BT Broadband help desk

[Nige005]

Originally Posted by Dibby

A quick and easy fix I found for slow speeds is to try replacing the master socket in the house. It costs about a fiver off the net and there's 2 wires inside a phone socket. My speed went from 500k to 2meg from lowering the resistance in the corroded connectors in the master socket. Technically, it's BTs property and you should keep the original in case they ask questions.


Best of all, ditch BT internet all together, I don't know why people still use them for their ISP - maybe the nice smiley man and his wife on the advert convinced you. Get shot of them and use a decent ISP like ADSL24, UKFSN, Be*, Zen, Aquiss. Steer well clear of the big McDonalds flavour internet: BT, AOL and Tiscali, they are a nightmare to deal with and charge far too much for what you get

Hi Dibby, did this earlier following your advice and things went well for a while and then the odd drop in line speed occurred but usually only for short periods. When the last episode happened and dropped to 420ish for three days I'd had enough. The complaint seemed to have worked.....

BT was a good deal at the time, not so sure now. Was considering the Post Office option, have heard good reports on this.

One question. I have a BB 'Phone ( not a computer phone but a normal one with it's own number that works through BB ) that I use a lot. Do other ISP's support this ??

[rafe005]

I'm sticking with mobile internet. Just as fast (in my area)and never had a single issue!

[Dibby]

Originally Posted by Nige005

One question. I have a BB 'Phone ( not a computer phone but a normal one with it's own number that works through BB ) that I use a lot. Do other ISP's support this ??

Never used a BB phone so I don't know much about them, it must be a computer phone in disguise that talks to the router so when people ring the number the router interrupts it and sends the call to the phone handset. Otherwise it'll be a plain old house phone needlessly plugged into the router. Try unplugging the router, plug a normal house phone directly into the line and ringing the same number if it rings you'll be able to keep the number. Best to ring BT (if you can get hold of them), they'll know for sure.

BT have a very smart marketing outfit so their packages always looks like a good deal on the outside but hidden in the smallprint you'll probably be tied in to a 12 month contract and have certain traffic throttled down to less than 512k even if you're lucky enough to sync at 8meg. Have you gone through your usage limits and BT are throttling all your traffic?

Have a look at this page and see if your exchange is overloaded: Exchange Status Checker
Or this page to see what products have been installed in your exchange if you want to swap: Samknows Broadband - Exchange Search

[Nige005]

Originally Posted by Dibby

Never used a BB phone so I don't know much about them, it must be a computer phone in disguise that talks to the router so when people ring the number the router interrupts it and sends the call to the phone handset. Otherwise it'll be a plain old house phone needlessly plugged into the router. Try unplugging the router, plug a normal house phone directly into the line and ringing the same number if it rings you'll be able to keep the number. Best to ring BT (if you can get hold of them), they'll know for sure.

BT have a very smart marketing outfit so their packages always looks like a good deal on the outside but hidden in the smallprint you'll probably be tied in to a 12 month contract and have certain traffic throttled down to less than 512k even if you're lucky enough to sync at 8meg. Have you gone through your usage limits and BT are throttling all your traffic?

Have a look at this page and see if your exchange is overloaded: Exchange Status Checker
Or this page to see what products have been installed in your exchange if you want to swap: Samknows Broadband - Exchange Search

The 'phone is through the router and is a separate entity altogether, has it's own number, a BB one, although you can opt for a normal number. For example, my mate in East Yorkshire has an Aberdeen number. It's a very good system, works well and saves me loadsa money, most of my calls are to overseas numbers and it has cut these costs tremendously, I can thoroughly recommend this to anyone who makes a lot of international calls, especially to mobiles. Found it hard to track down the prices for calls, spent hours on yet another cruddy BT website and couldn't find out exactly what the costs were. However the first bill revealed all, for instance, saving over 30 pence a minute to a Cyprus mobile.

No, not exceeding my download, generally just a browser, not a downloader of any big files. Either this month or next they are also scrapping the download limit so it becomes a pretty fair deal. The only snag is that I have found the service a bit iffy, complete failure once since last November and a few issues with the speed. Just done a check, and I know that these speedcheckers are not really giving you the true speed, nonetheless they do serve as a day to day comparison so you have an idea of what's going on. One hour ago downloaded at 1.888 and up at 357, so as I'm only paying for a 2mb service I'm very happy with this. I think the problem last week was down to a fault which for some reason they don't want to admit to.

Thanks for the links, I'll have a look later, the "Sam " one does sounds familiar though.

Cheers.

[corbo]

BT Helpdesk is up there with Tiscalli for uselessness.

A lot of these helpdesks pay people peanuts to read scripts...you can't expect them to know anything really.

