Service affected by high winds

When we get high winds here my DSL service goes up and down like a yoyo. It always reconnects immediately, but after its done it a few times my profile gets adjusted and my speed drops through the floor. I have learnt from experience to report it to Plusnet as DCN rather than slow speed because this avoids the "72 hour" syndrome. What I have failed to do is get anything done about the base problem. We get into the situation where the wind has dropped and the connection stabilises so there is no problem for an engineer to see. I did actually have an engineer out in late January at a time of high winds but there wasn't actually a problem whilst he was here. He came Friday am and the winds decreased overnight Sunday so by the time Plusnet picked it up on Monday everything was stable and they couldn't/wouldn't do anything more. I had the same problem 10 days ago (6 drops in 12 hours) but again by the time they investigated everything was stable.
Has anyone any suggestions as to how I can address this or do I just have to put up with it and raise a ticket everytime it happens?

I guess this is because your phone cables are on poles rather than in the ground?

As the problem only occurs when there is a high wind, I would think it is going to be difficult to be difficult to get BT to do anything. I'd keep reporting it if I were you and eventually someone might actually take notice.

I assume there is no place on a report form to note something like "please check in high wind" Maybe if they checked the security of the wires they might find a loose connection?

In reply to a post by ponyman:

When we get high winds here my DSL service goes up and down like a yoyo. It always reconnects immediately, but after its done it a few times my profile gets adjusted and my speed drops through the floor. I have learnt from experience to report it to Plusnet as DCN rather than slow speed because this avoids the "72 hour" syndrome. What I have failed to do is get anything done about the base problem. We get into the situation where the wind has dropped and the connection stabilises so there is no problem for an engineer to see. I did actually have an engineer out in late January at a time of high winds but there wasn't actually a problem whilst he was here. He came Friday am and the winds decreased overnight Sunday so by the time Plusnet picked it up on Monday everything was stable and they couldn't/wouldn't do anything more. I had the same problem 10 days ago (6 drops in 12 hours) but again by the time they investigated everything was stable.
Has anyone any suggestions as to how I can address this or do I just have to put up with it and raise a ticket everytime it happens?

How does this problem effect normal telephone operation? its likely that there will be a lot of noise when using the phone in high winds, so report a voice fault when this happens.

I agree with systemx, sounds like a bad connection on the overhead cable which disconnects when the wind blows and would affect voice calls as well.

In reply to a post by ponyman:

When we get high winds here my DSL service goes up and down like a yoyo.

Do your neighbours have the same problem, or are you the only one affected by the increase in the wind?

May be worth posting here as well, as a PN rep may see it sooner!

Check the line using the BT quiet line test, dial 17070 and take option 2, if you don't hear any noise then remember to do the test (if possible) the next time the wind blows and causes the problem, if you then hear noise report it as a phone line noise fault ..... and it's best not to mention the broadband problem when you do this.

Hi ponyman,

We'll be happy to look into this for you but as stated it'd most likely be resolved much faster if it was raised as a phone line fault. If your phone line is with us we'll get it raised for you, if not please report it to your provider (without mentioning the broadband as Apprentice says, as that'll complicate matters) and once it's fixed the broadband should be sorted as well.

If not of course please let us know.

My father-in-law had a similar problem. We noticed loads of dropouts with his ADSL in bad weather. It got progressively worse until we then got lots of noise on the line on windy days.
Reported it to BT as a voice line fault. Told them exactly what we thought the problem was. They came out within 5 days with a cherry-picker and replaced the think cable between the pole and the house. Problem sorted.

Very interesting. If only I had known that voice is important and broadband trivial to BT/Plusnet.
Recently I had an intermittant problem with broadband dropping & reconnecting every few minutes then going for hours or days without dropping then back to dropping several times an hour. Ticket raised and lengthy dialogue followed but I began to feel as if I was talking to a wall as virtually every question or comment appeared to be ignored despite numerous escalations, apologies and 'please do not hesitates'. My mention of weather (rain in this case) and a possible link produced ... nothing. Over 2 months and 17 different support agents probably the most constructive comment was 'if we arrange another engineer visit he may declare this as a long line give us the option to ... cease the account completely'. In other words - if you don't shut up we'll stop the service. Fortunately at about this time somebody else in the lane did complain about the voice service and the overhead cable was replaced. The problem appeared to have been squirrels gnawing at the sheathing allowing moisture to get into the cable.
However BTO hadn't quite done the recabling correctly and we, and at least 4 others in the lane, lost the phone service - reporting the voice fault produced a fix within a few days. And my download speed is now the highest it's been since enabling 6 years ago (0.75Mbps).
It's just a pity that Plusnet (MAAF in my case) don't apparently notice that a problem has been ongoing for some time and have someone take responsibility for resolving it. However they did send me an email with the subject - 'Feedback'. Unfortunately it was blank - no text, no link - so when I replied asking what I was supposed to do with it I got ...... no reply. Perhaps they knew that I might not be completely happy.

If only I had known that voice is important and broadband trivial to BT/Plusnet.

Unfortunately, it isn't "simply" BT or Plusnet. (Which bit of BT? Retail, Wholesale or Openreach?). It's partly because phone faults are easier to prove and diagnose, and very much because of the law about telephone services.

BT Group, (probably OR these days), has a legal obligation to provide a satisfactory telephone connection, and the technical standard set is quite high.

There is no obligation on anyone to provide broadband. The last figure I remember for the legal requirement is a 28kbps service.

