ADSL24 and BT

Wednesday morning woke up to dialup speeds on my pc when usually I get between 6-7Mb. Before the ADSL24 office opened I had already done 3 bt speedtests with speeds ranging from 165Kbps to a whopping 654Kbps, I also tried different cables and filters to rule out anything like that, as we moved the desk and setup on Tuesday, speeds were ok Tuesday all day and evening.
So I called ASDL24 logged the fault, lost count of how many times I rang that day.
Thursday at 9am rang them for an update and only then they said it would be handed over to BT who returned it saying no fault on the line, as usual. I sent ASDL24 some trace test results and have continued to do speedtests throughout the day. Just before 4pm I slowly checked my ADSL24 account for email and was amazed to see my support ticket had been updated. Normally at this point I would speedily check this but with such slow speeds it took some time.
This is the update I got

Regarding the problems on the service at the moment (we spoke earlier on the phone) I've had an update from the 2nd line in the last 15 minutes (as I write) that advises having tested the service they've found a potential issue; it having been identified that your line is on a heavily used circuit at the exchange, (Virtual Path) so this has been raised with BT asking for them to pass this to their Complex Faults Dept (who deal with such things). Theoretically we'd get an update after 24hrs, but should anything come back sooner we'll try to advise further.

How wrong I was when I thought things would be chaning soon.

Friday rang ADSL24 again, no update from BT again, and all I get from ADSL24 is, "as you're moving over to our LLU package that wont be affected by this fault with BT", most helpful what about the next 2 weeks before changeover, having super slow dialup speeds.

Its now Saturday morning still with no further updates from anyone. The speeds are still under 130Kbps, with the bt speedtest this morning registering a huge 97Kbps.

BT know there is a fault so why can't they fix it? My exchange is in Little Clacton with just over 2400 premises. My sync rate is stable and always has been, that has never changed. I live about 1.15Km from the exchange by road. Last week when BT rang to try and keep my custom they said super speeds where coming, and I have seen them laying fibre cables along the raod last year, but with no dates as yet, bet they still won't fix nothing if I was a customer of theirs.

ADSL24 absolute fed up of the no help. I get moaned at for the router reconnecting 10 times in a morning, when I've just done the cable changes and moving modem to allow me to do cable changes.
No reduction in costs is being offered to me as "I'm still getting a service", well they can do without my custom, apparently I can't cancel the LLU order as its committed, so stuck having to pay £30 to get out of contract which is looking likely to be the best money I've spent with them.

To be fair ADSL24 have identified the issue, reported it to BT and its BT who are dragging their heels. If its at the exchange then its a BT issue and nothing more ADSL24 can do other than nag them to fix it.

BT found the fault nothing happened from ADSL24all they did was pass over the alleged fault to them. First time it came back and only because I kept ringing did ADSL24 boune it back.

If the VP fix involves a hardware upgrade at the exchange, that involves BT Wholesale getting things moving, and also Openreach. Fix dates shown on this checker are often way ahead. Last updated 15 Jan for your exchange, so no help there at the moment. I think it's a monthly update.

There is nothing ADSL24 can do to speed that process up. In theory even BT Broadband couldn't do anything for you. Wholesale and Openreach are required by OfCom to treat all ISPs the same on this sort of matter. No favouritism or priority.

Re getting a reduction in cost, I assume you have asked them? But the problem is the profit a decent ISP makes is well under £1pm per customer, and they won't be able to get any reduction in what they are paying Wholesale and Openreach for your line. The pile-em-high sell it cheap ISPs do make more profit per customer, but the service is normally not as good. Which is why you went to ADSL24 in the first place.

It's very rarely we see "fault" discounts reported from any ISP until after it is fixed, so they know what they are up against. Have you been generally happy with ADSL24, since the slowdowns on Entanet?

In my view if you have been, I'd stick with them and try the LLU. If it is a BT VP then that will fix it, and as I said there is no way any other BT-based connection would get fixed any quicker.

I'm concerned about the lack of customer support from ADSL24 over the last few day and then being on a 12 month contract for internet and phone with 100 mins of calls a month. Ive wasted more than 100 so far since Wednesday morning.

Ive posted somewhere else about cancelling the migration, BT said I can upto the day before ADSL24 say they don't know lol

Any ideas?

Cheers

In reply to a post by highlander317:

apparently I can't cancel the LLU order as its committed, so stuck having to pay £30 to get out of contract which is looking likely to be the best money I've spent with them.

If you've got more than 2-3 days before that order goes active, it is unlikely to have gone past the point of no return. Is your phone line currently with BT? get them to stop the migrate away, the gaining provided would then not get charged for a cancelled order and neither would you.

Matt

Constantly calling an ISP won't get the techies to work any faster.

They told me to check back so I do

I'm not happy on several points here.

The main ones are:

- that cancelling a migration to LLU is only going to prolong the problem if it is a congested VP, unless that does get resolved and you are back to square one anyway, leaving you are free to choose who to move to if you are really upset at what looks to be fairly good service from ADSL24;

- I have grave doubts that it is a congested VP. As Wednesday is the first day you have experienced the problem I would expect slowdowns to be sporadic, so a lot of the time things should be fine;

- I've never heard of a VP problem of any kind causing a router disconnection. I stand to be corrected by techier people than me, but I don't believe a heavily used VP is going to cause ten reconnections in one morning.

You won't like this . I suggest you power down the router and anything hard-wired to it. Unplug and replug-in both ends of every cable that connects to it, including the power. Start up again and see how things are.

Also including the phone line at both ends and the filter if you have one. Replug that into the socket as well.

If you still have a problem after that, then try the filter into the test socket of the master.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 28-Jan-12 12:41:37)