cryptogirl (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
cryptogirl) wrote2011-01-17 08:17 pm
cryptogirl) wrote2011-01-17 08:17 pm
Why BT are still fail, #1 in a series
Our net problems continue apace, at the rate of one a day; ranging from high ping through to the cutting out from incoming calls and just plain outages where the router isn't giving us any helpful orange lights of death. Having provided all the technical info an IT-infused chick can, BT on Twitter suggested yet another speedtest, then decided out of the blue it was the Hub that was faulty, and had the gall to say my current one was out of warranty and a new one would be £50.
Readers might remember I spoke to a stupid man in Enniskillen who didn't know his WEP from his WPA (that's bad) and who bizarrely thought that due to different surnames I must be the proud single 27-year-old mother of a 31-year-old man (yes, that was WTF). Anyway, he sent out a new black Home Hub for nothing. We've had it barely 4 months.
When I pointed this out to BT they replied that no, the warranty counted from when they first sent me a Hub, back in 2008 when we moved into Spontaneity, therefore the Hub was out of warranty, and the Enniskillen man shouldn't have sent the new Hub out for free, therefore if I wanted a replacement which they were suggesting it would be £50. Of course, if I'm going to spend £50 on a router it's probably going to be on some decent Draytek kit and not on Thomson-Alcatel's retarded offspring in Apple-ripoff plastic. Trufax. Plus, these outages affect the telly too; no internet equals no On Demand content, and bizarrely no PVR recording. Because you need the internet to record TV, right? In other words, we're not getting what we pay for.
Thus it was that I dialled 151 to report a line fault, and an apologetic man named Steve was very apologetic about the noisy line and net cutouts. He asked me if I'd tried all the steps suggested by the previous eejits. I promptly rattled off the list, including detailed descriptions of using the BT engineers' own 17070 number to do a quiet line test, and removing the bottom half of the master socket, using the test socket underneath and looking for dodgy wiring. Then he asked me what kind of socket I had, whether it was 'the one where the bottom half comes off', and if I'd seen a socket inside on the right and tried that as it connects straight to the exchange. So, basically what I'd just told him, repeated to me with extra patronising. This is what I hate about dealing with BT. As it is, I'm getting an engineer coming round on Wednesday 'sometime between 1 and 6', and he read the Riot Act at me about how I'll be charged £130 if there's no fault or it's a fault but not in BT's bit. Shall keep you posted on the extent of fail of the visit.
But an unrelated tale makes me bury my head in my hands and weep. Today Mum called me (which naturally disconnected the broadband requiring a Hub restart), and she had worrying news. She had got one of those scam calls from India claiming she had a virus and wanting to charge money to remove it, and she sensibly told them where to go. A while later the internet failed, with a popup from the taskbar Mum failed to write down (possible driver failure was my guess), and Ubuntu plaintively searching for networks and asking for the network key over and over. (It does this. I don't know why, but I sure as hell know more than BT support, who won't deal with anyone not on a Windows box. Just tell them you don't have a 'Start' button and watch them break down.)
Mum decided to call BT support and check it wasn't some random exchange failure. She mentioned the scam call as an FYI, and asked out of interest if a scammer like that could possibly get into the laptop and mess about with the net. Apparently the man on the phone was very concerned, said yes they could, and that she ought to disconnect all Ethernet cables from the router and her PC, and not use broadband for at least an hour.
...I'm going to leave you mulling that point over there. A 'fully trained' BT support man thinks that an Ubuntu machine can be rendered useless by a wifey in Bangalore with Networking For Dummies. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO DEAL WITH.
So, yeah, that was my evening in a nutshell. 'Moff to look at decent routers methinks...
Readers might remember I spoke to a stupid man in Enniskillen who didn't know his WEP from his WPA (that's bad) and who bizarrely thought that due to different surnames I must be the proud single 27-year-old mother of a 31-year-old man (yes, that was WTF). Anyway, he sent out a new black Home Hub for nothing. We've had it barely 4 months.
