That's really great. What biscuits does he need to attract him?

Who have you gone to for the broadband in the end, and do they do line rental? What is wrong with BT calls and line rental - are they much more expensive than the rest of the market, and do you actually use the phone a lot? Is it UK calls; international; or chargeable codes such as 0845, 08700 etc.?

I went for Vivaciti in the end as although more expensive than I am paying now £20 for 100gb adsl2+ seems quite good with the support they offer.

They do line rental as well in a full LLU package which is £6 more than the surfwise variety package so essentially line rental is £6. They don't do any cal lpackages though and neither can yo uuse a prefix as it is full LLU but their calls are quite cheap being approx 1p per minute national.

We don't really use the phone much as we tend to use our mobiles most of the time... basically because most of our calls are to mobiles so it makes sense.

For international calls I tend to use skype.

There are some 0845 numbers but not many .... actually it has mostly been to aol support!!!

Nothing at all wrong with BT calls and line rental other than the cost.

As far as biscuits go I really didn't expect him to be over this weekend as the line was down most of the week so I didn't have time to buy any!!!..... Fresh ground coffee seems to work just as well though!!

Edited by wildgoose1uk (Mon 04-Apr-11 09:27:29)

No I don�t think you did act in haste, a fundamental point of customer service, is to retain unhappy customers. If they did not have ability or resources to retain you as a customer, it is Aol's loss.

What happened was the following:

1. Tried to trace internal wiring from entry point, but internal ducting made that impossible
2. Made a guess on the socket, disconnected one side of wiring
3. Found out which socket was first in the daisy chain wiring
4. Found my old SAR-600E got 3.7Meg sync
5. Attached the extensions - sync dropped again
6. Proceeded to try and figure out the sequence for the sockets in the house
7. Fixed the socket with one leg disconnected - sync improved, some odd noise on line
8. Noise went away after playing with another socket

In terms of wiring no real changes, just the IDC's had been remade, and confirmed no ring wire connected.

The 4167 sync appears to be with a 12dB target noise margin, so hopefully once with Vivacciti either it will reset to the 6dB margin, or it can easily be requested. This is likely to take sync to 5 or 5.5Meg, which is about right for the 47dB attenuation.

Moral is that never accept a poor speed until you've made sure the homes wiring is not causing some of the problem.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

What happened was the following:

1. Tried to trace internal wiring from entry point, but internal ducting made that impossible
2. Made a guess on the socket, disconnected one side of wiring
3. Found out which socket was first in the daisy chain wiring
4. Found my old SAR-600E got 3.7Meg sync
5. Attached the extensions - sync dropped again
6. Proceeded to try and figure out the sequence for the sockets in the house
7. Fixed the socket with one leg disconnected - sync improved, some odd noise on line
8. Noise went away after playing with another socket

In terms of wiring no real changes, just the IDC's had been remade, and confirmed no ring wire connected.

The 4167 sync appears to be with a 12dB target noise margin, so hopefully once with Vivacciti either it will reset to the 6dB margin, or it can easily be requested. This is likely to take sync to 5 or 5.5Meg, which is about right for the 47dB attenuation.

Moral is that never accept a poor speed until you've made sure the homes wiring is not causing some of the problem.

This should be compulsory reading for those that change ISP without properly investigating their wiring. Nevertheless I'm a bit surprised that such a recent installation doesn't have an NTE5.

No real surprise as the internals are done by the builder and usually BT these days just connects to their network outside.

I was in the process of moving my calls back to BT from aol (line rental has always been with BT) when I noticed the following:

Available to eligible new and existing residential customers signing up to the Unlimited Weekend Plan on a 12 month minimum term. Terms and conditions apply.

Whilst we don't make many calls using the landline I really don't want to be tied into a 12 month contract unless it is the best option. If it is the best option I can live with it.

What are the other options that are worth considering?

cheers

wg

I think the Post Office is monthly contract for phone.

I realise that we all have different requirements for our calls package, but when I last phoned BT to enquire about deals I finally got through to their "retentions dept" who gave me a deal (anytime calls, unlimited broadband and BT vision) that dramatically undercut what I was already paying for a lesser service.
However I'd imagine that everyone who advises you will have their own preferences, maybe a good read of the Moneysaving Expert forums might be another source of information, in what I believe to be a complex minefield!

Brief update!

I now sync at 4167 d/s and 903 u/s which gives me a usuable d/s speed of 3.5meg

Vivaciti had problems with my MAC code. Apparently because I was with AOL (tt) and Vivaciti purchase their LLU from tt this confused the poor puters who rejected ther MAC code as it was already registered on their systems (albeit with a different provider). This is something Vivaciti were trying to fix btu could not give me a timeframe as it was dependent on tt changing their systems.

I therefore cancelled the order and have remained with aol. I also cancelled the proser to move my landline to the Post Office as there seemed little point doing this until I got the broadband sorted out.

Soooo.....I am currently paying aol £15 a month for unlimited downloads and unlimited anytime UK landline calls and paying BT £13 a month line rental. My download speed has gone up from 0.5 - 0.9mb to 3.5mb. Practically speaking this means that if I miss an episode of my favoutite tv series I can d/l it in 13 minutes instead of an hour.........

...... and it is all entirely due to Andrew and the folks on this forum.....

Many thanks....... many many thanks.

wg