Guest MJG Posted July 26, 2007 Share Posted July 26, 2007 Since upgrading my Dell PC a few weeks ago and ending up with Vista home premium I've had a few problems with my Virgin Media (AKA NTL) cable broadband. Very often the connection to the internet goes to bo bo's and only a switch off of PC and my wireless router gets the internet back. Prior to this my non Vista equipped PC had no problems.... so clearly it's something to do with BG 'improving' his operating systems. At this point I'm faced with a couple of options - ditch NTL, sorry Virgin, or defect to a ASDL broadband provider, such as SKY, BT, Talk Talk and the like. So I place an order for ASDL broadband through BT and am promised the nice sexy Vista compatible BT hub and phone which arrives as promised on the 26th July 2007 which is my Broadband activation day Ring Virgin to cancel my cable broadband service as they confirm their service is not 'fully' compatible with Vista. Carefully follow the installation instructions for BT broadband and note if I have not recived an email or voice message on my phone saying it has been activated I have to wait until 8pm on activation day. After 8pm today (activation day) I duly try to install BT broadband...... no success. Ring their techinical helpline....... the engineers have had to 'plan something' plan what I say 'er I don't know' something........but we will review on the 6th August !!!!! Er do you mean you will activate my BT broadband on the 6th August or do you mean you will see if you can??? 'er the latter!!!!' The CSA at BT gets both barrels at his point particularly as at no point does he say anything like :- "Sorry our engineers are complete icompetent baffoons and at no point did anybody at BT think it was appropriate to contact you and inform you your Broadband would not be active untill a full week and a half after we originally told you it would be" So now have to ring NTL cacnel the cancellation and find a cable broadband modem and wirless router that is fully Vista compatible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RRX Posted July 26, 2007 Share Posted July 26, 2007 Normal BT cockup, deal with it all the time at work. stick with virgin and by a new router and the get a cable ran from the router to the pc and ditch the wireless. Virgin/NTL/Telewest systems are alot more reliable than any adsl setup Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gromit Posted July 26, 2007 Share Posted July 26, 2007 You're lucky can can (sort of) get broadband. I live 2 miles from the biggest town in Ireland, 40 miles from Dublin. I know that the fibre connecting Belfast to Dublin (and on to London) to is about a mile from me. Is my local exchange enabled - of course not. Are they planning to enable it? - HA I have to get wireless BB, and I only have line of sight to one of the wireless providers. Eircom-broadband-rollout, local-loop-unbundling, independant-comms-regulator my big hairy aunt. Look, you've gone and got me started! (At least mine works most of the time ) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 It's not often I come to the defence of my employer, but this time I will - err, sort of 1) I wouldn't wish an engineer's life on anyone, their jobs arrive with zero notice on their laptop and they have to go and make it work within the time the computer thinks they should take. When things go wrong, it's a PITFA to sort out - you think customers have to spend a long time on hold, believe me engineers spend half their lives listening to plinky plonky music to talk to a call centre who will then pass them around the houses... all the time the clock is ticking against the engineer and affecting their perceived performance. Most of the delay in getting any job done is the time it's floating round between you placing the order and the thing landing on an engineer's laptop, unbelievable but true, we've measured on numerous occasions where the brown stuff hit the ventilation equipment and the engineer got blamed and almost every time the delay was getting the job to an engineer who then has a ticking package of "you failed the customer" dropped in his lap with 5 minutes to fix something that's 30 minutes' drive away 2) Planning means just that - there is a million miles of copper wire in the ground and hanging off poles all exposed to the elements, it's not a faultless system and although the computer may say there are enough wires between the exchange and your house to give you a line, in reality it may well be the case that some are faulty or in use for things that haven't been properly recorded. What this means is that they could not use the route the computer told them and could not find an obvious alternative that was suitable for broadband. It could also be the case that the spare port on the broadband equipment turned out to be faulty when they activated it - often the first time this stuff is fully tested is when you order a circuit and happen to be on the next available slot on the equipment that may only have been installed a few days ago. 3) Dunno mate - The customer service experience is utter sh*te, there's no two ways about it, they give us all a bl**dy awful rep. Most of them wouldn't know one end of a router from another, or if they read the note the engineers put on the job it may as well be in an alien language as they don't know how it works. As such, in the unlikely event you get through the menus and being on hold and speak to a human, and even more unlikely they actually care enough not to lie to you, then they often end up telling the customers some fantastical sci-fi version of what is actually going on. 4) No plans to enable your exchange - wrong, everyone will have BB eventually. But, if you add up the cost of doing it with a small exchange you need quite a few customers to break even. Scrub that, you need a ****load. Say it costs a minimum of 100k just to enable your exchange, and you may have less than 500 total lines from it - do the maths on how much broadband you've got to sell before that pays for itself. 5) The fibre goes past my house - if the flight path for heathrow goes past your house would you expect them to build you your own runway? Yes, it really is that sort of deal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 Unfortunately, offcom in thier great wisdom have decided that it is best for all of us if BT is split into several disparate divisions, and the split runs between Openreach who deliver the line, and Openworld who deliver broadband - neither section are allowed to talk to each other directly, and only limited information can be passed between the two. So when the unfortunate in the call centre at Openworld says they don't know what's being planned on the line, they really don't, and aren't allowed to. The aim of this is so that Openreach can deliver the same level of service to all providers and nobody is favoured - which means everyone gets carp service, but the same carp service. progress eh?? It sounds as though there may not be a spare pair of cables available to your house, so the engineers may need to free some up or provide new - it does hold things up andobviously broadband can't go on till the lines ready. It's unfortunate that the new regulations make it so much more difficult to pass this information on to the customer, not impossible mind you and you perhaps spoke to someone who isn't quite so clued up on engineering processes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bull Bar