When I pointed this out to BT they replied that no, the warranty counted from when they first sent me a Hub, back in 2008 when we moved into Spontaneity, therefore the Hub was out of warranty, and the Enniskillen man shouldn't have sent the new Hub out for free, therefore if I wanted a replacement which they were suggesting it would be £50. Of course, if I'm going to spend £50 on a router it's probably going to be on some decent Draytek kit and not on Thomson-Alcatel's retarded offspring in Apple-ripoff plastic. Trufax. Plus, these outages affect the telly too; no internet equals no On Demand content, and bizarrely no PVR recording. Because you need the internet to record TV, right? In other words, we're not getting what we pay for.
Thus it was that I dialled 151 to report a line fault, and an apologetic man named Steve was very apologetic about the noisy line and net cutouts. He asked me if I'd tried all the steps suggested by the previous eejits. I promptly rattled off the list, including detailed descriptions of using the BT engineers' own 17070 number to do a quiet line test, and removing the bottom half of the master socket, using the test socket underneath and looking for dodgy wiring. Then he asked me what kind of socket I had, whether it was 'the one where the bottom half comes off', and if I'd seen a socket inside on the right and tried that as it connects straight to the exchange. So, basically what I'd just told him, repeated to me with extra patronising. This is what I hate about dealing with BT. As it is, I'm getting an engineer coming round on Wednesday 'sometime between 1 and 6', and he read the Riot Act at me about how I'll be charged £130 if there's no fault or it's a fault but not in BT's bit. Shall keep you posted on the extent of fail of the visit.
But an unrelated tale makes me bury my head in my hands and weep. Today Mum called me (which naturally disconnected the broadband requiring a Hub restart), and she had worrying news. She had got one of those scam calls from India claiming she had a virus and wanting to charge money to remove it, and she sensibly told them where to go. A while later the internet failed, with a popup from the taskbar Mum failed to write down (possible driver failure was my guess), and Ubuntu plaintively searching for networks and asking for the network key over and over. (It does this. I don't know why, but I sure as hell know more than BT support, who won't deal with anyone not on a Windows box. Just tell them you don't have a 'Start' button and watch them break down.)
Mum decided to call BT support and check it wasn't some random exchange failure. She mentioned the scam call as an FYI, and asked out of interest if a scammer like that could possibly get into the laptop and mess about with the net. Apparently the man on the phone was very concerned, said yes they could, and that she ought to disconnect all Ethernet cables from the router and her PC, and not use broadband for at least an hour.
...I'm going to leave you mulling that point over there. A 'fully trained' BT support man thinks that an Ubuntu machine can be rendered useless by a wifey in Bangalore with Networking For Dummies. THIS IS WHAT I HAVE TO DEAL WITH.
So, yeah, that was my evening in a nutshell. 'Moff to look at decent routers methinks...
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Switching to Virgin. Only way to get away from their horrendous tech support.
(Incidentally, the 'no start bar' line gets 'we only support Microsoft Windows' fail... Even when I'm reporting a line fault.)
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I thought even Windows didn't have a start button any more. Didn't Vista replace it with a cryptic shinything?
I'm half convinced your mum's BT support bloke was taking the piss. He didn't also suggest dunking the laptop in Domestos, by any chance? The more cynical half of me realises that, yes, that really is what passes for technical knowledge in BT's B2C support department.
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If you're after technical clue, AAISP are the winners, general customer service competence gives you Zen, Idnet, large fast and not too shit leads you to Be/O2. Fast and cheap virgin. Personally I buy one line from Idnet and another from Virgin, that way making the internet come back after internet fail involves one route command on the router. It also means I still get to use the internet when I'm trying and failing to set up native IPv6 (idnet side).
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tbh I'd use AAISP for phone if you've got them for broadband. They allow you to send anyone who doesn't display caller ID to an endless set of looped messages allowing the spammers to waste their time.
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