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BB Issues, Woeful support

realitytech
Member

Just changing this line because the forum thinks I'm flooding, ignore

 

We've been figting an uphill battle with Bt now for a mont to get an office move done,. its now at the point i'm cancelling the whole thing, just to avoid the stress, greif and inconvieienc of the whole thing.

 

Anyway, our broadband has always been a bit hit and miss here, we got 8Mb once, now down to 4, but its stable bar the odd hiccup and that godawful **bleep** bill reminder.

 

Bit of background on us. We are an IT repair/electronics shop. Our broadband is our lifeline, it carries all of our VOIP lines, runs the link between our Uk and Canadian shops, the PDQ and till system use it and we rsync our databases between the two sites over it. On top of this we do remote support and maintainance for our customers and we need it to do updates etc. No broadband leaves us totally and utterly dead in the water.

 

Last week, our broadband was disabled. PPP sessions were failing and a call to be revealed that the guys there dont know the difference between November and December and had killed the line early. After some jumping up and down the line was restored, though I'd already given up and closed early. one day lost earl#nings and two upset customers because they couldnt take their kit away as they couldnt pay.

 

Monday morning I notice our connection 'isnt right' a quick look at the firewall shoes LCP packets going missing and followed by repeated CHAP timeouts. A bit more digging and it seems once in a while we loose showtime too. BT are called, and during a long chat we were told no fault, then as it went again the lady re-ran the line test which utterly failed at the BT end with a number of odd errors. We were tols it was booked in and we'd hear back soon. This was at 10 am. A message was sent to teh business movers team rep we were assigned who hasnt even called me back 50 hours on.

 

For reference, after all the messing we've had in the pst, our line comes in, through and ADSL filter at the test socket. One end into a ADSL2 modem, one end into an FXO for our exchange. There is no other wiring or kit, and we even pulled the FXO out at one point and changed the filter and modem.

 

9am Tue morning we get a call from an exchange engineer. He says he found a problem where our line enters the exchange and it didnt seem to be punched down properly, he had corrected this but was certain it wasnt the issue so an engineer was comming out to look at it.

 

10am a Telephone engineer saunters in, wrong address, right name. and when he's told theres a broadband issue he points out he only does phone lines, not broadband. He looks over our kit, declares it all fine, then tries to run a line test, only he cant, the test number doesnt work. When I point out he needs to dial 9 he's surprised that A)Its a BT line and its a feature line. Aparently he'd not been told either. The test gets run, comes back ok and he wanders off and fiddles with a few things. He comes back and tells me that *I* now need to call my provider (thats BT) and arrange for a broadband engineer to come out and do a line test. He saunters off and I do just ask asked. I'm informed that he's already submitted the report and an engineer is on the way, nothing that I need to do and she'll give me a call back to let me know whats going on.

 

Half an hour later I get a call informing me of an issue between the exchange and the cabinet and that a team is out looking into it. Odd, the line test came back clear but ok. fifteen mins late rthere are BT engineers all over the place and I let things be. We are up to 2pm now and thats a day and a half I'm behind.

 

 No further calls come but the firewall announces the line is up and stable, a quick look confirms this is indeed true and its been up for 15 minutes (prev record was 4) So I run a speed test...

120k d/s 10k u/s. I'm about to call when I get a call from BT saying that no fault was found by the engineer and I need to pay for the call out (Three times I've been told there is a fault) I blow up at the guy who promises to call back after hes found out more.

 

The call comes back (we are now at 3pm) and he says there is an inconsistancy to what the engineer told him and whats on the system. (The engineer lied) and he's taking control of the fault and will get it resolved. As we are in the 48 hours of the original fault things are still withing acceptable limits. I'm also informed by a customer that my line was out of order all morning at this point returing 'Sorry there is a fault'.

 

5pm I call the complaints line, I'm told that there is nothign the guy can do, and given the overall impressiong they dont care anyway. The call ends with no attempt at resolving this or retaining me as a customer.