[Nev]

Originally Posted by Nige005

T I can thoroughly recommend this to anyone who makes a lot of international calls, especially to mobiles. Found it hard to track down the prices for calls, spent hours on yet another cruddy BT website and couldn't find out exactly what the costs were. However the first bill revealed all, for instance, saving over 30 pence a minute to a Cyprus mobile.

VOIP phones that plug into the router are just another pain-in-the-****
thing to go wrong.

I use jajah. Much easier and way more flexible.
(Works from mobiles too.

[Nige005]

Originally Posted by Nev

VOIP phones that plug into the router are just another pain-in-the-****
thing to go wrong.

I use jajah. Much easier and way more flexible.
(Works from mobiles too.

Mine works well Nev, always has. The quality is good and the price is right, the money I've saved more than pays for the whole BB bill.

However, please do tell us more about jahjah. What is it ? Hope it's not one of these call redirect things like World Calls etc, these do not work out well for calling some international mobiles, Cyprus in my case.

[corbo]

Originally Posted by Dibby

Technically, it's BTs property and you should keep the original in case they ask questions.

It depends where the fault is. I was once charged £160 by BT for a fault in the master socket because they claimed the BACK half of the socket is theirs but the FRONT half is mine, and therefore my problem.

Fourtunately BT Openreach can only talk to the ISP, not me, and they billed the ISP for it. I refused to pay and the ISP gave in and said they would foot the bill for me. The ISP is Eclipse, they are pretty good all round.

[Dibby]

Woah! £160!!! It's a £5 component off the net, those BT boys know how to make money.

Good job you didn't have to pay in the end

[andyalfagtv]

I agree with CampFreddie, foreign call centres are useless, and I'm not racist either, because my wife is from Asia.
I wonder about the "big boys" - BT, AOL, Tiscali, because they seem to have a good reputation and standing.
AOL were sh?te with me when I changed to broadband, because they didn't change the free line correctly.
It may be an idea to post the most efficient providers on this forum.

[rafe005]

I was with Eclipse, I moved house 3 weeks before my first 12 month contract was up (was happy to this point) and they tried to charge me £70 to cancel the contract and then I would have had to start a new 12 month contract....So I told them to go jump

[Dibby]

Originally Posted by andyalfagtv

I agree with CampFreddie, foreign call centres are useless, and I'm not racist either, because my wife is from Asia.

Being from Gloucestershire originally, I find foreign call centres can't understand my thick bumpkin accent and I always have trouble understanding them. Me and foreign call centres don't get on well.

[rafe005]

When i get through to a foreign call centre i always put on a thick devon accent.......What fun I have Always get transferred to a uk centre fairly quickly

[robk147]

Originally Posted by corbo

It depends where the fault is. I was once charged £160 by BT for a fault in the master socket because they claimed the BACK half of the socket is theirs but the FRONT half is mine, and therefore my problem.

Technically they are right. Removing the front plate of the socket disconnects any extension wiring (which usually isn't fitted by BT) as that can often cause a BB fault. your ISP should really have asked you to try that before getting a BT engineer out.

[PaulR]

Been there -master sockets only exist in houses built in the last 10 years or so.

I know - I had a 2 hour discussion with the helpdesk where they insisted I grubbed about looking for a master socket in a 20 year old house where (I knew) all you got was the standard BT wiring.

Yes, I pretended to look.

Yes I did look the next day - and there was, of course, no master socket.

[Dibby]

So what do you plug your phone and broadband modem into? There's got to be some kind of socket? Your computer and phone can't be wired directly back to the cabinet.

My house was built about 20 years ago and I've got a socket in mine.

[corbo]

Originally Posted by robk147

Technically they are right. Removing the front plate of the socket disconnects any extension wiring (which usually isn't fitted by BT) as that can often cause a BB fault. your ISP should really have asked you to try that before getting a BT engineer out.

In this situation they did, and it didn't resolve the fault. Then BT came and claimed it was the front of the socket. Because Eclipse had it on record that I tried it without the front part of the socket in, and that it didn't work I argued that BT must be lying. ISP had no defense and had to foot the bill.

£160 is/was BT's standard charge for any work carried out, no matter how small.

[Nev]

Originally Posted by Nige005

Mine works well Nev, always has. The quality is good and the price is right, the money I've saved more than pays for the whole BB bill.

However, please do tell us more about jahjah. What is it ? Hope it's not one of these call redirect things like World Calls etc, these do not work out well for calling some international mobiles, Cyprus in my case.

JAJAH - web-activated telephony

It's a voip system whereby you
tell it the number you want to
call via the web, a little java program
on your mobile or local phone numbers.
It then calls you back and initiates the
call.