It is also a well-known fact on all forums and by all ISPs that if there is a voice fault, then fixing that will fix most broadband faults. Also if a visit is made for an intermittent broadband fault and the engineer is not able to trace it, a charge of well over £100 is levied by Openreach on the ISP and that with all low-priced providers has to be passed onto the customer. We could not have, on any of the mass ISPs, the low prices we do without that being the case.

The same charges are beginning to be levied for NFF calls for voice faults, but the chances of the fault not being found are much lower, as I said above.

It is also well-known that a broadband engineer can declare that a line has become unsuitable for broadband and remove it. With no appeal to anyone possible. I wasn't aware that any option was presented to the ISP. Maybe it depends on the state of mind of the engineer at the time he makes the decision that fixing the fault is impossible, to avoid this highly unsatisfactory outcome for the user.

Is it possible that during your "lengthy dialogue ... numerous escalations" checking your phone service with the Quiet line test was suggested, and you didn't do that? When you lost the voice service was your broadband speed at that time extremely low - far worse than during the preceding saga?
_{Edit - typo.}

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 14-Oct-12 09:22:30)

Hi there,

Sorry to hear you had such a struggle getting us to act on your behalf. Intermittent broadband faults can be a complete pain to get to the bottom of at times. It's not that we don't take them as seriously as a voice fault, it's just that voice faults typically get turned around a lot quicker/are easier to identify.

I recognise you probably didn't have a voice fault to begin with though so I'm not sure how much solace can be gained from knowing this.

I'm surprised you were advised the way you were regarding the cessation of your line. Even if Openreach were to recommend this as a course of action, it's not something that would typically be done without your express permission.

The blank feedback email is worrying as we rely quite heavily on the responses provided to these for monitoring satisfaction levels. Can you provide me with an old fault/support ticket reference so I can take a look at your account and try to work out what happened?

Best regards,

Hi Bob

Ticket 57063990 records much of the recent saga.
Ticket 60436580 deals with the subsequent voice problem
Ticket 60057140 deals with a VM issue that was also handled badly.
The last 2 tickets are still open but unless something happens I expect them to close in a few days as they are resolved.

The blank feedback email was dated 20/09/2012 and was from [email protected]. My reply, to that email address, was dated 26/09/2012.

I do understand some of the difficulties with intermittent faults and how frustrating it can be to get to the bottom of them. For me using effectively such information as one has can be important in working towards resolution. I don't see the involvement of a dozen or more people as being an efficient way of doing this. My intention is to write to a couple of people at your head office and comment/complain about this recent support issue and previous ones over the last 3 or 4 years. However if you feel it would be useful to do so I'm happy to discuss my views on what I think are significant support shortcomings, and to be corrected if appropriate, but I don't particularly want to do this in a public forum.

Put it another way � I miss Samara.

Regards

Bill Ward

Thanks, Robertos, for the info. As I said 'if only I'd known'. I took the trouble to check back through the "lengthy dialogue ... numerous escalations", more than 20 pages in Word at 10 point with tight margins, and there is no mention of Quiet line test or the voice side of things. I do think that I would have tried it if I'd known, especially if I could pick a time when the drops were occurring every few minutes. I have now tried the 17070 test, earlier today, and all was quiet apart from a low background grumble.

The subsequent voice fault I mentioned that resulted from errors in the re-cabling manifested itself with us as an inability to pick up an incoming call or make an outgoing call. Picking up the phone didn't stop the ringing. Broadband was dead although I don't think I reported that.

A couple of years ago I had another instance of a broadband problem which took several weeks to resolve. This was much more clear cut � if the line was dialled the broadband connection dropped even if no phone was connected. Voice was fine however. A year before that we had a fault that took 11 weeks to resolve but this time broadband only worked if the phone was in use � dialling 1471 and leaving the phone off-hook was sufficient. Could I have reported these as voice faults?

Anyway they're history and I know a bit more now so thanks for that. I'll try and keep my frustration in check in future � my post was intended to be more in sorrow than anger, not a rant about ISPs and BT. Maybe I'll spend more time reading bulletin boards so that that that is so well-known to everyone else is also known to me.

Hi Bill,

Thanks for the info and apologies for the time taken to get back to you, I've been a little busy of late.

I've checked the survey email and you're right - it was sent without any content in it. I've PM'd you the URL's to the surveys and will try and find out what caused the problem. I suspect it will have been a temporary problem that's no longer evident.

Must admit, your most recent fault shouldn't have taken so long to escalate to Wholesale/Openreach and we should have aimed to get an engineer out to you earlier. I've also scanned through some of your previous support tickets but haven't had the time to read them in the detail I think would be required in order for me to pass comment.

Whilst I recognise what you're saying about ownership, it's tricky to approach all faults this way, not least due to the nuances of the processes and systems that need to be followed/used.

As you've undoubtedly witnessed yourself, it often takes multiple Openreach engineer visits before the cause of an intermittent connectivity fault can be isolated. You're also one of the unlucky ones whose line leaves a bit to be desired in terms of length/quality

I'm sure there are a few people who miss Samara but to be brutally honest, the MAAF subscriber base was significantly smaller compared to the combined Plusnet/MAAF base these days. Of course, me and the Digicare team do our best to help out here and elsewhere across the community, but I can't help but think we'd need about 20 Samara's nowadays to offer the one-to-one support she often did throughout the life of a fault

Having said that, we do welcome your feedback so feel free to send that letter or relay your suggestions for improvement using the survey I've linked you to.

On a final note, I can't see anywhere where we've tried to make amends for the hassle you've had over months previous so I've applied some credit to your account to reduce your next couple of month's subscription costs.

Your line looks pretty stable at the moment, let's hope it stays that way.

*crosses fingers*

Best regards,

Edited by deleted (Thu 01-Nov-12 17:29:36)