Archived on 6/5/2022

Anyone else on BT lost their internet connection? UPDATE - local area broadband issue now fixed

oakr
8 Apr '20

My connection is down and when I called it says there is a major fault in the area, which I assume might affect people with other providers also.

However I’ve had issues for the past 2 months and my service with them is due to cancel on a week or 2, so am wondering if they have cancelled it early by mistake or if this is genuine.

Pauline
8 Apr '20

I lost mine for a bit (TalkTalk) but it has just came back on and there were open reach guys working just outside mine during this time as I saw them when I took the bin out 20mins or so ago, hopefully you are back on now x

Foresthillnick
8 Apr '20

BT fiber going fine here.

ChrisR
8 Apr '20

I’m with Talk Talk on basic broadband/ADSL which had been fine until Sunday or Monday evening (can’t remember which!) but since then the connection has been frequently dropping out and always around midnight when it seems to be out for at least a couple of hours. The Talk Talk health check recognises my internet is disconnecting, but despite following all their suggestions nothing has fixed it. Luckily I have unlimited data on my mobile so can reconnect using that as a hotspot to save trying to contact Talk Talk. However touch wood it seems to have been ok so far today.

Hope you get it sorted for the remainder of your contract!

oakr
8 Apr '20

Thanks everyone- we are still offline, will give the router a restart. The last 2 months with BT have been a nightmare, the only salvation being they had to let me out of my contract as the connection speed was so under what it was meant to be for over 30 days. I’ll never sign up with them again though after the hoops I have had to go through.

I am meant to return a router to them they send for me to try, but not sure if I it is wise to take that to the post office (they insist you get proof of sending).

oakr
8 Apr '20

…and we are now back online - the voice message said there was a major broadband issue in the area which is now fixed so if anyone else had issues they should be resolved now.

Londondrz
12 Apr '20

BT are odd. We had major issues when we moved. It would go down constantly and with 2 of us working from home this became intolerable. Anyway, fast forward a year and many many many arguments later we now have up to 80Meg down and 20meg up. Down averages 75Meg. What I find amusing is that BT have told us it is physically impossible for us to achieve these speeds and yet, when they test them, that is what we get. :roll_eyes:

Foresthillnick
13 Apr '20

That must be fiber surely with those speeds?

Londondrz
13 Apr '20

BT tell me absolutely not. They have not installed it. Personally I find if you are really nice to the Openreach people who come to your house many times because BT doesn’t know it’s arse from its elbow, you give them tea and lunch, your speeds reach top levels!!! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Just saying!

NorthernMatt
13 Apr '20

Just checking uSwitch and you can get 67mbps near FOH Sainsbury’s https://www.uswitch.com/broadband/postcode_checker/results/?postcode=SE23%203HF

In my experience you can get slightly varying fibre speeds over Openreach depending on your ISP. It’s all down to how each ISP manages the traffic over their network. To

Londondrz
13 Apr '20

Just to clarify, I am in the wilds of Norfolk. Normally Courier Pigeon don’t even make it. :grin:

oakr
13 Apr '20

For me I had a nice chat with the engineer (he didn’t want tea though! \ this was all pre-lockdown \ social distancing in Feb). After his visit though my speed went from 20Mpbs to 10…it’s now back up to 20.

I would originally have stayed with BT as it would have been easier if they had just put me on the lower package to reflect the speeds I was getting. By the end I’d decided to leave as they had kept closing the fault as resolved.

When I called to cancel, they then tried to tell me off for not contacting the engineer team when I’d always contact the only people who had contacted me and asked for it to be escalated. I asked how would I know to call someone if no-one told me, they said tough and I could not cancel until they have made 3 attempts to fix it which I’d not allowed them - the whole thing was painful beyond belief, so many emails and calls - it was ridiculous. They sent me a new router which changed nothing.

The day after they agreed to cancel the contract I mysteriously started getting scam calls about my BT Broadband issues and how they’d found the issue etc etc people were hacking into my router blah blah - they did have some details.

In fairness the line was pretty much always stable but it will be a long time before I ever sign up with them again if ever - I tried to be reasonable at the start (I started in IT support so I know there are certain hoops to go through) but the way the acted and made it so hard to try to get it resolved. They also said they’d credit me back some of the monthly fee which they have not done.

Anyway much bigger things to worry about now but they actually lost me through their customer service - I know I’ll probably get the same speeds with my next provider - will know next week!

Londondrz
14 Apr '20

Sadly we can have BT, and that’s it. It took me a year to get sorted. In the end we got our broadband speed to where it is now and 3 months free BT.

The only thing I can add to this is to log every call, the time, who you spoke to and what the call entailed.

And be prepared for the long haul!!

In the end, armed with lots of notes I was able to demonstrate BT were at fault, hence the money back.

Oh, and a letter to the Chairman may have helped.

Foresthillnick
14 Apr '20

I had massive issues with BT too - Kafkaesque is the only way to describe it. Incompetence on an industrial scale but I emailed the “chairman” (actually just goes to executive complaints!) and got it sorted but it was very painful…

anon5422159
14 Apr '20

I’m still waiting for the “automatic compensation” I was promised two months ago after a nightmarish BT/OpenReach installation in my new house. Broken promises, missed engineer visit, massive delays, wasted time on the phone chasing them.

BT/OpenReach behave like they’re still an unaccountable nationalised monopoly (which they are in all areas that Virgin haven’t yet reached).

One of the advantages of home broadband via 5G is that we’ll no longer be reliant on OpenReach physical infrastructure.