I use it all the time on my mobile
when not roaming as it's really cheap
and even free between fixed phones
if both numbers are jajah users.

[Nige005]

Originally Posted by Nev

JAJAH - web-activated telephony

It's a voip system whereby you
tell it the number you want to
call via the web, a little java program
on your mobile or local phone numbers.
It then calls you back and initiates the
call.

I use it all the time on my mobile
when not roaming as it's really cheap
and even free between fixed phones
if both numbers are jajah users.

Thanks for the info Nev. It seems that jahjah is slightly more expensive than the BT BB from home to Cyp Mob so no benefit to me there. I can say it's certainly cheaper for calls from the mobile but this is something I rarely do, think I've had about 20 quid credit since Jan, not often I use it to make calls from.

Great info though, thanks, bookmarked in case my lifestyle changes.

[PaulR]

Originally Posted by Dibby

So what do you plug your phone and broadband modem into? There's got to be some kind of socket? Your computer and phone can't be wired directly back to the cabinet.

My house was built about 20 years ago and I've got a socket in mine.

Yep - you have the standard 'phone socket where - believe it or not - you plug your 'phone/filter/router in. However, apparently, if you open it up, rather than just a bunch of wires going into a piece of plastic that your 'phone plugs into, you might find another piece of plastic where the wires go into first thence to the one you plug into.

NOW THEN - if you have this extra bit this is the Master Socket and you can plug your 'phone/filter into THAT and all will be wonderful.

Yeah right - wires from outside are just that - all they are saying is that because they have been extended from the master (if you have one) to the "slave" there is a possibility that one or more wires might have become disconnected - all total B'locks.

Paul.

[bigredshaza]

Here is something that may interest you.

I am the Lego Technic Helpdesk for Denmark.

How? I don't know. Three years ago our company moved its office to Glasgow an installed a national digital phone system for all of our offices (not LEGO I have to say). For some reason or other I now get calls for Lego straight to my desk. It can't be fixed and nobody knows why it happens.

And they all speak English too. About 3 calls a week.

[PaulR]

Originally Posted by bigredshaza

Here is something that may interest you.

I am the Lego Technic Helpdesk for Denmark.

How? I don't know. Three years ago our company moved its office to Glasgow an installed a national digital phone system for all of our offices (not LEGO I have to say). For some reason or other I now get calls for Lego straight to my desk. It can't be fixed and nobody knows why it happens.

And they all speak English too. About 3 calls a week.

Wow - how sad can people be?

They have LEGO problems?

What next - the Breakfast Cereal helpdesk"

"Hello - BC helpdesk - how may I help you?"

"Er, hello - I have some Rice Crispies - "Snap" and "Crackle" seem to be behaving in the right way but my "Pops" seem more of a "phut".

"I see - what milk are you using"

"Semi skimmed cows"

"OK - yes - uh hu - I see - so then - as a first step you need to give a "POP BOOST" - buy some Channel Island full cream heart buster milk - pour it on and get back to me only if the sonic effects are still desultory"

LEGO helpdesk - get outta here.

Paul.

[Nev]

My mobile phone number in France used to be the same
as a helpline for one of the Spanish mobile phone networks.


When Spanish people used to be in France they'd call the number
without the +34. I'd get 1 or 2 calls a week in summer time.

I got a Spanish mate to record a message saying "Please redial with +34"
which I would play to any callers.


It petered out as people got more mobile savvy.

[PaulR]

Originally Posted by Nev

My mobile phone number in France used to be the same
as a helpline for one of the Spanish mobile phone networks.


When Spanish people used to be in France they'd call the number
without the +34. I'd get 1 or 2 calls a week in summer time.

I got a Spanish mate to record a message saying "Please redial with +34"
which I would play to any callers.


It petered out as people got more mobile savvy.

That was very pleasant of you.

Others, I am sure, would have had the message "Place your 'phone in a bowl of water which is at the precise temperature of 50.75
centigrade".

[robk147]

Originally Posted by corbo

In this situation they did, and it didn't resolve the fault. Then BT came and claimed it was the front of the socket. Because Eclipse had it on record that I tried it without the front part of the socket in, and that it didn't work I argued that BT must be lying. ISP had no defense and had to foot the bill.

£160 is/was BT's standard charge for any work carried out, no matter how small.

Fair enough, sounds like the engineers might have been telling porkies in that case! Part of my job at the ISP I worked for was to go through the charges BT had made for engineer visits and decide if it was a fair charge. I'd usually dispute up to 50% of them per month and BT agreed to refund them for the most part.

The buggers also tried to charge me for an engineer visit a few months ago when my phone line went dead but I successfully argued that one as I only have one socket in my flat and the frontplate is permanently off.