I signed up for BT Broadband in August, and an alarm bell went off in my head when the only date they could switch our service on was 3 weeks after signing the contract - i.e the final day of the cooling off period. Figuring BT were a big company, I figured this wasn't going to be some form of underhand tactic.. so I went for it.
Our service is utter dogshit, rarely can I watch a 25 minute show on Netflix without it breaking off. We're not even talking about peak time either, 3am on a Tuesday morning shouldn't be subject to the kind of network congestion that causes noticeable latency, let alone dropped connections. I've avoided dealing with it, because to be entirely honest - I'm not really up for having a discussion with someone reading off a script who's going to tell me to unplug the router and that everything is OK.. Until tonight. 5 dropouts whilst watching a 20 minute programme on NowTV. It's not really acceptable, is it?
I figure nothing is going to be done about it (although I'm currently waiting in a 15 minute queue for an online support chat..) - so if this continues, does anyone have any tips for breaking out of the contract? As far as I'm concerned the service isn't fit for purpose, and therefore they aren't fulfilling their own obligations.. something tells me they wont care about that though.
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https://cable.co.uk/guides/how-do-i-cancel-bt-broadband/
Another thing I hate about BT, every time I've logged in to download my bills, it never works. If they're website is bloody slow and doesn't even work, it's no surprise that everything else they seem to do is a bit naff.
Bloody hell, school must've been painful for that git.
Edit: He's changed it now, a bit awkward.
I wouldn't read too much into the three week wait, nothing Machiavellian there. This is very common as there isn't often enough engineers or capacity at the cabinet/exchange. Equally they can't charge you till it is switched on, so they would do it tomorrow if they could. The two week period is just too short because of the speed the industry moves.
Ultimately if it is a problem with the line or some kind of outside interferance like REIN or SHINE, then only switching to virgin would make a difference, as all the providers rent the line off BT.
With regards to interference, that had crossed my mind - I'm not sure whether to pick the brains of the neighbours at some point, and see if they have any issues.
I'm going to see if the router is logging the dropouts, if so - I'll simply download the logs and make a spreadsheet of the connection dropouts. I know I could get my last Sky router to send the logs to my network hard drive, if the BT Hub will do that I should be able to automatically generate a spreadsheet without any hassle. I'd like to see exactly how often it disconnects when I'm not using it too.
By virtue that everything appears fine via the normal socket, surely it's a given that the master socket is functioning fine? Or am I missing something here?
My advice would be to check the connection with an Ethernet cable. If the problem persists, then check the mechanical points of failure like the router, microfilter and finally the front plate of your master socket. After that, the problem must be outside your property and BT's responsibility to track down.
The biggest cause of an intermittent connect is noise on your landline, so listen for any hissing, clicking or strange instances when using the telephone. Finally don't let the tech support/engineers fob you off if there is noise on your line. It is often a hard problem to track down, as it is intermittent in nature and they will save themselves the pain of trying to track it down by confusing you with technobabble.
Funnily enough, despite my apprehension - using the master socket did actually give me a massive speed boost when we ran the test - up from 3Mbps to 13Mbps. It still dropped out though, but I was quite stunned at the difference in speed.
They offered to send an engineer out to check things, but I was quite concerned that the quoted price of £129 would be added to my bill if a fault was found in the property. I may continue to run things from the master socket for a while, so if it continues dropping out I can book the engineer with some confidence that the fault isn't going to be inside the house.
Since moving house my maximum download speed is around 26mb/s and upload is around 18.
It's been pretty stable though.
In the old place we tested up as high as 60mb/s but as low as 3mb/s frequently on download.
I always have used the Speedtest app for that which keeps a log of the tests independent of the BT one.
Just checked my Virgin Media speeds:
Download 163.91 Mbps
Upload 11.20 Mbps
And I'm going to guess you don't have to pay line rental as it's Fibre Optic...
- Removing the face plate from the master socket, and there have been no connection drop-outs at all. Which is very weird as there's no secondary phone sockets, so I'm not quite sure what removing the face plate has isolated it from.. other than the face plate. (Which, surely is just 5 copper conductors, not exactly something which can go faulty?)
- Looking online, some people claim that the £129 call out fee still applies to get that replaced - whilst some people claim that it's technically still the master socket, so covered via BT. BT haven't been able to give me a definite answer, so I've just ordered a £6 replacement and will pop the official BT face plate in a drawer in case BT ever need to come out to do anything.
Peculiar as feck!
To be honest, you can just leave it there in the test socket. It is designed for that. The only thing to bear in mind is the front plate controls any extensions in the property.
I left over a year ago, and they only came out after I had a new had a new master socket installed by open reach when I moved. Apparently it only has a 12 month guarantee. When the 'engineer' turned up he claimed that there had been issues with the 'master socket'. I was not charged, and normal service connected. You have to remember with BT that most of the 'staff' are based abroad and read from a script, the script seems to be written that the whole universe is to blame, except BT!.
Migrated to sky as they offered a great deal, but still stuck with outreach, most of whom are sub contractors. One of the issues is that you are a customer of BT\Sky etc, not of Outreach, despite the fact that they display there logo on the van. I must have lived a very difficult area, as my no through road every week had a engineer working on the cabinet. Personally I would pay more NOT to have outreach and as soon as the company is broken up I will not loose any sleep. The only exception is Virgin, and a couple of friends have had horror stories with them, so no choice really. Complained to offcom, but that is a waste of time as they do not take up 'individual complaints'.