Crazy line fault

So on Friday my dsl drops and reconnects after 30 minutes of trying at half its original speed. downstream attenuation increased so line stats have randomly got worse. I go to phone pick it up and instantly notice a buzzing sound so loud i can hear it over the ringtone. I call my phone voice line rental provider not my broadband provider cause this clearly appears to be a line fault. After what i can only describe as some crazy attempting to talk over the buzzing to BT and echoing. There is a echo affect everything you and the other person says is repeated 1/2 a second or so later. i managed to get the BT support person my mobile number so we could talk properly.

They claim it is going to take until Thursday to fix this but i find this length of time not fast enough. My voiceline is almost useless if it gets any worse it will be! When people phone me for example it is really bad. I phoned myself my phone doesn't exactly "ring" anymore normally it does a constant non stop ring not a normal one. when i answer and listen on my mobile sometimes it disconnects me other times it re directs me to random peoples phone numbers on my exchange (starting with the same area code and first 2 digits of my exchange but always a different persons number each time)

So all my friends and family and work and anyone who phones me right now will either get through and hardly hear me get disconnected or worse of all forwarded to some random stranger in my area, oh and i have also had the "the number you have dialed could not be recognized" automated voice repeated to me over and over during a phonecall that was actually working!

Shall i make a complaint about this? Phone them back and see if they can speed up the time of repair?
Also this is so weird i would be interested if anyone knows what kind of insane fault this is or experienced anything like it.
Lastly i am scared after its fixed my dsl will not be as fast as it used to. For the length of my line my dsl was always surprisingly fast.

Edit, forgot to add there is also a privacy concern sometimes i can hear other people i thought i had a crossed line but I've heard more than 3 conversations in process at once. I also noticed they can hear me but not each other accept the people they were talking to not the other conversations i can hear. so my conversations are not private.

Blackmesa8

Edited by deleted (Mon 20-Jul-15 14:33:29)

So, you have a line fault, you have reported it, BT have it scheduled for repair.

What is your complaint? Do you have a contract that stipulates next day or 48 hour repair - probably not, so you will have to accept Thursday for te repair.

If you want faster responses, then change your contract and pay a higher line rental.

BT does offer to redirect calls to a mobile, which might have got around the noisy line in the mean time.

But yes aim is for four working day repair window for residential, so a fault reported today would start counting day 1 on Tuesday.

In reply to a post by MHC:

So, you have a line fault, you have reported it, BT have it scheduled for repair.

What is your complaint? Do you have a contract that stipulates next day or 48 hour repair - probably not, so you will have to accept Thursday for te repair.

If you want faster responses, then change your contract and pay a higher line rental.

That is true. To be honest i don't know what BT's terms are for repair time probably should have read the terms and conditions. I suppose i am lucky my broadband is even working at all!
I guess i am just finding it very annoying i use my landline for most calls due to free anytime call package etc.

I also really hope when it is fixed on Thursday my dsl speed goes back to normal.
I would still be interested to know what could have gone wrong to cause this issue i have never experienced anything like it.

Probably one of the two wires that form the phone line has got an intermittent connection and may fail totally soon.

DSL will keep working with one wire, but phone won't and DSL would be around half the speed of normal.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

BT does offer to redirect calls to a mobile, which might have got around the noisy line in the mean time.

But yes aim is for four working day repair window for residential, so a fault reported today would start counting day 1 on Tuesday.

Thanks for that info. I reported it Friday last week. What days do they count. Not weekends? Cause Thursday is 6 days from Friday but not working days i do know that. 7 days if you count Friday.

A working day is usually Mon to Friday, and excludes bank holidays.

So you are on day 1 of your fault.

They should count Friday as day one and today as day two. BT are sneaky . I'll look into the re directing option to my mobile and i am glad to hear that my broadband although slow will hopefully continue to work.

Thanks for the info guys.

Call them from your mobile on 0800 800 152 and arrange a divert.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Call them from your mobile on 0800 800 152 and arrange a divert.

Cheers for that.

Could always use BT Smart Talk. Uses your mobile over WiFi to make calls thru your BT Landline Account with the benefits it provides.

Hi, Don't think my dsl is stable enough for that. It is running at half speed roughly upload is incredibly slow, 256kbit i think. Normal speed for upload 1.2 to 1.3mbit. Also I'm seeing packet loss and it drops randomly and reconnects at about the same speed half the usual. It's fine for general web browsing or IM like Skype or email but gaming packet loss makes it very bad, downloading is bad the speed is unstable drops and increases non stop and downloading or pushing connection too hard seems to make it likely to disconnect. So it's just limping along half speed unstable.

Cheers for the suggestion tho.

Call divert to mobile is up and working so only thing i lost now is crippled dsl and can't make out going landline calls.

Blackmesa8

You should try BT Smart Talk as suggested, what's to lose?

In reply to a post by blackmesa8:

In reply to a post by MHC:

So, you have a line fault, you have reported it, BT have it scheduled for repair.

What is your complaint? Do you have a contract that stipulates next day or 48 hour repair - probably not, so you will have to accept Thursday for te repair.

If you want faster responses, then change your contract and pay a higher line rental.

That is true. To be honest i don't know what BT's terms are for repair time probably should have read the terms and conditions. I suppose i am lucky my broadband is even working at all!
I guess i am just finding it very annoying i use my landline for most calls due to free anytime call package etc.

I also really hope when it is fixed on Thursday my dsl speed goes back to normal.
I would still be interested to know what could have gone wrong to cause this issue i have never experienced anything like it.

You do need to subscribe to a higher version of the "Care" Package for the line if you're sufficiently bothered - the response time and fix time offered sounds like standard Level 1 to me.

In reply to a post by blackmesa8:

They should count Friday as day one and today as day two. BT are sneaky . I'll look into the re directing option to my mobile and i am glad to hear that my broadband although slow will hopefully continue to work.

If you logged it anytime on Friday, it doesn't count until the next day on Level 1 - "response time is next working day" (Monday), and fix time is supposed to be next + 1 (Wednesday)., and Committed to be Fixed by is the day after (Thursday)

It's "sneaky" I guess, but if you reported it at 23:59:59 on Friday, would you count it as "Logged it on Friday" - probably not, but that's going to get day 1 as Monday just the same as if you reported it at 00:00:01 on Friday. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

For an additional fee you could have better levels of care - up to and including "within 6 hours, 24/7/365 for a fix".

You might not consider that worthwhile mind once you saw the price, and would then reassess how "urgent" it is - inconvenient it may be - but urgent... not really.

Sounds like a battery fault. One or both of the wires is in contact with another person's line. This produces quite a loud humming sound.

If one of the wires was failing you'd hear crackling, rather than humming.

In reply to a post by blackmesa8:

Hi, Don't think my dsl is stable enough for that.

Smart Talk doesn't run over your broadband. It just let's you make calls on your mobile as though you were using your landline plan.

I used to use it for 0800 calls on my mobile because those costed up until this month, but were free on my BT landline.

The same when I had a line fault - lost it completely. Used Smart Talk for outgoing and they diverted the incoming.

This probably explains it a lot clearer than I did:-
http://bt.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/40735...