It wasn't broke...

but BT "fixed" it anyway.

Been a happy Zen customer (ADSL2+, 21CN BT exchange) for years. Some time in May BT carried out overnight "planned maintenance" on my exchange, I lost service afterwards. Phone call to Zen, service restored within a couple of hours. Well, not really. Ever since then I've had problems with low SNR, high error rates and occasional short dropouts, on a line that used to sync at 16Mb/s and stay that way.

Problems since then:
Aggressive negotiation on the part of BT's kit, going down to under 3dB SNR downstream. Mitigated, but not quite cured, by asking Zen to nail up my line to a minimum of 6dB SNR, opting into Interleaving, changing modem/router from Netgear DG834G to TP-Link TD-W8960N and adding an Iplate to the NTE5 (bell wire was already disconnected in the extension wiring, the Iplate's common mode choke makes a small difference to SNR, though).

SNR still drops sharply a few times a day, usually correlated with rainfall. At these times the line is unusable. These events last a few minutes at a time, too short apparently to be picked up by Zen's NMS, which seems to sample DSLAM stats in 15 minute intervals.

I've had to resort to manually increasing SNR to 9dB to give me enough link budget to get through most of these adverse events.

Zen are unkeen to raise a fault with Openreach, claiming that all seems well from their end. Given that Openreach charges for truck rolls whenever it can, I can almost understand that. Then again, I'm paying for a better-than-consumer service and I'm not getting it.

This is quite unlike my previous experience with Zen, who were always rather good at getting things sorted. Has anyone else had such problems following a "BT planned maintenance" window? What are the magic words, and to whom do I need to say them to get this fixed?

So your line has developed a fault, make sure it's not your end by trying the router in the test socket. If the fault is still present, you won't get charged. Openreach need to fix it.

I think you obviously need an engineer visit.

Have you tried in the test socket? That's worth a shot before anyone comes out.

Anyway I'm definitely quite shocked by your zen experience. They're certainly not the cheapest out there.
With regards to zen im not sure how their charging policy works for engineer visits. It can't be that different to sky though.

With sky as long as you are in the master socket & have tried the test socket they won't charge you. They tell you this upfront before an engineer is sent... Even if no fault is found there's no charge. In this case they just send someone else out straight away.

If the issues with the internal wiring there's a charge of around £100 + whatever works carried out.
Internal wiring is anything beyond the master. Wiring upto the master test socket isn't chargeable

Looking at the way sky do things you definitely would not be charged by them. Given that zen is far far more expensive & apparently has better customer service I cannot see how they can charge you for a visit.

Now as I say I'm shocked that they've not sent anyone out though. Sky get somebody out almost straight away (after trying an alternative router always).

Pester them as this shouldn't be occurring. & perhaps leave it at 6db SNR so the drops etc get registered by them. Plus ring whilst the SNR is dropping so low so they can see the issue.

Also you could run a program called routerstats to build up some evidence.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Sun 12-Aug-12 10:34:56)

Unfortunately I have to say that in the past when BT have accidentally caused a problem with my line at the exchange, my experience of Zen escalating the issue to BT in a timely manner has not been good at all.

I think the OP should try the master test socket and a new microfilter - as that is what BT ask as a prerequisite check, but beyond that Zen should be getting the issue escalated to BT ASAP as it may be another week from that point until BT start to do anything, by which time the customer has had a degraded connection for almost 2 weeks.

I checked from the test socket and tried a couple of new microfilters before even shelling out for a new router and the Iplate, so all the obvious things have been tried and failed to make a difference.

I had a sensible email conversation with Zen while we were at the "add Interleave, crank up the SNR" stage, but when that and all the other measures failed to make a difference and I asked to get Openreach involved, they refused and started pointing me at "first reboot your router and plug directly into test socket"-type support web pages. Felt like a bit of a retrograde step.

rather feel like an idiot than be out of pocket

If that had happened to me I would have been absolutely fuming.

Send a PM to SkyFire.

Hopefully he can put the situation right for you to make up for this bad experience.

What I would say is in addition to what you have done, arm yourself with 3 consecutive speedtests from the BT speedtest website using the BT speedtest logon. http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/btwspeedtest.htm

In reply to a post by GenericUsername:

I have to say this. I find it absolutely ridiculous that Zen aren't the ones suggesting and pushing an engineer visit.

Truth is you are paying a premium over LLU and honestly the help being given here just is not upto scratch. Firstly you have falked out for an iPlate AND a new router out of your own pocket. When I had a fault with BT and sky in the past they both provided me a new router for free as a first option.

Then when this failed and the TEST socket failed both ISPs got me an engineer out immediately. I had an engineer visit within 3 days on both providers. With Sky I made the 1st call, on receipt of the router Sky rang me to check up on things.

With Sky. Day 1 - issue reported, new router issued.
Day 3 new router arrived. No improvement. They sent a new engineer
Day 5 engineer visited. No fault found.
Rang back, another engineer sent out.
Around day 7 2nd engineer came, found a fault. Job done.
None of this nonesense you are getting.

I paid £7.50 for broadband at this time. So with the premium you're probably paying to Zen I would have expected something far far better. At a minimum I'd expect a similar service to the cheaper providers.

Also with Sky they wouldn't even increase my SNR despite me asking. They were absolutely insistent that this just wasn't a good enough solution. Engineer first, try to get it resolved and if they asbolutely no way in hell could get it fixed they said they would look at these methods.

It's just not good enough to artificially cap a line which can easily perform fine at 6db noise margin. It's masking up a fault and not dealing with it. It's kind of like covering up subsidence with a new plaster job, it's gonna come to bite you eventually.

What really worries me with Zen is that I get the feeling they don't have the customer base or profits to swallow any BT charges. As a customer you shouldn't feel scared that an engineer visit could potentially cost you a bomb. Zen need to get somebody onto the case to help you from openreach.

As a customer I like to know exactly where I stand. From Zen I would have expected the following:
1) A commitment to get an engineer out once the test socket and a new router were tried.
2) An exact statement stating in which cases you will be charged by openreach.
It is not openreach who charge you. Openreach basically write a report which will go back to Zen. It's then upto Zen if to charge you.

E.g.With Sky it's this simple. If you are in the master and there is a fault there's no charge.
If no fault is found they keep sending out engineers until a fault is found.
So Sky see the engineer report, see you were in the master. You won't be charged.
Black and white and you know I won't get a bill.

3) & then I'd expect Zen to compensate for the issues.

Anyway I'd write in at this stage. Just wondering are you still in a contract with Zen. Other ISPs in paticular AAISP are very big on guaranteeing to fix any faults.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Mon 13-Aug-12 01:55:21)

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

What really worries me with Zen is that I get the feeling they don't have the customer base or profits to swallow any BT charges. As a customer you shouldn't feel scared that an engineer visit could potentially cost you a bomb. Zen need to get somebody onto the case to help you from openreach.

What you are forgetting is that for Sky, or more accurately NewsCorp, Broadband is simply a means to an end - that of getting Sky TV and other NewsCorp products into the home by all means possible. The effect of this is that they can, if necessary, afford to run it as a loss leader subsidised by other operations.

The Murdoch group has very deep pockets........

In the case of this fault and others, we advise the customer that if anything is found on thier equipment we explain that OpenReach will charge them for the visit. Now if all diagnostics are done before the fault is raised to BTW then we also advise about charges as by law we have to, however we also tell them that we will absorb the charges and then dispute them with BTW via the process available to us.

In the case of the OP, I don't as yet know the full history of the issue and I will be contacting them to see if I can help get to the bottom of it and certainly try to resolve it.

Kindest Regards,