End of my Tether with Broadband fault at the excha...

Question

Evening All,
I've reached the end of the line it seems with BT technical support and Im now heading for a deadlock situation. Heres a bit of background from the past 7 weeks or so to try and outline the problem I've got, whether it inspires any suggestions from the community as to how to proceed or potentially makes others aware of the tragic failings of this massive organisation in the semi rural areas across the country.
Had a new line installed as part of home move order which was placed 3 weeks in advance of our move. The engineer attended on the 31st July 2013 to install our phone line. We had a new line from the telegraph pole in the street wired directly to a newly installed socket in our living room. This is the only socket in the house. Unfortunately, the phone line did not work for calls, and I had to raise a fault with BT immediately. By the 5th August we had a working phoneline after finding several faults on what was a newly installed and tested line. Good work engineer #1. I then phoned BT back to say I wanted the broadband component of the homemove order fulfilling. I was told that I would need to phone again to get this once the phone line was installed as they couldnt raise the broadband order against a line which didnt yet exist. I found this slightly frustrating but liveable as I was told it would only be 48 hours from placing the order to having the service activated.
I phoned BT again on the 9th because my broadband had still not been activated. I was told the order had an error and had not been placed. My order was then expedited and filled on the 10th to activate my services. By this point I thought “great” as it seemed the ordeal was over.
Once the connection was enabled, I noticed the speed was very slow to use. My homehub indicated a sync speed to the exchange of 8mbit downstream and 0.45mbit upstream. After the first 3 days had passed and the line training should have been complete I ran the BT wholesale speed test to reveal my line had a 2mbit profile assigned to it. I phoned BT again who informed me of the problem and offered to reset the IP profile which would then lead up to the full line potential within another few days. For a period of 3-4 days this produced results at a maximum of about 6.5mbit, even though my sync speed to the exchange still showed 8mbit downstream. At this point it seemed to be resolved as much as it would so I considered closing the fault out. The same evening I noticed the speeds started degrading, to the point where the connection was completely unusable (a few kbit). I could not even ping a basic site.
I phoned BT again and they offered to send an engineer once I had convinced them of my competence to plug a router, microfilter and phone into the only socket in the house. The engineer turned up, completed the checks within the property and found the line to be fine in terms of noise/gain/etc etc. He surmised that the problem was within the exchange and bounced the issue back to wholesale. I was not informed of the results and BT helpfully offered to close out the fault because no fault was found. This is even though my connection was still fully useless.
I then phoned BT several more times going through the same infuriating conversations. Another engineer was produced. He did the same again.
We then repeat this same process a few more times. Sometimes the connection worked between engineer visits, sometimes it did not. However the same fault emerges over the course of a couple of days and we start the loop again.
I am now in the lap of the UK based resolutions team in Newcastle. However, they are not getting anywhere with BT wholesale who are still not recognising and resolving the exchange based fault. The really frustrating thing is that this is not just affecting myself. There are at least 7 other customers in the same exchange complaining of the same fault. BT have not recognised these may all be related and have been sending engineers out the tackle the individual problems of us incompetent customers setting up our routers incorrectly. However this is now turning out not to be the problem, and it is in fact the exchange. But BT broadband aren't getting anywhere with wholesale who seem to be refusing/unwilling/incapable to accept that the fault is within the network.
I am 7 weeks into this fault and hence heading for the stage where I will be requesting a deadlock letter from BT to take to the ombudsman. I have no ADSL alternatives at the exchange, being in a semi-rural area and BT is the only supplier in the area. Basically, I can either stick with BT on a connection which works intermittently and occasionally, or look at a more expensive laggy satellite system. However, this seems a tad unfair as I have plenty of neighbours enjoying the 8mbit max speeds in the area. Also, the exchange is under consideration for fibre upgrade so others in the area will be enjoying even more modern age tech, the unlucky few will still be getting ignored by BT as it suppose its difficult to fix all of the problems so if a few customers are left out, who cares?
I have requested multiple times that someone pick up this issue and own it to resolution because we, the BT customers, are paying for the incompetence of the whole organisation to resolve faults in a fair and reasonable time scale in a number of engineer visits befitting the problem. This seems to be falling in deaf ears. I have requested multiple times that the issue be escalated to avoid going round the same loop. That seems to fall of deaf ears also. The same team of BT resolution personnel are bouncing the same issue round and round to try and stop the issue escalating. One person told me the issue would be passed onto the tier 2 manager but that was a week ago and I've since heard nothing more.
I've guestimated that I've had at least 7 engineer visits to either the property or exchange on behalf of my fault. I know of 7 other people in the same boat (I know this because our local post office has a list of known broadband “problem” customers) who will have arguable had a similar number of engineer visits over the course of their faults or complaints. So I would round up to 50 visits to the one fault which hasn't fixed it. Thats at least £5000 wasted, going on BT's charge to customers for a wasted engineer visit at £99.
I feel its a very sad situation that the small percentage of “difficult” problems such as mine are being kept under wraps in order to conceal the multiple failings of this thoroughly salami sliced organisation which Im sure presented plenty of opportunities for statistics to become lost. Not to mention glorious overheads of multiple engineer visits.
So there it is, I have 7 days before the 8 weeks are up and I involve the ombudsman. I have got no where with BT on any front and my fault is still being thoroughly contained by the faults team as they are completely unwilling to raise a serious complaint about the handling of the case while the faults is still existing. A very clever trick which I presume waits for the satisfied customer to develop before receiving feedback on their wonderful experience.
So if anyone reading this happens to be a BT employee/share holder/director feel free to offer up suggestions on how to progress this anywhere. And anyone else reading this – if there is any alternative provider for services in your area, I would use them. BT will not help.
Apologies for the increasing sarcastic tone but reliving the situation in word form is even more laughable as a state in the year 2013. I had broadband 10 years ago that was faster and more stable.
Kind regards
Matt
Kirkby-in-Furness
PS - had to connect to an adjacent neighbours bt hotspot as a guest to post this!  Took more than 1 hours to load the community.bt.com page

Answer 1

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