At my wits end re Saga of erratic Broadband connec...

Question

I guess there are many people with connection speed problems but are they general or related to local exchanges or what.
I have been a customer of BT Broadband based in Tavistock Devon, for 2 years or more and during this time my connection speed has been consistently reliable and fast.  It started of at around 7.5Mb and increased last year to 14 Mb as they switched me to a faster link at the exchange and I have consistently achieved those speeds until 14th April 2012 when after losing web access totally and being put through the test hoops by the BT support people in India, it was agreed that my Home Hub 2 had failed.  I could only finally prove this by connecting up an old Netgear hub I had and proving that everything was then OK, despite the fact that I kept telling them that everything had worked satisfactorily for two years and had only just gone wrong.  They seem fixated on - either the amber light comes on the router - in which case it's the line, or no amber light shows on the router in which case it's a wireless fault and it's down to you the user to fix it.
They agreed to send me a new hub and after 3 days (despite them promising it would be a next day delivery) I recieved a new Home Hub 3 which I duly connected up and everything seemed OK.  However, my wife uses a DS connected over the internet to play online with friends around the world.  The problem is this game will only work on a hub with WEP security set ( It doesn't like WPA or WPA2) so I have had the previous router set to WEP and everything has worked OK.  When I try this on the Home Hub3, the game will not work and having spoken to Nintendo, they cannot explain why that would be.  BT also cannot explain why it would be different with HH3 and decided to send out an engineer to me but to also ship me a brand new Home Hub 2.  The engineer duly came out and checked my internal connections, checked the line between my house and the exchange and pronounced everything in order.  I had to agree on that day running my normal BB Max speedtest, I was getting nearer 10Mb and assumed that as I had switched routers there would maybe be a learning curve again and the speed would get back up to full speed after a few days.
As everything seemed to be working apart from the DS, I assumed that I would be able to replace the HH3 with the HH2 when it arrived and everything would then be back to normal.  Well, it wasn't and after a few days the speed dropped back to almost zero.  Over the next couple of days the speed jumped around from between 436Kb to 4Mb but nowhere near the 14 Mb I had been getting.
So back on the phone to India, and having gone through all the basic tests yet again, they agreed to send an engineer out who "understood" about wireless as they thought this would be more helpful.  The engineer was booked for 26th April and over the ensuing days, the connection speed bounced about from less than 1 Meg and up to 14Meg.  I had checked my home wireless network, paying paricular attention to the wireless signal strength using InSSIDER which shows the amplitude of the wireless signal from any router in the vicinity.  One thing I noticed was that th HH3 signal was almost as weak as my neighbours HH2 and also seemed to be quite erratic.  I tried changing channels which did improve it a bit. On the 25th April in the afternoon, I lost my telephone connection for about 15 minutes and then amazingly, the internet connection speed jumped up to 14 - 15Mb almost immediately.  I was looking forward to the Open Reach engineer visiting hoping he would be able to determine what was wrong.  He arrived at 8:15 on the morning and I first asked him whether anything had been changed at the exchange end yesterday as things had now seemed to be back to how they had been originally.  He said, I don't know, I'm not based at the exchange but from what you describe it could be a "cut and move" or some similar term, I can't remember exactly, but he implied that they may have moved my connection to a different port in the exchange.
We then went upstairs where I have all my system and where the line comes up from the master socket downstairs by the street entrance.  He then asked me how many devices I had connected to the HH3 router.  At that moment I only had my own desktop and my wife's laptop.  He asked how many devices I usually have connected to the router and I went through a list - 1 Desktop PC , 2 Laptops, A PS3, a Nintendo Wii, a nintendo DSiXL, A Humax PVR, an Epson printer and finally my daughters Android phone when she was visiting.  I made it clear that not all theses devices would be accessing the internet at once, and at most I might have three or four devices connected at the same time.  Well that's what your problem is, he said, you can't connect more than 3 or 4 devices to this router!  Who says I asked,  I just did he replied.  Yes I know that but where are you getting that information from?  Well you can't just connect loads of devices to the router, it's like telephone extensions, you can't just connect any number of phones, there's a limit to how many the router will take.  I was astounded by this comment and said so.  He seemed to know nothing about wireless networks and when I said that I had used similar set-ups in an office environment, he said well you only have a domestic router and that has a limit to the number of devices.  I said, but BT offer the same router to their Business customers.  He was really aggresive and patronising and I was becoming very frustrated by his attitude so I said maybe he had better do his tests and then leave.  At this he just said, I don't have to put up with this, and stomped out of my home without doung anything.
On 3rd May the Home Hub 2 arrived which I then connected up and everything seemd to work OK.  The connection speed seemed to be more or less stable at around 14Mb, so I concluded that something had been done at the exchange which had corrected the fault.  This was later confirmed when I spoke to the Indian support people again who recorded that there had been a line fault (low voltage on the line) which would have explained why my connection was erratic.  This had been corrected on 26th April.  I had contacted India again to complain about the way I had been dealt with and why it had taken so long to correct the problem.  They said they would arrange for a rebate on my Broadband rental as I had lost my service and I asked them also to look at compensating me for the trouble I had been put to trying to find the cause which they continually treated as a "wireless connection fault".
They said they couldn't deal with that so they transferred me to the "Customer Service" department who then proceeded to ask me to phone back in few days, when the fault might be cleared.  I was at a complete loss as to what they were talking about, so just gave up.  Later I made a complaint about the Open Reach engineer and the loss of my time, on the BT website complaints form and yesterday I got an answer back saying that it sounded like a wireless fault and I should refer to their self help guide on the web.  This despite me telling them that the fault had been an exchange fault and nothing to do with wireless and had been working satisfactorily for the last two years.  Does'nt anybody at BT support listen to or read complaints properly? I have replied to that email accordingly, but I am now at my wits end because today the connection speed has been bouncing about from less than 1Mb up to a maximum of 4Mb again and I just don't know what to do.
Is there anybody at BT who is prepared to take ownership of this problem and actually resolve it?  I heard on the news that BT's sales were down 4%.  Mr BT Chairman, have you thought that it might be something to do with the level of service you are providing to your customers?  I for one will be considering very carefully whether I renew my contract with you.  Any commecnts or suggestions would be very gratelfully received.  Paul Burton
Solved!
Go to Solution.

Answer 1

ok then it is back to basic  tests  if you can go through all the notes  we can try and find your connection problems 
Here are some help pages done by CL Keith http://www.btinternet.com/~cbeddoe/speed/Speed.html
also post your full hub stats details shown in this link http://www.btinternet.com/~cbeddoe/others/adslstats.html
Can you also post the full results fromBT Speedtest speedtester.bt.com  
Have you tried connecting to the test socket at the rear of the master socket
Have you tried the quiet line test? - dial 17070 option 2 - should hear nothing - best done with a corded phone. if cordless phone you may hear a 'dull hum' which is normal
This is a customer to customer self help forum the only BT presence here are the forum moderators
If you want to say thanks for a helpful answer,please click on the Ratings star on the left-hand side If the reply answers your question then please mark as ’Mark as Accepted Solution’