bt broadband rip off

hey up everyone. ill try and keep it brief.

june 2006 my 2meg broadband connection (that will get faster as my line gets faster according to sales office) goes off.
engineer rings me after a week, spots the wire is aluminium not copper and changes it for me. problem fixed, speed should go upto 4.5 meg in 3 days.
a week later speed remains 1.9meg
sales office tell me its a mis understanding but i can go on dsl max product, speed should be at least 4 meg minimum.
july 2006 turn dsl max on, speed is only 1 meg and disconnects whenever someone walks past the house (ie all the time)
16 engineers visits, over 60 hours on the phone and still not fixed, we are in october now.
october 2006 and a bt highlevel complaints man takes the case.
another 6 engineers visits are booked another 6 hours on the phone. 4 engineers dont even bother to turn up 2 say you need an SFI engineer.
its now june 2007, still have the slow speeds and disconnection problems.

bt are conning customers, by quoting authentication speeds as download speeds. they are not.
bt dont even have fibre optics in place (as 3 engineers are telling me)
bt dont use top of the range equipment as other companies do ( other companies exchange equipment is superior to bt's own) again engineers telling me this.

default speed on my line is 3.2 meg (anything under this is deemed by wholesale as a fault) best speed i have had is 2.1 meg since october with disconnection.

i authenticate at 4 - 4.5 meg most days (ie password and username) then im switched to another server where ive reached the heady heights of 1.9 meg download speeds.
if i try to download a song, it rarely gets above 10kbps ive tried this with cable/dsl/dial up/t1/t3 connections.

bt suggest that my equipment is at fault, ive tried 3 different pc's - 1 laptop - 2 stand alone modems - 3 different wireless routers.

to sum up after 11 months of slow speeds and disconnection problems, i am firmly convinced that british telecom do not have a clue what they are doing.

the bloke helping me in high level complaints has requested work to be done and engineers to come out, and laughs in disbelief when they dont turn up or refuse via email to do the work hes requested be done.
he cannot believe the incompetance of those who are supposed to be trained professionals and customer service team that doesnt know how to make steam.

since october hes witnessed first hand the constant lies of work being done that hasnt/booked appointments and work when they havent even turned up etc.

but the most annoying thing hes witnessed first hand, is the way they quote the authentication speed as the download speed, when it is not, and the server connection drops but the authentication remains until you try to open a site online, then it states i have to re authenticate once again.

bt are ripping people off by connecting people at high speed (knowing that in the tool bar it shows a high speed, which doesnt change until you reconnect again) then dropping people to slower servers to protect their precsious bandwidth or whatever.

its fraudulant and they should be stopped!

And what speed do you connect at, and does it keep dropping sync, if you plug the router into the 'test' socket inside the BT master socket?

remember you have 2 speeds synch and ip profile your ip profile will match your speed is depending opn stability off line see this line for bras info http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/2622-another-max-product-update.html and yes between 4pm and midnight you ARE being traffic managed on port 80 protocol ie torrents and p2p

best speed ive had is 2.1 meg download, back in october.

3 hours of discussions broadband faults finally conceeded that they should turn the speed up, as i, 2 engineers and high level complaints man argued for. this was a month ago.
the next day they limited the speed to 1mb

after 10 days of arguing with them, they finally agreed to return it to max product and ive only been able to download at 1.2 meg

im using adsl wall socket with nothing else added onto it. ive tried new phones, ive tried just router/modem and yes ive tried removing the wall socket and plugging in directly.

i test regularly at all times of the day and night, using think broadband's test.
if im downloading at less than 1meg, bt's own test returns as "the system is down at the moment, please try later"

my son works nights, when he has a night off hes tested the speeds and had the same results... rubbish speeds that dont come close to what they should be.

the fact that my authentication speed (showing when mouse is held over the small monitors on my toolbar) shows a constant, and the green squares (showing connection is active) even when my actual internet connection goes down, shows that my connection is diverted to another server.

should the internet connection disconnect, and i remained on the same server i authenticated on, then the same result as if i had unplugged mymodem would occur, ie, the green squares would go brown and the monitors would turn red.

they are conning customers, high level complaints agrees but states he cannot say so as his call might be recorded. they have blamed every man and his dog for the fault and slow speeds, yet despite 11 months of continued promises, they have done nothing constructive to rectify the problem.

i cannot leave a film downloading and goto bed, i cant download more than 4 tunes at a time as the connection is so slow, 1 tune on its own takes around 18 minutes to download for a standard 3500kb file
my son pays for and wants to use world of warcraft, and is getting very frustrated trying to use our *high speed* connection, ive tried secondlife, but face constant lag if i can get on at all... useless it is.

