BT Install Saga.

I thought I would share my experiences relating to my recent Infinity install.

The chosen date for the engineer visit and install was set at 13 August and the hardware arrived on the 9th as indicated. The time slot was 08:00 to 13:00 and the engineer arrived at around 12:30. I showed him the layout of the house and indicated what I saw the problems were, mainly that the BT Master Socket was located in the entrance hall with no local power, while the main PC in my home office was situated at the rear of the house in an extension. I said that I did not want to connect this PC wireless (currently I have an internal BT extension that fed the O2 router adjacent to my office PC).

I also pointed out that 2 separate lines come into the house, but only one is still 'paid for' and to complicate matters further, I subscribe to a BT service called 'Call Sign' which allows 2 separate phone numbers to be transmitted down the single line, where they are split at a pair of 'TwinTalk' devices. He said he had never heard of such a set up and was worried it would not work after the install.

Anyway, he decided that it would be best to run a new cable around the house and come into the rear extension where he would fit a new master socket close to the PC, and feed back into the existing supply. The actual cable install seemed to go OK (apart from him not wanting to run the cable over the flat garage roof, and smashing through an external brick face while drilling through!) Around 1.5 hours later, I could almost hear his head scratching and he then said he needed to go back to the cabinet because he wasn't getting a dialing tone.. 30 minutes later he came back and ran some more tests but still no joy. Finally he said there was nothing he could do, as when he connected his scope, it indicated a disconnection 71 meters from my property and he would have to arrange for an underground engineer to repair the 'fault'

I suggested that 71 meters from the property was about where the cabinet was, he had been working at. His answer was that it probably was 'as the crow flies' but cables don't run straight and it was more likely that another crew had pinched his pairs. I pointed out that no other BT vans had been anywhere near all day, so then he said it must be a broken cable. I asked if he had connected the correct cable bearing in mind that we had 2 cables coming into the house. Slightly indignantly he told me he knew what he was doing.

On leaving in a hurry he said that I had no broadband and no phone and he did not know when it would be working!

About 10 minutes after he left, my phone rang, to my surprise. It was not BT but a personal call, however it disproved what the engineer had told me. I plugged a phone into the new master socket and just got white noise. This made me suspicious because if he had fed back from the new master, I would have thought that I would have had noise from all phones. I then got a text message telling me the date for the completion of the install was 29 August!!

Anyway to cut an already long story down, I phoned the BT fault line (India, but polite and helpful) then got through to a UK centre were I was met with just the sort of customer service I hoped for. My line was checked for a fault and none found and the operator listened to my analysis of the situation with utmost patience. She offered to send out a BT 'dongle' to at least get me back on line and then spent about 20 minutes off the phone trying to find the best solution. She phoned me back to say another engineer would be with me the next day and continued to apologise.

The new engineer was with me at 11:30 am and I spent a few minutes explaining the problem as well as my assumptions. Sure enough, within 10 minutes a dial tone was heard and soon after I had 3 blue lights on HH3. As I thought, the first engineer had used a cable that he found external to the house, but entering through a wall, which was the second line. The original line installed when the house was built, came in under the footings and into the cavity and then the BT master. What amazed me was that the first engineer (Neil) did not even remove the faceplate in the hall. Total incompetence from him but praise to the very knowledgeable second engineer (Matt) who took time to explain what he had done as well as commenting on the remaining poor installation.

As the saying goes 'You only get one chance to make a first impression' and Neil blew it.

I will be lodging a formal complaint to BT as long as I can find the best way to do so.

Finally, I can say that the actual service I am getting (speed etc) is very good, my only concern is the temperature that the Huawei modem and HH3 are running at. The HH sits ontop of a horizontally placed modem and in my book, heat is just wasted energy.

Steve

I stand the modem on it's edge and away from the router - especially for tomorrow's heatwave.

Absolutely as BatBoy says. They normally wall mount the modem vertically. Mine does have a little more warmth coming out of it than I would ideally like, but not near enough to feel troublesome.

Excellent service from the BT Retail Call Centres and the UK one in particular . Good to hear such for a change.

Re complaining, I've occasionally seen a link for compliments/complaints for Openreach but can't spot it at the moment.

As this displays a very poor performance by the original engineer, (possibly one of the new half-trained FTTC installers but that isn't much excuse for him), it may be appropriate to go straight to Openreach High Level Complaints, which appears to be on [email protected]

That's probably better than the Openreach CEO, as she would just pass it to them anyway. Don't forget to give sufficient identifying information.

My Huawei modem is horizontal on a desk in quite a warm room that that gets the sun most of the day. The router is close to it, with a second laptop and often a network drive as well. It gets hot in there! No problems. But if the only convenient place for the HH is on top of it, I suggest some sort of support at the four corners to allow a decent air circulation between them.

You mean this http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/contactus/tellu...

I've heard of Openreach "engineers" stacking the modems and homehubs before. It strikes me as a stupid thing to do.

I'm not sure that's it, but if not it is very similar.

Interesting that there is an option for the opposite of the OP's experience, but no option for it.

In reply to a post by Racehunter:

Finally, I can say that the actual service I am getting (speed etc) is very good, my only concern is the temperature that the Huawei modem and HH3 are running at. The HH sits ontop of a horizontally placed modem and in my book, heat is just wasted energy.

I had an FTTC install today and OR guy insisted that the modem (ECI, not Huweai) had to be fixed vertically on the wall.

Since I was not present I didnt have a chance to argue and it is neater in the present location. Snce he fitted a new NTE5 replacing the discoloured one we inherited with the house (smoke gets everywhere - ughh) I can't complain.

When OR failed to attend the appointment last Friday I rang BT to complain about this and the representiative rasied an official complaint on my behalf.

A complaint to higher up in BT got me an expedited install today rather than waiting until September!

And the OR Tech today said that his manager had said "this install must be done today no matter what" and also said that he had been in the locality last Saturday and had loads of free time to have done the installation then. He reckoned that OR "encourage" staff to work Saturdays but dont let punters know that Saturday appointments so most of the time they are sent home as there is nothing for them to do!

All very typical of a large corporate - I work for one and see this all the time.

My modem is in the electric box whilst the hh is on the shelf above the electric box.

Sounds very much like the first 'engineer' was a mobile workforce bod ... I'll say no more on the subject.

I'd strongly suggest wall mounting the modem. 2 screws at 100ml apart will do the trick.

Thanks for all of your comments. I have moved the modem and wall mounted it. I does seem to be cooler, but then the heat will rise up up and away through the top vent.

Just need to carefully word the complaint now............

Edited by deleted (Mon 20-Aug-12 10:34:16)