BT Broadband Technical Support

It has been a difficult fews days dealing with BT Broadband and trying to resolve an issue with my connection.

My line throughput was 2000k. Upstream 448, downstream 8128. Actual speed 1871kbps.

BT reckoned I could expect around 6500kbps. At £29.99 a month I wasn’t pleased with this performance. And this had been on and off since I regraded to the ‘Upto 8mb’ service in May.

Out of the blue I got a bit of juice in my internet rocket - while I was on hold awaiting a time and date for an engineer to visit as all technical problems at the exchange had been resolved so the problem was 100% at my end. To pass the time whilst waiting on hold I used the BT Wholesale speed tester and seen a fresh, faster set of results. They had twiddled the correct knobs and allowed my throughput to be raised. I was now seeing and receiving a faster connection speed.

IP profile for your line is - 7150 kbps
DSL connection rate: 448 kbps(UP-STREAM) 8128 kbps(DOWN-STREAM)
Actual IP throughput achieved during the test was - 6091 kbps

It had only taken around 300 minutes of combined telephone calls to the Technical Support team, who are incidently based in India and unable to do or answer anything that deviates from their onscreen step by step help guide. Over and over questions I put to them went unanswered.

What follows is a list of reasons they gave as to what was causing my line speed to be so low.

My router - it was reporting that it could take a downstream of 8128kbps though that didn’t matter as it wasn’t the BT supplied router. In fact the last equipment BT gave me was FIVE years ago when I got the initial broadband service installed. It was an Alcatel Speed Touch model.

MY OS - according to the Technical Helpdesk my operating system was corrupt. Sadly this was not true. My version of WinXP has been very stable for a couple of years. It has SP1 installed and one other patch. I don’t update it as it is stable as it is.

My Filters - now that is a great call though the one big problem is I don’t have filters on my phone sockets. As I said above, BT installed my broadband, an engineer done all the work and rewiring. My main telephone box / socket has a built in filter. The unit has two slots on the front panel, one for the telephone and one for the broadband connection. OK, that rules out the filters.

My Wiring - they then went on to suggest poor quality wiring, again it was ALL BT installed so the chances of it being that were remotely small. I dismissed this and suggested yet again the fault lay with them.

My Settings - ??????? They suggested editing and altering various setting within WinXP. Now I would have been happy to try this, I’m no fool when it comes to how various elements of the OS work, so before I changed anything I asked the support advisor what each suggestion would do and how it would affect my speed. NOT ONE of them could answer, again they couldn’t deviate from their onscreen instructions as, in my opinion, they are untrained to do the job of providing technical support other than following what options their screen show in response to what answers you are giving.

My Sky Box - for anyone not from the UK, a Sky Box is a satellite receiver which can be attached to a phone line to provide interactive services. Having your Sky Box conected to the telephone line is only required for the first year of your contract. It is, I believe, how they subsidize the free box and installation. Add to this my Sky Box was actually attached to a seperate phone line and was unplugged exactly 366 days after it was plugged in then it would be safe to rule that excuse out.

My Microwave Oven - yes, I’m being serious here, I was told my PC and router must be too close to my microwave oven. Now the Technical support team are suggesting an appliance I don’t even own is interfering with my broadband speed. Priceless.

I have never experienced such inadequate customer service in my life. The people hired to be the support for a service that has several million subscribers is nothing short of scandalous.

BT Broadband should be serving their cutomers with a better internet service to begin with and when things do go wrong, which is inevitable, the support team should be trained to deal with people and situations on a personal level.

NOT READ FROM A SCREEN.

Here is a screencap from speedtest.net of my current connection speeds.