In reply to a post by yarwell:

dunno who uses electric fences for chickens, let alone a mesh, but anyway.

To deter foxes?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

and I would have to get TalkTalk to send out a Bt Openreach Broadband engineer, I wasnt keen seeing as over the past 3 months and countless phonecalls to TalkTalk Technical Support I have found them to be insanely inconsistent as to what they would do. But I landed lucky, and the guy begrudgingly booked an engineer for a week on Monday.

What did the guy "begrudgingly" book? A phone fault/engineer, or broadband? What did you tell him, and ask for?

I'm also still puzzled by:-

its not a hugely beefy fence unit, its only doing a small chicken run, but I suspect the problem is largely because its a net, and the net goes right to the floor, that every pulse will be going to ground.

I gather from "the only 11kv transformer anywhere near a BT cable is our own" that it is your fence? So why not just turn it off and see what happens?

You also imply earlier that it wasn't like this in the past. So when was the fence installed, in relation to the noise starting?

The guy made an appointment for a BT Openreach engineer to visit, wether it was a linesman or a "broadband boost" I can't say, besides which Openreach decided to ignore this and not tell anyone that they had... Another appointment made for Wednesday.

I told him exactly what the BT linesman told me to say, I asked for a "BT Openreach Broadband engineer". Still can't fathom why each engineer goes home and ticks the "fixed" box even though they know it isn't...

Not our electric fence, a neighbours. When I say 11kv transformer, I mean SSE's one on a pole transforming 11kv down to our 250v mains, but as I say I don't think this means anything because previous engineers have said they still get the noise when the section of cable that runs by it is disconnected.

And no, it wasn't like this in the past (the past being a quiet line and stable 1Meg bb with very very few errors), but besides a ticking I honestly don't believe the fence has any great effect on the line, I have had it switched of several times and the main noise/problems remain.

Thanks, JF.

EDIT:
Yeah, foxes, that's why the electric fence, but also to keep the chickens in, they Live right by a main road.

Edited by deleted (Mon 18-Feb-13 14:02:46)

To deter foxes?

it's a thought, but they would just hop over.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

To deter foxes?

it's a thought, but they would just hop over.

Nah, at just over a metre high foxes wouldn't clear jump it, so first contact scrabbling over will put them off. Its very good at that actually.

Oh well, Just thought I'd put another update down.

Wednesday.
BT Openreach engineer turns up, I ask him what happens if he cannot fix the issue, he explains to me that his orders are very clear, if the line passes his JDSU tester he clears the fault and goes home, his hands are tied and he cannot do anything else. So he goes to the socket, and comes up with an "insulation fault". So he goes 500m down the line, tests ok, back 100m ok, back to the gable end of the house ok. Turns out one of our new sockets less than a fortnight old is faulty! So he replaces that, and gives us a nice shiny Openreach VDSL filter faceplate. He also apologises for not being able to fix the actual problem.

A few hours later I phone TalkTalk Fault Management (its bad when you know their number better than your own mothers!). I speak to a nice Indian woman and explain the whole past 3 months. She listens, apologises, and tells me she is away to speak to openreach and will call me back. Half an hour later the phone rings and she tells me she had spoken to the engineer at Openreach, and that he had explained to her that our cable has degraded to such an extent that the only real fix was to "replace the entire 7.5km from the exchange the the property". She says clearly this is not a quick or cheap thing to do, so a report had been put in to Openreach managers, and TalkTalk managers. If the fault is not able to be resolved we may have to cancel your contract since we are not able to provide the service you are paying for, there was also talk of compensation. She will phone back tomorrow to update.

Tomorrow.
Get a call from TalkTalk UK, knows nothing of my phone call yesterday, blames wet weather, says Indian woman couldn't have spoken to Openreach (I cant see any other way she would get the information she had) and says she is sending out another BT engineer, but no mention of a time slot. This was the worst call centre person I have spoken to yet, completely refused to leave the script, I have honestly gotten on better with the Indian guys.