 

Weds is my 'on call day'. 9:30 am I get a call saying the engineer is on his way. I'm on a call so I cut this short, apologise to the customer and head back to the shop, predictably, no engineer. And still no engineer now. We still have no useable broadband and I'm now not only 3 days behind, I've had to send customers home empty handed and as the day ticks on I'm having to cancel call outs and thats costing me more money.

 

So, anyone on here have any suggestions or does anyone at BT actually care? I've seem Vermin media screw up before but never like this. I'm dead in the water, loosing money hand over fist and nop-one at BT seems to care.

 

On top of that we've had false promises, misinformation, failure to communicate and outright lies about our office move too :smileysad:

11 REPLIES 11

realitytech
Member

Bit more digging and it apears our IP profile is horribly, horribly wrong 😞

 

 Download speedachieved during the test was - 0.08 Mbps
 For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 0.1 Mbps-0.25 Mbps.
 IP Profile for your line is - 0.25 Mbps

 

Upload speed achieved during the test was - 0Mbps
 Additional Information:
 Upstream Rate IP profile on your line is - 0.83 Mbps

DaveA
BT Partner
BT Partner

Hi,

 

I'm really sorry that you're having problems, but there is one question that springs to mind.

 

Why on earth are you running the whole show without any obvious backup connection?  No second line?  No mobile broadband dongle, either there to plug in or as some sort of failover plugged into a suitable router?

 

Don't get me wrong it looks like we've made a mess, but seriously you're telling me that you have every single egg in one basket?

 

Anyway that said could you PM me the details you have and I'll have a look at the case to find out what's happening with it?

 

Dave

realitytech
Member

How I choose to run my network is of no consequence at all  and nothing excuses this kind of service so trying to make it my fault wont help.

 

FWIW we have abysmal 3G here and BT is the only option. A redundant link requires another provider and different route, something you cant do AND I'm not sure any small business is going to be happy about doing just in case BT screw up. SO please, before we start kicking up about things like this can we get BTs house in order?

 

PM sent

realitytech
Member

Another call, 12pm, exchange engineer has been passed the fault as a line fault *again*. We had a long chat and agreed that the line seems to be good now and that its possible my IP profile is now wrong as the result of the previous problems. He's referred the fault back again.

 

A call to the support line has left me waiting on a call before 5pm saying that there is *still* a fault on the line and still no ETA for a fix. More promises for callbacks that will never happen.

 

Business moving team STILL havent called back.

DaveA
BT Partner
BT Partner

@realitytech wrote:

How I choose to run my network is of no consequence at all  and nothing excuses this kind of service so trying to make it my fault wont help.


 

Hi,

 

I'm not trying to make it your fault.  I'm trying to understand how you can so completely rely on a broadband connection, and yet not have one single backup option at all available if it fails.

 

I just don't get it.  Everything fails.  Would you jump out of a plane without a reserve chute?  If your whole life depends on something then surely you're not going to rely on a single point of failure.

 

Dave

Birchills
Member

Sorry about all your problems - it may be the time to swap - if they haven't tied you in.

Not everyone is like BT,  you may like to try us - Birchills Telecom 

 

Good luck

 

<Links removed for advertising - DaveA>

 

p.s.

 

I've sent you a PM.

 

Dave

 

realitytech
Member

Birchills - Given we work in the same sector and you could be considered competition, I'm not so sure thats a wonderful idea, thanks all the same 🙂

 

As of 16:09 we are aproaching 72 hours downtime, and still nothing 😞

realitytech
Member

Well, Day 4 and oh look, still not right 😞

I was told last night they had reset the IP profile and it might take some time to take effect. This morning its exactly the smae, no change at all. So this is 4 days now, I'm guessing its not actually going to come back before we move next week. We've got a work around of sorts but that doesnt change the fact this line is still down.

 

Oh, and 'wait 48 hours' isnt a valid reply to the problem either. If I told my customers that I'd have ceased trading years ago.

DaveA
BT Partner
BT Partner

Hi,

 

Public apology first for the grilling I gave you.  You've done more than I gave credit for with regard to backup connections, so sorry about the roasting.

 

As far as the profile reset goes the unfortunate thing with it is that it does take up to 72 hours to do its job, which I admit can be frustrating.

 

Dave