So I rang Zen, and although a bit more painful than I expected, my old order is cancelled and a new one with engineer install should happen. It took some convincing initially that an engineer visit would be in everyone's interest and I almost had to use the line "people on the internet told me!". Sales to Technical, back to Sales, then to Billing.
I feel like something is going to go horribly wrong.....lets wait and see.

Was the Data Extension/Home Wiring Solution ordered? It's free, but vital! If it isn't ordered the engineer doesn't have it on his worksheet, (and may even have less time allocation - my supposition).

The current order details visible to me are a bit opaque. I will follow up to check. I feel like I covered that ground during the discussion but not quite sure how that might have translated to the order (other than this guy is a pain).

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Was the Data Extension/Home Wiring Solution ordered? It's free, but vital! If it isn't ordered the engineer doesn't have it on his worksheet, (and may even have less time allocation - my supposition).

Zen assure me it is included / part of the order. We will find out in a weeks time hopefully. The wife has also agreed a route for the data extension from the current master socket that she can live with, so although not aesthetically perfect should make getting to a sensible power outlet point ok now.

So I had my install today. We ended up effectively making my existing extension point the master socket and all other extensions are now disconnected - so no data extension used. New master socket with interstitial faceplate fitted. I guess he was happy with the few extra metres of internal wiring, seemed to do quite a bit of testing to make sure it was OK. Getting about 50/10 which I said was under the impacted estimate and he stayed on to do some further checks. He couldn't see any problems and said the line was performing at maximum and no errors etc. I'll wait a couple of weeks and see what Zen say. Not motivated enough to go poking around the Openreach modem.
He said there are only 3 other people on my cab currently. Does the BT line estimate get refined as more people join the cabinet and it sees what real world stats they get?

Going by BT estimates mine is similar to yours and i have been able to get the max sync rates of 80/20 so far , do you know how far you are from the cab, ? my line is about 300-350mtrs from the cab to the master socket

Edited by tommy45 (Fri 14-Aug-15 17:32:35)

The current estimates don't take into account your distance from the DP i.e. usually last telephone pole or pavement chamber, so 20m long drive can have an impact. That should change during the autumn.

There is some feedback into the checker systems i.e. its not perfect but pretty good for the way its done for now

Was the engineer Openreach, or someone like Kelly's/Quinn's?

As crow flies around 300m, by walking on roads perhaps nearer 400m. The whole area served by the cab is all underground cabling. He did check whether there was anything more he could do the other side of the master socket outside to get the speed up but I guess was restricted somewhat.

Openreach, extremely polite and helpful. Seemed like he had been doing the job a while. We chatted over some broadband trivia and even my mysterious cease and reprovide that happened a couple of years back. He made the astute point that the myriad of communications providers are not very good at communicating with one another.