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[NewtronStar]

My issue is not so much about rein it's more about RFI and you have posted on here to say the BT80 RF3 and the SSFP MK2-MK3 will not stop/cure RFI interference, I know the RFI is coming in from the D-side what can the OpenReach engineer do to lessen the effects of RFI ?

[Roxy]

Where is the emoticon smiley face for banging head on a wall...

The engineer calls the house while I'm away, gets my sister on the phone and starts rattling off things she doesn't understand. Eventually she gets the gist of it, that he is not coming to the house, because according to OR the connection is 'stable,' and working fine.

She told him that she didn't understand a lot of what he was saying, but knew for a fact that the line is not ok and he needs to speak to me. So I get a call at work (not cool), and spend fifteen minutes going around in a circle with him. Apparently OR thinks it's appropriate to leave my connection in a more crippled state and at a lower speed, because it's 'stable.' I immediately reminded him that of course it's stable, it's interleaved - interleaved because of all the CRC errors, which still happen on this new port.

I said it's very simple in black and white : On the previous Thursday I had max rate 47mbps, with an interleaved 42.5 DS.
After the lift and shift, I had max rate of 39mbps, with an interleaved 36 DS.

The only variable that's different is the port. He swore it wasn't the port and I challenged him to test it. Reset the line, and see what happens. If it gets around the same speed, then he's right. If it doesn't, he's wrong.
The best he would do is call them and ask the bump the profile. I said I don't want a profile. If I'm going to be stuck on interleaving forever, then give me the max I can get (which we know is proven working at 42+). Reset the line and let it do it's thing.

So I come home and it's at 39DS fastpath. Where was I the other day after they fixed the line crash (caused by the lift and shift)? at 39DS fast path. Two days later as I promised them, it's interleave at 36. What's going to happen in two days from now? interleave at 36.

Salt in the wound : The so called 'back office' team from BT called, and it was just some level one rep seeing if the engineer arrived. There was no in depth conversation with someone technical as promised to me. They are going to look at the engineer notes and call me tomorrow.

I can see where this is going 'well, the engineer says the line is stable and the speed is within acceptable limits...'

[burakkucat]

Where is the emoticon smiley face for banging head on a wall...

Right here: 

The e-mail address you require is Gavin.E.Patterson@BT.com. A logical, well thought out message stating all the pertinent facts will instigate action by the high-level complaints team.

[Roxy]

Where is the emoticon smiley face for banging head on a wall...

Right here: 

The e-mail address you require is Gavin.E.Patterson@BT.com. A logical, well thought out message stating all the pertinent facts will instigate action by the high-level complaints team.

Thanks! That may come in handy.

So as you know we had the lift and shift in late November, which brought things down in terms of speed and the line crashed to the point where an engineer had to attend to fix it. They had to make a custom profile and banding in order for it to synch on that port.

I contacted Beatie and explained that it's not acceptable for them to create a further problem and then leave it. After several weeks of call backs and ring around the roise with Beatie level 1(I know right, they still make me start all over every time), they got wholesale to agree to a lift and shift.

The engineer was one we had before(one of the waffle ones, but nice none the less), whose notes clearly stated he was there for the purpose of a life and shift - he confirmed it.
He called to start the job and Beatie Wholesale refused to let him have one on the grounds that the line(on the new port) hadn't disconnected (obviously..it's on interleave) in the three weeks it was up, and that the speed difference of 10mbps (or so) isn't relevant.

The engineer even asked the guy to speak with me and he flat out refused, though peculiarly, he let me speak on speaker phone.... I explained about the port change causing issues and it's their responsibility to fix and issue they created. They wouldn't hear any of it.

The engineer was sympathetic but said he thinks I am stuck now. He even suggested I cancel my order(break contract) and order it again, to force a new port.


I guess now this is becoming a customer services issue again, and will have to have the case handler scream down the phone at BT Wholesale, to allow someone a lift and shift.
How they can send an engineer out, for a specific job and then tell him he can't do it? The lack of efficiency and resource waste is beyond me and entirely a waste of everyone's time. And I love how Wholesale and OR are making snide comments about how many engineers have visited. I have to correct them every time and remind them that half of them don't show up, 1/4 of them don't care and the 1/4 that do try are not being supported by Wholesale.

