And I thought for a moment I was the only person who formed that opinion of their engineers after many years of experience (or despair, rather !).

The only people with any faith in BT these days are those who's paycheck depends on it.

Unfortunatley not much will change until the regulator grows some teeth.

I don't want to rub salt into the wound but.........

A superfast way to go mad - ring BT's call centre in Bangalore | Mail Online

Mike
I did as you suggested this morning - and am still awaiting a reply.

Engineers still pondering what went wrong yesterday. I'm promised an update on or before Thursday. They are clearly pulling their finger out!!!

Engineers you say. What engineers? They are generally blokes who have had a couple of weeks of specific training and let loose. Many years ago, shortly after leaving the Royal Signals, I worked for a while for GPO Telephones, at a couple of exchanges in the Manchester area. I seem to remember my rank/grade was something like T2A and I came equipped with years of formal training, C& G certificates etc. I believe my grade was one below Technical Officer (TO). Anyway, a few years ago when BT began rolling out a trial for a 64Kbs home service, they piloted it in 2 areas; Leeds and Basingstoke. So I signed up for it and got nowhere. The best I ever got was 9.6Kbs (in theory). Years laterI tried to get whatever the next iteration was and that was equally a failure. Worse, I arrived home to find the BT oik had dismantled my outside junction box and left it dangling in the breeze, looking like it had been bombed! I got nowhere with the standard complaints route, so I wrote to the then Chairman, enclosing photos of the mess and a reference to my web site where I had published my complaint/photos etc. I received not only a nice grovelling letter from the boss and a visit from a technician to put right the damage done etc. I also had a call from a nice bloke in a call centre in the Shetlands. At the end of a good conversation, he arranged to send me a couple of hundred quid as a "sorry" from BT. When the technician came to fix the previous moron's efforts, we had some interesting discussions and, to be fair, he tried absolutely everything to get a decent broadband service sorted out but he had to admit defeat in the end. He knew that the cabinet at the end of my road was full up and I had the worst pair in the whole cabinet. He drove to the exchange to see if he could manage to swap a couple of pairs around to get me a service but had to give up. At least he tried! Eventually, the cabinet was replaced and fibre run out to it. I subscribed to Infinity and, when tested after installation, I had 100Mbs speeds! That, of course, didn't last too long but I was nevertheless getting in excess of 32Mbs. Now, it can vary between 32Mbs and 4Mbs but it is still a lot better than 9.6Kbs! While the last bloke was installing the kit, I asked him about the technicians and their experience/training etc and that was when I learned how they (generally) have sod all previous experience and no qualifications that I would recognise. Aah! The joys and benefits of privatisation!

Interesting, Kelvin - we should all remember that what you describe is basically the 'bright' future for the famous government flagship roll-out of 'Super-fast broadband in ?every? county in the UK AND remember it is your and my money that is being poured into the BT pension fund by this government.

Lucky for some
 

My village - Baschurch in Shropshire - won the race-to-infinity. We were promised rollout in March 2012. Well, there are lots of Openreach vans around and fibre optics being pulled into ducts, but we're still told by the BT website that Superfast not available in your area. Not very promising for the rest of the country.

Some time before all this Internet speed issue, I had a serious crackling problem with my telephone land line.
The BT guy who came to fix it said there were 2 problems.
1. In places, the lines to our Close went underwater due to heavy rain.
2. Despite the fact that the house was only built in 1979, the wire from their underground junction box, (if that is the right word) about 200 yards away from my house had perished.

He said he would report no 1. I have no idea what they did, if anything.
He simply pulled through a new wire to deal with no 2.

Do they still pull new wires through to solve problems?

I attribute my current high speeds for FTC (not FTH) bt internet to my "new" wire pulled through over 10 years ago to deal with a crackly telephone line.

Later, when my "high speed" internet was slower than a snail, it took umpteen "engineer" visits and lots of new kit to sort it. I still do not know what made it speed up in the end.

Impossible to answer, AO - the 'bit' from the JBox to house is only a small part of the equation. The rest of the line is relevant too - patched/aluminium/drowned - who knows? I suspect you will never know. They may even have swapped your line to a 'better one' at the exchange. - it depends how you are 'wired' - if like many round here your grotty wires are just buried in the earth there is nothing to 'pull them through'.

Oldbeefer - a common story, and several 'winners' have found that (as predicted) houses on opposing sides of the street have different results due to 'cabinets and lines' and delays. It was simply a PR stunt and I'm actually glad my village went from No1 at the start to 'off scale' at the end. Your village is now, of course, sadly, 'out' of the running for BDUK money to improve things since you are 'NGA Black' (or 'grey').

Similar occasional problem here.

BT engineer told me that the cabinet containing my line, in the adjacent road, suffers from water ingress. When I suggested new door gasket he informed me that the water rose from the ground.

skua
I do hope you forgive those of us that have a (?morbid?) interest in this.
Do update us when you can! We would all like to know how to prompt better service from BT.
AO

I'm assuming nobody has had a poke on the BT Community forums, as my suggestion in post #8, judging by these newer posts.

Water ingress is probably the biggest cause of my customers' broadband issues. I can tell when it's peed it down as the phone's ringing.

Thank you for your interest gentleman, and I can now declare that (after the FIFTH engineers' visit) I am (once again) connected!!!

I would have hugged the engineers, but at least one of them had rather pronounced BO! I have had three, yes three, pairs of boots climbing up and down my stairs all day.


For the technically minded, the problem was in the 'cab' - I was put onto port 51, 52 or 53, depending on which of the 5 sets of engineers' visits we are talking about. It was a '50 port card', so I was on a new card. And the card proved to be faulty. No other household had used it, and no one until today had thought of testing it...Errgggh

I am getting 33.96megs download, 7.68 megs upload. And my new best friends say that may improve a little over coming days as my 'profile' settles down. A bit like my blood pressure.