach in relation to this so I will keep you posted as to what their findings are when they are made available to me.
An appointment with strict, and I do mean strict instructions  to complete checks for REIN, and read the full case notes have been issued to the BTW engineer interventions team.

[glloyd]

Any news on this? Speed dropped 7 meg in two days and several disconnects. Getting to be  a real pain. Disconnected twice on Sunday whilst talking to my grandaughters in OZ  which upset them.

[adamwalker]

Hi there,
It looks like part of my response was missing yesterday. To clarify an appointment has been booked for the PM slot  tomorrow to make sure the REIN checks do get carried out for you. It does sound like the work of the previous engineers needs ot be looked at if the speeds have dropped that much.
I'm going to perform some diagnostic checks to see if I can spot anything pointing towards a reason for the sudden drop in sync speed and will post another update on your ticket shortly.

[glloyd]

Hi Adam,
The last engineer did not do anything which would have fixed the problem. All he did was have the banding removed which is now being added again bit by bit.
This is the problem, all that gets checked is the line over and over again and that checks OK. The fault at the exchange which fixes the issue is not made permanent.. So much time is being spent on a line that is known to be of good quality and not on the exchange equipment.. It realy is getting to the point of being silly now. If I wistle now the face plate jumps off on it's own it's been off so many times since December.

[adamwalker]

To clarify, we do not believe there is a fault at the exchange at this stage and we are recommending further engineer is booked to test for REIN issues. This would be the final check which would need to be carried out to allow us to escalate your fault to the complex faults team at BTW which we would wish to get done now to make sure the fault is handled with appropriate levels of priority and urgency.