And remember what I said about they had to use a custom profile(isn't that a red flag? The previous port needed no special actions). Well when the engineer reset the line, he reset the profile. So it's likely that I will lose sync at some point and here we go again.

What else do I need to show them to convince them they've made a mistake?

Absolutely shocking.

[pedro492]

Absolutely shocking.

Kafkaesque.  BT cultivates that bureaucratic mindset of a Soviet-era government department.

[Roxy]

Absolutely shocking.

Kafkaesque.  BT cultivates that bureaucratic mindset of a Soviet-era government department.

Yes, that's very accurate..the more I think about it..


I did as burakku suggested and provided informative and to the point email to Gavin Patterson. I received a response within a day from someone at the BT (UK I assume?) technical team. Obviously it wasn't Gavin however they promised to look at this service history and get back to me. I wasn't too sure about how this would play out, as the response seemed scripted and automated. However today I got a call from a woman there, whom was English and asked me to explain it all to her. I was reserved and almost didn't want to, because in all previous instances of doing that - people realise they've bit off more then they can chew, and eventually tune out, trying to hurry me along. It's not as if the email to Gavin was missing any pertinent details.

Never the less, she vowed to take care of the situation personally and would be taken over our case from here on out.
She said she'd be back in touch later today.

Then I get this email...

"
...
Thank you for taking the time to talk to me this morning regarding your on-going broadband fault. As advised I am now your case handler so anything you need from now on please do not hesitate to contact me.
 
I have checked your line and can see you currently are getting sync speeds of around 35.7 Mbps and your broadband connection is showing solid for 3 days now and currently aren’t seeing any errors occurring.
 
I have run an address tech check and we estimate that with BT Infinity your download speed will be between 31 Mbps and 39 Mbps and your upload speed will be between 6 Mbps and 7.9 Mbps. So from the back of this result you are currently achieving what your line is capable of.
 
The engineer that attended on Saturday 13 December advised he called to arrange a lift and shift however this was rejected as the port you connected to is running within acceptable limits. With this being the case I can arrange to change your broadband package from BT Infinity 2 (up to 80meg) to BT Infinity 1 (up to 40 meg). We have different prices for these packages depending on what your require.
 
Please let me know your thoughts..."




The key thing that really burns me, is that Wholesale was trying to say that our loss of 10mbps or so, is not their concern and not enough of a reason to perform another lift and shift. However they then claim that the connection is running within acceptable limits, so there's no reason to perform a lift and shift. I thought speed didn't matter? How low does it need to drop before it matters?


Wow, just loss for words. This is the kind of thing I expect from level one Beatie off shore employees, that we've all experienced, but here I thought these people were actually going to look at the REAL data and take an interest in the problem.

[Roxy]

Hi all, this will be the last update for some time I suspect.

The conclusion is that Beatie Wholesale will not allow another Lift and Shift because the current port does not 'present the same problems as the previous one and is running efficiently.' They refuse to discuss or show what exact problems they could see with the old port versus the new one, however that lack of information and other parts of their behaviour suggest that there isn't anything fundamentally different.
Conversely, the new port exhibits all of the same issues, is less stable and has a significant loss in speed.

So in effect we've lost the battle and lost service performance along the way.


My belief is that the hardware of the line is not as good as the engineers first thought. I suspect there is aluminium in the run somewhere and other various aspects(including a bit of RFI/interference) that are causing the inherent and extenuating errors. While interleaving doesn't need to be applied to keep the line stable, I imagine DLM is forcing indefinite interleave as a cautionary measure as well as to reduce the chance my errors affect other customer's lines.

Had this been identified or explained much earlier on (as one of the Beatie technicians stated - yes someone at Beatie on shore actually called me for once), then we could have accepted the reality of the situation and then decided whether it was worth keeping the line or cancelling the service.

While I generally give benefit of the doubt to everyone in life, the experience with the OR engineers and Beatie wholesale has been exceptionally poor and they are the only ones to blame. Unfortunately I'm left with a diminished service due to their lack of knowledge, interest and empathy.

If there is a silver lining, I managed to claw back some of the costs we've spent and a little bit of reimbursement. The only saving grace is that our contract has been removed, allowing me to walk away at any point.

It's unfortunate that ISPs such as Beatie have to suffer under the crushing weight of disappointment and frustration caused by Wholesale's negligence and cowboy attitude towards the market.


