Noting the comment about supply interruption compensation elsewhere I wondered if this would extend to a BT engineer error cable fault.
Open Reach turned up on the 23rd. to sort a fault complaint from one of my carpenter tenants. After he had gone, I discovered that *voice/dial tone* was missing from our land line and went through the automated system for fault reporting.
Various texts later culminated in a promise to fix by the 30th.! Luckily adsl2+ still works albeit slowly.
I complained and got ex gratia payment on the grounds that it was not a *fault* but an *error* by BT and therefore outside their (now miserly) compo scheme.
Our alarm line went out on Christmas Eve morning. I resigned myself to not getting it fixed until towards (or even *in*) the New Year. Called the fault out about 10am and at 12:30, an Openreach bloke arrived at the front door. Fixed within the hour. An all-time record, given that we've waited 3 and 4 days before now.
He said they weren't very busy, which astonished me, given the howling gale we'd had over the previous 24 hours.
Oh! Interesting. I think they care more about business lines.
Getting them to admit responsibility on flaky domestic overheads might be uphill.
After the last *storm outage* I removed some of the tree branches seen to be in contact with the multicore. In one place the outer insulation was abraded exposing the twisted pairs. No conductors visible but, up a double extending ladder and with no magnifying glass, who can say...
BT's main get out is giving a free divert to another number (mobile or land line), accept that and you wave goodbye to any compensation. Having said that I think compensation with Standard Care on a residential line isn't very much and won't kick in for 4 working days after you report the fault anyway.
I guess he would be one of the bods covering the Prompt Care or Total Care or Critical Care or Priority Fault Repair Service levels(*). No Standard Care residential and business repairs would have been scheduled and without an "appointment" trying to sort them out in the abscence of higher priority faults could be pretty fruitless with people away or not wanting a BT engineer joining the family get together...
Presumably he can see via the fault tracking system a new fault appear and the chances are you are about if you have only just reported it...
(*) Residential lines see section 8. This is residential lines, business lines have different sevice levels, their Standard Care is
*much* better for a start.
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Standard Care on a residential line is pretty poor these days if a fault it takes out your voice and internet. Should be fixed by midnight 3 *real working days* after the day you report it. Reports after 2100 on a working day or any other time get logged as 0800 the next working day. So after 2100 on a Friday before a bank holiday weekend the fault enters the system 0800 Tuesday to be repaired by midnight Friday. A week without service...
On the other hand:
"Totalcare - operates between 7am and 9pm on weekdays and between 8am and 6pm at all other times. We aim to repair a fault within 24 hours of you reporting it to us."
This costs extra of course, £4.00 inc VAT/month, but note that last sentance, repair chap could be down holes/up poles on Christmas Day. If your family is anything like mine lack of internet is likely to turn 'em into a lynch mob, well worth £4/month. B-)
Prompt Care sits between the Standard Care and Total Care no Sunday or Bank/Public Holiday cover same after 2100 into next working day. Faults should be repaired bymidnight of the next working day inc Saturday. This service level is £1.40 inc VAT/month.
Dave has pointed out an opportunity for call diversion but the only land line call I need to make is to pass on my card number to confirm a hotel booking. It'll wait:-)
Looking over the shoulder of an engineer; into the open door of a street cabinet at the mares nest of multi-coloured wires, I am amazed any of it ever works.
I suspect a lot of fault correction involves swopping lines to different pairs. Not checking if a pair is already in use comes into bungling for sure. I am rather hoping that the fix will improve my adsl2+ speed as I think 1.9 meg. at less than 1 mile from the exchange is piss poor.
Thanks a zillion for this. I shall be ordering it as soon as it seems likely that someone at BT might pay any attention (IOW, after the Xmas slowdown...)
1) Dump all wired phones in the house except one - useful during a power outage.
2) Dump all present phone cabling in the house, and have a new phone cable run to wherever you have the one remaining wired phone, mentioned in (1) above.
3) If you can manage it, have your router located at or near the master socket connected with a second new phone cable. From the router, run cat5 to your computers.
4) Ensure that the bell wires in the new cables mentioned in (2) and (3) are *not* connected at the master socket.
5) Buy a set of wireless phones to use around the house. The base unit will need to be near the router.
We did essentially all of the above [1] and now have 6.976Mbps at rather more than a mile from the exchange.
[1] except that our router and base unit are in a room adjacent to rather than at the master socket.
It's served me well on a couple of occasions. Although last time the Indian call centre had no idea what it was....
Them: "Yes, sir, an engineer will be with you before the weekend". (on Tuesday) Me: "But I have TotalCare" Them: "Yes, sir, an engineer will be with you before the weekend". Me: "I have TotalCare and I pay extra for fast repairs". Them: "Yes, sir, an engineer will be with you before the weekend". Me: "Look, TotalCare gets me a faster repair than that. Please talk to your supervisor" Them: "But sir, we will be fast, an engineer will be with you before the weekend". Me: "Please talk to your supervisor now or I will put in a complaint" Them: "Please wait, sir" (long pause) Them: "Yes sir, I see you have TotalCare. An engineer will call you soon"
The engineer did call me within 30 minutes (10 p.m.) and apologised. He said he could come out that night but wouldn't be able to do much as he wasn't allowed to climb ladders in the dark. I was happy for him to come at 8.30 a.m. next day; in fact he arrived at 8.15, did comprehensive repairs to the dropwire terminations (new joints, new box) and was fijnished within 45 minutes.
Yes seen them trying to find a decent pair that works. Seems that when the cables are pulled in some a pulled more then what they might be and sometimes they short out to adjacent pairs etc.
Once seen them swap a pair over out in the sticks four times before they found one that worked among mutterings that Bombay had the relevant drawings and they couldn't retrieve them;!...
Yes ally cable perhaps?..
Unless the cable routes differently to how you think it does?..
I'm more than a bit curious about the overhead connections here. We are close to the end of a rural circuit; with two others about 400m further on.
What appears to be a single multicore terminates in a lollipop junction on the pole across the lane. From there connections go off to the sewage pumping station, my sister's house, two carpentry workshops and a smaller multicore off down the lane. Our connection comes back as twin? from two poles further away where there is a small junction box.
Why can't I have a feed from the nearby junction? Probably 300m less copper!
Who knows. Marconi did some work putting in extra poles here about 15 years ago. They may have freshened up the cables at the same time.
Not the last but one time. I held the ladder and opened the gates so he could reach the poles. I didn't bother the last bloke 'cos it wasn't my line. Mk 1 eyeball tells me that it doesn't come from the nearest pole:-(
What do you mean by "suppressor"? Are you talking about your microfilter that you plug into each phone socket?
Doing all I described took us from ~3.5Mbps to the higher figure I reported. If your phones are, I dunno, 15 years old or less, AIUI you don't need a bell wire anyway. See e.g. here:
and see the links referred to in the first post or two.
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