one final insult for us, a lady across the street has a connection of 4 to 4.5 meg using her bt line with a different provider, she builds websites and works from home, and doesnt have any disconnection problems at all. shes on the same post the same exchange the same package, and shes using a 3 year old machine with a 4 year old modem!

i would trust bt to look after a mouldy old sock

Good job you kept it brief. Seriously there is so much unsubstantiated stuff there and so much ranting you are harming your own case.

ok sounds like a rant i agree, but after 11 months with a problem, much of what i quoted is agreed with by BT's own high level complaints team!

half the departments ive had to deal with havent even been mentioned.

imagine having a problem, then being told what going to happen, then finding out a day later that nothing has been done at all and yet another call back promised is not made.

* to date with this fault: 32 agreed call backs, total received callbacks just 13.
* agreements made about plan of action with senior supervisors of various departments: 27, times when that action has been carried out, 8!
* engineers visits booked and waited in for: 17, actual engineer's visits as booked 11.
* im told i need an SFI engineer to visit my home (landline and broadband engineer special fault engineer) and an appointment booked: 7, actual SFI engineer visit turned up at my home, 0! (only twice did an engineer actually turn up for this, both times they were not an SFI engineer) ive only been waiting since october 10th 2006.
* wholesale requested to turn the broadband speed up by high level complaints 3 times, twice they did nothing, on the one occasion they actually turned the speed up, they posted on my account notes they had done it. it took 3 hours on the phone and 4 requests via the advisor's manager before just the authentication speed increased, 10 days later, actual download speed then fell to half what it was before they turned it up.
only after complaining to the chairman's office did it go back to 1.9 meg it was before they addressed it.
*wholesale have closed the fault 16 times since july 2006 (its not even listed on their website tracking feature) excuses include: im not using a bt modem; my bt modem isnt plugged in properly; 128k ram isnt sufficient to use broadband i need to upgrade my machine; a faulty micro filter (they have it on account notes that im using a adsl socket); the website im downloading from is experiencing heavy traffic; peak times can slow connection (even at 4am uk time); i have a virus; my windows firewall settings are limiting my speed; im using the wrong username and password to log on; the username and password on the account doesnt match the one on their records.

* on 3 occasions, wholesale have sent an engineer to work on the fault at the local exchange, and left me without any internet for 3 days at a time. on the 3rd occasion i argued on the phoned for 4 hours for an engineer to go out to the local exchange and plug me back in, 2 hours later (at 7pm) an engineer visited the exchange and found that they had forgot to plug my connection back in after doing work on it!

* the head engineer in my area requested a lift and shift via the main exchange in wallsall, it was reported back that it had been done. i reported the same fault 14 days later, the same head engineer came out and contacted the exchange in wallsall to see if it had been done, they didnt know! to be safe he asked them to do it again, as yet we still do not know if its been done as their is no confirmation of this either verbally or via email request. they do not know!

* in october, the head engineer requested my line card be changed from the rack in the exchange; 3 weeks later he contacted them to see if it was done, the request had been refused because "there are 59 other customers on the same rack and we would have to turn them all off for about 30 minutes to move your card over. As we do not know who the other 59 customers are, we cannot do this" the engineer informed me that he would repeat the request, which he did another 4 times. high level complaints have also sent this request 3 times, but im told by both high level complaints and engineer that they can only request this, as its on the landline side of things, that department dont have to action it! (they still havent actioned it)

are there enough facts for you there? all logged in a diary. i thought maybe my post could make some people aware, so they wouldnt have to go through the problems im facing, i guess this forum doesnt cater for this.

I'm afraid to say that your next step of action is to either e-mail Ben Verwaayen CEO BT Group or to give a call to the Complaints Review service on 0800 545 458. They will investigate your issue completely and take any action if necessary to improve customers experiences like yours with BT and get your broadband fixed.

You can find more information about the complaints procedure here:
http://www.btplc.com/Thegroup/Regulatoryinformation/Codeofpractice/Salescodeofpractice/Complaints/Complaints.htm

thanks for that,funny tho not one single person mentioned this info at BT during the whole time of the problem.

ive been trying to get someone at the chairman's office to act, but they just pass the buck.

thanks again.

For over 25 years I answered letters of complaint to the Chairman of a national utility. I urge you to keep it brief, succinct and without copies/attachments.

perhaps if bt would keep account notes on correspondance as they should and engineer's dont tell them theyve done work when they havent turned up, then a simple complaint request to look into my problems with customer details would be all thats needed.

sadly however they are only too pleased to get the complaint and forward it to the person who was supposed to have sorted it out months earlier.

its a never ending circle.