Thanks to every one for their input, assistance, patience and extra curricular work for the stats and graph analysis. If nothing else, I know a lot more than I did before.
As for our plans moving forward? We'll keep the service for now, then move to Sky or TalkTalk at a later date.

[Chrysalis]

What make all this so silly, is it probably took BT more resources to fight you than to just do the work.

[HighBeta]

As for our plans moving forward? We'll keep the service for now, then move to Sky or TalkTalk at a later date.

Andrews and Arnold isp (aaisp) would be the isp to take a close look at. Zen isp is another popular choice although their  not quite at the level of aaisp.

[Dray]

I suggest you consider having a new line fitted when you move to another ISP and run them in parallel with your existing ISP for a few days to ensure you get a new pair and port.

[Roxy]

I suggest you consider having a new line fitted when you move to another ISP and run them in parallel with your existing ISP for a few days to ensure you get a new pair and port.

Could be costly, but how could that be possible - to get the same pair and port - if it's different hardware?

As for our plans moving forward? We'll keep the service for now, then move to Sky or TalkTalk at a later date.

Andrews and Arnold isp (aaisp) would be the isp to take a close look at. Zen isp is another popular choice although their  not quite at the level of aaisp.

We have heard of Zen, though not sure any of those three will be out in our area any time soon.

What make all this so silly, is it probably took BT more resources to fight you than to just do the work.

Yes, particularly my thoughts when the engineer was here telling Wholesale that he was ready to start the lift and shift, only to be told no.

[KIAB]

Just write a letter to  Sir Michael Rake, chairman of BT, at BT Group plc, 81 Newgate Street,London EC1A 7AJ.

Been have problems with my phone line,dropped connection, etc, etc, been getting nowhere with getting the problem resolved despite having a Lift & Shift which solved nothing.

So,I went straight to the top & wrote a letter to Sir Michael, within 2 weeks  a case manager had been appointed to my case, & within 4 weeks I had my new line installed & it was rerouted to another pole closer to the cabinet.

Connection is superb now.

[ih]

We have heard of Zen, though not sure any of those three will be out in our area any time soon.

They should be. Zen does not need to have an LLU presence in your exchange to be able to serve you. If you can get BT Infinity you can probably get Zen's fibre offering too and will be able to get Andrews and Arnold.

I had one customer who didn't have a telephone line for 10 days after appointment, so she went right to the top.  Thats the type of people I get peed off with, ones that aren't patient.  10 days is hardly a nightmare compared with some people who've been waiting 9 months! Best thing was, I wasn't even sympathetic to them I told them you shouldn't have done it because its not fair on other people, you're just wasting resources.

I have a friend who got BT phone + infinity installed, then a week later everything died, as if they'd taken his line and port away (migrated from Sky using their "easy switch" thing). He spent weeks on the phone to the normal BT drones who promised the earth and did nothing, and then emailed the head honcho's email after I mentioned it to him (I can't remember if it was Gavin or whoever runs Openreach these days). Either way, he got emails and phone calls from apologetic people pretty quickly and managed to get a new line/connection installed within a week, plus loads of credits and new customer bonuses that he wasn't eligible for the first time.

From memory, BT were trying to blame Sky, even though the service had migrated over to BT already.

[Chrysalis]

Its a matter of opinion I guess, I would consider a 10 day delay a massive failure unless I was given a concrete reason for it which justified the delay.

The fact you consider 10 days nothing significant seems to indicate it might be a common place issue?

[Chrysalis]

I never said it was simple, but to be blunt the customer doesnt care about how complex it is, they only care about it been installed on the quoted date given to them by the seller.

Just because you resellers accept a shoddy service from openreach it doesnt mean consumers have to, which is why when I joined BT infinity 2 years back they quoted me a 2 month wait for installation I went straight to the CEO as that was a ridiculous wait in which he agreed, and I got an expedited install in the end.  Some other providers on TBB moaned about my new date, but its not my problem they accept such poor service.

I have read all sorts of horror stories e.g. if BTw mess up on a order a CP is expected to cancel and do a new order which of course adds long delays, which I think is absolutely bonkers, yet all the CP's seem to just accept it and carry on, AAISP are now however thinking of making a stand and I read on revk's blog about him thinking about charging BTw for wasted time on having to resubmit orders, so that will be interesting when it goes to court.