Half an hour later I got myself that wound up that I called India back and explained the whole situation to somebody else who then went off to speak to Openreach. When he called back he told me that Openreach were requesting this visit (I had been told that before) and that he had made sure the notes to go with this visit explained the issues and previous visits as much as they could. Timeslot booked for Monday morning.

I know people will say I would be better off with BT retail, but the issues are fundamentally Openreach's failings. Granted TalkTalk are not entirely blameless, But they keep reporting the fault and Openreach keep closing it, who is more to blame?

If you can't be bothered to read all that I don't blame you, I'm pretty peed off now as well...

JF.

I would take most of what they told you with a pink of salt.

The service providers for one have no access to the Openreach engineers who work in the field, all they see is the electronic report with various fault codes.

Alright guys, can you just tell me one thing?

When Openreach send out another engineer to the same property/number for the seventh time in 3 months, do they not have a recent history list of notes?!

Problem still ongoing, latest Openreach engineer just as useless (sorry, that's perhaps a little harsh, lets just say unable to help) as the last 6.

Also, problem is more widespread (further down the UG cable to the exchange) than I originally thought, however as we are second from the end of the line the littlest thing affects us badly. Since everyone else is significantly closer they don't feel the ill effects as much and so aren't bothered...

Thanks, JF.

EDIT: Just spoken to TalkTalk yet again, they are now claiming that the fault is within the exchange (plausible), that it is being worked on (not so plausible...), and also that it will be fixed within 48hrs (my foot!).

Edited by deleted (Tue 26-Feb-13 09:48:36)

In reply to a post by 405mi16:

If you can't be bothered to read all that I don't blame you, I'm pretty peed off now as well...
JF.

It's fascinating stuff so keep posting!

Not that fascinating for me I'm afraid!

Currently on the phone to TalkTalk to cancel, unfortunately in contract so they want to charge me! So they are wanting to send out one more engineer, then if still not fixed they say they will waive the fees (cheers guys!)...

Not especially happy since TalkTalk are £10 a month cheaper than BT, and seeing as its BT's problem I don't see how TalkTalk should lose a customer over it (apart from their god-awful fault management process!), or how BT should gain one actually... Besides which we don't want a homehub, or 2GB of BT cloud, or any of the other [censored] they give you to try and convince you your actually getting a good deal...

All I want is the line fixed, and to get back our old faithful 1Meg stable broadband!

Yet 10 miles down the road they are getting geared up for ADSL2+ to be upgraded to fibre!

JF.

EDIT: Oh joy, after an hour on the phone they've let us go without fees, now I wonder just how good BT's fault handling is... TalkTalk wouldnt give us compensation unless they fixed the fault! And BT service wont start untill a months time, so I guess we'll have a quiet month.

Edited by deleted (Tue 26-Feb-13 11:49:42)

Well, after I cancelled TalkTalk and signed up with BT (start date of 27/03/2013) I got a phone call from a TalkTalk UK call centre, asking if I still had the fault, and if I wanted to book an engineer. Apparently they are still responsible for problems until the 27th...

So I say yeah, go and knock yourself out! Engineer booked for today, and when he turned up he made it clear he was one of the guys that will follow through with a fault. He did all his tests, same as before with no faults, but he agreed something wasn't right. So he calls up a collegue and they work together and test each run of cable right back to the exchange. All tested ok but one stretch he had a pair with a slightly better A/C balance, so swapped them.

He then came back and explained what he had done, and how he was able to replicate our problem even when calling the exchange number. So he thinks its possible that we are on a faulty line card, and that the further from the exchange you get the length of cable acts as an aerial and amplifies the line card fault. Soo, he has kicked it back to the exchange with lots of notes explaining the problem and what had already been done. He also suggested that this may not actually fix the BB problem as that may be down to faulty exchange equipment.

Any comments are welcome.

Thanks, JF.

Which exchange is this BTW?