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"Broadband Support Help"

Had a call from my brother last night (a freeola customer but not for much longer i feel) about his broadband being very hitty missy of late, he has made several calls to Freeola and spoke highly of Glen but poorly of Dean.

So my point is my understanding is that if I have a broadband problem I call freeola, they go through all the usuall tests filters etc and check their system (which we know from my own probs in the past dosent always show localised problems) and if there is a problem then Freeola and only Freeola can then contact BT wholesale to escalate this for the paying customer.

It would appear that where my brother lives there are SEVERAL houses having the same problem, yet my brother was told that he would have to phone BT himself! and am sure that its Freeola s job to do this on his behalf?

As I said in the past when the whole village was off where I live your system said all was well, this is not what I expect from Freeola and I have to say I have never had bad service but I do feel that your letting my brother down with his customer service

Digi

Hi How long should this take to stabalise, Still losing connection intermitantly and really slow tonight IP profile up to 6500 dsl way down to 2400 from 7424 and actual speed down to 1759 from 5539 ??

Hi Butch cheers for your reply,
Speed has picked up now IP profile up to 6000 (usually 650 but not worrying about that) and speed up to 5456.
Have been using bt speed checker every 2nd day if poss but was unable to use it for 3 days at weekend as it kept comming up with error. On checking router it had dropped out early hours this morning again but if thats the route it takes we ll wait and see.

Still a bit vague over face plate fixing things (if it was that) as I was pluged into the test socket with another router , filter and cables for a few days and still had very high number of line drop outs just like the original set up. my set up since sat is back to the same as it was when all this started.

ps I wish all the faults on vehicles were as simple as fuel : )

Will keep you posted

Haggis Catcher

Which is to be expected if a customer has an issue with their car, I highly doubt fuel is a common cause of motoring faults compared to other aspects of the car. Any reported ADSL issues however are more often than not (I would go as far to say nearly exclusively) down to equipment issues at the customers end which is why we, along with ever other ISP on the planet worth their salt, ask for these checks to take place. Comparing the motor trade to the ISP industry is not a fair comparison really.

Without knowing the downstream rate on your connection I cannot comment on whether or not your speed will get better, however all BT checks suggest you should only get a maximum of 6000 so, after a maximum of 72 hours of solid connectivity, your speed may raise a little. Besides, 4meg is nothing to sniff at :)

You were asked to connect your router to the test socket again as you called us still claiming to have an issue, despite the information we were seeing from this end. From this call up until yesterday lunchtime you had a perfectly solid connection with no interruptions so, assuming you followed the advice of my colleague, this further proves the fault is likely internal to your premises.

Due to the number of calls we take daily, we would soon notice if there was an issue with the incoming lines. All calls to our call centre are noted and the times you called from the premises a noise or crackling was heard, two of my colleagues separately informed me of this which is why it was mentioned. The fact your connection times dramatically improved after the PSTN engineer visit (10-20 second connections to 10-20 hour connections) it seems to me that this was the right call in this case.

I appreciate your frustration at the fault finding process, however everything we have done and asked you to do is necessary in finding, and resolving, ADSL issues.

Hi its the brother here and still not convinced things are ok. On checking my router its only been connected for about 8 hours 30 mins. It has been up to 30 odd hours recently.I heard a story that it was nt the line that was dropping out but the connection between router and computer? well how does xbox live and daughters laptop also on wireless drop out at the same time. My computer is hard wired into router and I have even changed that cable. Bearing in mind I also changed the router and plugged it into test socket for a few days but still had the same fault. On friday night the broadband was isolated at face plate untill bt engineer arrived sat pm.
Ip profile at 4000 and actual speed 3624 tonight. Will it get better?
It was quite annoying on Sunday to get asked to plug into the test socket again just 24 hours after the bt engineer had replaced the face plate as he found no fault hopeing it might get rid of the supposedly intermittant noise.
Regarding noise on the line one night when I phoned freeola, I have also phoned from my work 20 miles away and the same noise is there, is this at the freeola end? we have no broadband issues at work. Waiting to see what happens now just hope it gets better.
I have been connected to the motor trade for many years and if we told every customer who says there car is not running right to drain the fuel and fill with new fuel each time they contacted us we would have NO CUSTOMERS !!!!

Aye, Butch is right there. His connection has improved from more or less the moment the changes were made (or at least the day). It's always hard to pinpoint what has effected a broadband line but it seems most likely Butch's comments.

And just to say if that did resolve the issue, as it has it seems, had we got an engineer to visit and investigate etc there is was a high chance your brother would have been liable to pay for the engineer visit. And this is not cheap, not cheap at all.

We don't make profit on these charges when they are applied, and hence we inform the customer of them well in advance and only allow them to be sent should the customer understand they may be charged, and we believe they are needed.

At the end of the day, we try and help our customers. Just "throwing" them over to BT isn't in their best interests. (As most customers seem to believe) :D

Hopefully your brother's account should be ok by now, I certainly hope so.

Your mate is incorrect. If there is a fault at the exchange we, or our wholesaler, would raise this with BT and get it sorted. Any engineer call-outs that turned out to be un-necessary due to the fault of the customer (wiring, equipment etc.) it is they who would be liable for any charges levied by BT, not ourselves. It is for this reason that ISPs are "are overly paranoid about not raising a job", not any other.

In relation to your brothers' ADSL line; he has had only a couple of drop-outs on his connection since he reported to us that BT/Post Office replaced his filter. His connection history improved dramatically the very afternoon this work was done which confirms our original suspicion of a PSTN fault being the cause for his intermittent connection.

As your brother has now been connected solidly for 44 hours (and counting), with usage both up, and down, the line any claimed drop-outs in his connection will be between his computer and the router and not the router to the exchange. Obviously, this is nothing we have any control over and will need to be investigated internally.

Think I should update this thread.

OK so the Post office were called and said there was no noise on the line but the Broadband was still dropping out, so he called them again, and the put a new faceplate on and rewired his line and he is still dropping out even when conected to the master socket, filters were again replaced and still others in the same area are having a problem.

I spoke to my mate who is a BT engineer and he says that it sounds like a fault at the exchange to him but he also said that ISPs are so scared to raise a job as they get charged if its not a real fault - this is why they are overly paranoid about not raising a job.

Digi

Hi Digi,

I wrote this a while ago and forgot to post it!

PSTN stands for Public Switched Telephone Network, which is the general term used for the worlds phone systems (including mobile networks). In the UK it's generally used to describe the copper/aluminium part of the telephone network (i.e BT Openreach).

As mentioned, if there is any noise on your line when performing a call then this can effect your broadband, which can make you think the problem is a broadband one when in fact it's a voice problem which you line provider need to fix. A general rule when calling them to get a noise problem fixed is not to mention that is is causing broadband problems otherwise they may say you need to contact your ISP!

Cheers Warhunt I will many thanks

Digi

Incidentally, you may wish to say that I really do think it will be worthwhile contacting BT, it's only a quick check and I am fairly confident it will resole the issue. He has spoken to 2 different advisors who have both heard crackling etc when he has spoke to them.

I believe my colleague has updated his account now anyway. Won't go into details here.