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)