Cowboy Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 I have used BT Broadband for the last 2 years, and after some initial issues the service has been excellent. The initial issues were speed of the connection from the implementation date ………I had a 2 meg service for 12 months that was 1st class, I then upgrade to an ‘up to 10 meg service’ and the average speed dropped to 400K ! …………… it took a lot of aggressive phone calls and about 2 months to sort out ……….. but eventually it was found to be set up incorrectly in my local exchange. BT then gave me 3 months free for my troubles …….. I say stick with it, because once the service is running properly, you cannot fault it. Ian Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 Puddles - you left out BT Wholesale / BT Operate, who own the exchange and provide all the services. They're not allowed to touch OpenReach's bit of wire and OpenReach aren't allowed to touch their bit of equipment... I was *heavily* involved with this (well, trying to sort out the aftermath) and let's just say if someone had asked an engineer before they decided to do all this splitting up they could've made life 100x easier for everyone At the end of the day, with the occasional exception of Bulldog and one or two others, any broadband you buy is 100% delivered by BT anyway so they are all subject to the same level of problems. Even Bulldog don't own any cable from the exchange to your house so that's always going to be OpenReach. At least the customer has choice now I guess... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toger Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 I have the BT. BT.Yahoo to be precise running through a BTVoyager 2100. I get problems whenever I forget to turn off the router and leave it switched on with the computer switched off. When switching the compuyter on it doesnt find the connection so a re-boot of the whole thing takes place. It is not very fast but speeds up a bit if I turn of the phising filter. I am sure there is an online test page but have yet to find it to check my BT speed. There have been a number of occassions when I have had to ring Asif in Bangaladesh to get the voyager to work. He always assures me that the BTVoyager 2100w is the best damn router on the market. It is just sometime it doesnt work because of a build up of static electricity. Switching everything off and pulling all the wires out is what he tells me to do and then to put the router in a safe place for ten minutes away from the computer. To be fair, this does work. I'm not sure if he's taking the mickey but it works. I'm not sure the BTVoyager 2100w is the best but what do I know Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puddles Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 I have the BT.BT.Yahoo to be precise running through a BTVoyager 2100. I get problems whenever I forget to turn off the router and leave it switched on with the computer switched off. When switching the compuyter on it doesnt find the connection so a re-boot of the whole thing takes place. It is not very fast but speeds up a bit if I turn of the phising filter. I am sure there is an online test page but have yet to find it to check my BT speed. There have been a number of occassions when I have had to ring Asif in Bangaladesh to get the voyager to work. He always assures me that the BTVoyager 2100w is the best damn router on the market. It is just sometime it doesnt work because of a build up of static electricity. Switching everything off and pulling all the wires out is what he tells me to do and then to put the router in a safe place for ten minutes away from the computer. To be fair, this does work. I'm not sure if he's taking the mickey but it works. I'm not sure the BTVoyager 2100w is the best but what do I know Toger - You don't need to turn the router off at night - broadband is an 'always on' service, and you can leave it on 24/7/365. I would suggest that you have a problem in your 'Network Settings' on your pc, which isn't looking for the router as the primary connection point. Are you connecting wirelessly or through a LAN cable?? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
toger Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 Puddles, The computer connects via both. By which I mean sometimes it's wireless and sometimes wired. It has a mind of it's own Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
q-rover Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 Sorry, the computer says noooo... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gromit Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 4) No plans to enable your exchange - wrong, everyone will have BB eventually. Not in this country. There has been huge political debate about rolling out broadband across Ireland with the help of the comms regulator to open exchanges to competitors. Unfortunately, the regulator has absolutely no powers to overcome Eircom's monopoly, which they have retained. As a result, BB penetration is something like 4 years behind schedule. 5) The fibre goes past my house - if the flight path for heathrow goes past your house Fair point - I was just having a rant! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
white90 Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 Well my BT BB has been faultless and I live over 8km from the exchange. just because someone has a bad experience doesn't mean the entire company product is rubbish Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeSheds Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 Had BT BB for 4 years and have only lost service twice for (in total) about 6 hours in all that time. Expensive, but reliable. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LR90 Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 Been with them 8 years now! The rabbit's caused more disruption to my service in that time than BT (oh and I'm now on my third router). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jameslwt Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 I hate it, hate it, hate it etc etc. Oh yeah, I hate it. Our home hub unit is a pile of shi....e. Only seems to work if you sit within 5 feet of it. And even then we regularly get a message on screen saying the computer can find all the other wireless set ups in our close, but not ours. 'no other networks in range'. WTF! My old man had the same problem with his. Guess I'm being lazy by sitting next to the router now and should get onto BT about it. Only went BT as moved house and didn't have a phone line to house (well that's what BT Customer services said to us, despite me repeatedly telling them I could stand outside and look at the wire going from the telegraph pole to the house. I asked was it just not connected. They said there wasn't one! Engineer was great though - think it made his day when he turned up to totally install a new line and all he had to do was go up the pole and re-connect it! And if you have a new line 'installed' you have to stick with BT for the first year. Can't wait till thats up! So yeah..... Engineers good Customer service totally carp BT Home hub....can't think of anything polite to say! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
white90 Posted July 27, 2007 Share Posted July 27, 2007 This is a L/R site not a BB issues one so with that notice this thread can now close. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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