Reply to: BT broadband probs, ho ho

[Euro-commuter]

It is rarer to find happiness in a man surrounded by the miracles of technology than among people living in the desert or the jungle and who by the standards set by our society would be considered destitute and out of touch.

-- Thor Heyerdahl

[wendigo100]

I'm sorry to hear all this EC. I have found BT the most tulipe company to contact if things go wrong. I once had to write to the Company Chairman to get something simple sorted out.

[Euro-commuter]

Update

The test passwords didn't work, even when connected to the Master socket (thanks for suggestions though guys).

I called a networking acquaintace, and he had me look in the router admin page & got to the bottom of it right away: have ADSL connection, don't have broadband. Called BT Home Help (paying service) and they found the same (their first line test gave non-useful results so they had to do another).

Still took multiple calls to India, where they basically started off every time with "please tell me what lights are on on the router". Finally after 3 hours I got through to a UK tech guy, who listened to what I said, and confirmed that the line test results were "inconclusive" (to India, of course, they conclusively proved that it must be my router).

..... many more calls that I can not bring myself to relive. Some examples include the person who made me find a network cable to connect the PC to the router, when I said that I could not only ping it but even open the router's admin page; and the one who wanted me to disable firewall and antivirus on the PC. And they ALL ignored the 3 tech guys mentioned above - 2 of them BT - who all agreed that I have ADSL but no BT Broadband .....

Finally, have an engineer coming round on Friday to test from the house. My partner insists that it would be illegal to lock the door after he comes in, and made me promise not to.

BTW to go with this callout, I do have a direct line phone number to BT Tech support in the UK. To use it, I need the specific PIN, which is valid for only 2 weeks.


Have BT no shame? So little do they want to talk to paying customers who have no service, that they PIN-protect their support phone? I have not heard worse since Mugabe got to nominate the UN commissioner for sustainable development.

[where did my id go?]

there are a couple of test id/passwords that you can put in to the router to test the connection. They route through to servers withing BT's infrastructure network and are used only for testing. If they work then its the user id/password that you have.

I'll try and find a linky.

edit :

try looking at these

http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/bttest.htm

http://www.more-solutions.co.uk/supp...test-user.html

[Euro-commuter]

Change! You don't have to lose that precious BT email address...

I had a similarly sh1te service from BT a while ago but had my BT mail since the good old dial up days and really did not want to lose it.

Simply go to the accounts page and choose to downgrade your account to a dial up pay-as-you-go account. This way the email address stays active

Useful info, thanks.

[Gonzo]

I suggested changing providers. OH was reluctant: firstly, she has many subscriptions using the BT email address that she would lose

I ditched BT Broadband about 3 years ago. But I can still log onto the email account through the Webmail access. They don't seem to have switched it off even after all this time.

I have stopped looking at it now though because the amount of junk mail it gets is truly horrific.

[chubba]

Change! You don't have to lose that precious BT email address...

I had a similarly sh1te service from BT a while ago but had my BT mail since the good old dial up days and really did not want to lose it.

Simply go to the accounts page and choose to downgrade your account to a dial up pay-as-you-go account. This way the email address stays active and you can collect and send mail via the webmail system or collect mail using Outlook or whatever and send using your new ISPs SMTP servers.

Job done. Ditch them, you now have no reason to deal with thier bloated ineptitude and shoddy customer service.

Oh yeah, the PAYG dial up account is handy for the laptop while out and about too...

[Diver]

I think the quickest way to sort this is to cancel your BT broadband and renew at your new address. (that's if happy with BT broadband. I am)
tell them that you already have voyager & disk Whatever, and just need a new account.

You will still have to wait a few days for your user name and password, but at the moment it sounds like you are just running arround in circles.

Good luck.

Ps. when I switched to BT from NTL it took 5 days for the everything to arrive.

[Euro-commuter]

Talked to OH tonight. She got a letter from BT today, to the new address, referring to the old address, quoting the correct account number, saying that the telephone number (0xxx xxxxxx) was still active at the old address, and did she want that?

The number was one she had never heard of in her life, so she called India again, on the existing phone that was transferred from the old address to the new (except for broadband) and told then that she didn't recognise that number. Oh, they said, that's your broadband.

So she said a few things about that, got transferred here and there, and eventually spoke to someone who said No, that's not her broadband, there is no problem, everything is connected correctly.

Right. Where is my Kafka, I need some simplistic escapism.

I believe that we got the truth by mistake here, but now BT will no longer admit it: that they have transferred our phone, but not the broadband; that the other number (which may or may not actually be connected at the old address) is now activated as our broadband. So we can't connect to it no matter what we do; but BT will always see it as active no matter what they do. So they will always say (correctly) that we are connected, and we will always say (correctly) that we are not connected. How can we fix that?

I suggested changing providers. OH was reluctant: firstly, she has many subscriptions using the BT email address that she would lose, secondly, she has signed up to another min 12 months from the house move date (they make you do that). I said I'd like to see them enforce 12 months for nothing, but I suppose they would.

She has now gone to bed crying and seeimingly suicidal. If she really is, and does, you will find my real name in the papers soon. Some BT people's names will be in the same article.

[Euro-commuter]

In addition, it pays to have a set of brand new replacement cables available in case they take that route. I had two completely parallel setups (routers, cables, PC's) just to prove it wasn't a problem at my end.

The problem with the call centre is that they're used to dealing with the typical consumer who doesn't know their RJ45 from their elbow.

You could pay a lot for a local techie to come round and argue with BT all day.

Don't they do a service where a BT engineer comes round and sets it up for you ? It might be cheaper to go this route, then any problem is their problem.

2 days before we left the old house, the connection there died. India maintained that the connection was OK so it must be at my end, and had me checking all my connections etc. When I confirmed that I had tried it with 2 different sockets, 2 filters, 2 cables, and 2 PCs, they jumped on the only thing I didn't have 2 of and said it must be my router, but since it wasn't a BT model they couldn't support it (never mind that BT sell Netgear routers) and I would have to call the manufacturer for help. After over an hour I managed to get to someone in the UK on Order Management (by mistake I think) who confirmed that the connection was not OK, it had been disconnected, 2 days early for no apparent reason. They suggested that I make a "request" for reconnection, which would take 5 days!

So I'd advise a double setup too. And keep the original BT modem for ever.

[Euro-commuter]

To confirm this, go to the BT Yahoo Homepage and login using your account details.

If you can login, then your existing account details are obviously still valid.

If not, the monkeys at BT have changed them.

I can do that with the BT Yahoo user login, but the broadband login is not the same as that, though it is similar ([email protected] for user, [email protected] for broadband login).

[oraclesmith]

In addition, it pays to have a set of brand new replacement cables available in case they take that route. I had two completely parallel setups (routers, cables, PC's) just to prove it wasn't a problem at my end.

The problem with the call centre is that they're used to dealing with the typical consumer who doesn't know their RJ45 from their elbow.

You could pay a lot for a local techie to come round and argue with BT all day.

Don't they do a service where a BT engineer comes round and sets it up for you ? It might be cheaper to go this route, then any problem is their problem.

It's called BT IT Home Install :

http://bt.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/bt.cf...7&p_faqid=9645

[Clippy]

Allegedly unchanged, though the thought does nag. If it doesn't get fixed then neither will we

To confirm this, go to the BT Yahoo Homepage and login using your account details.

If you can login, then your existing account details are obviously still valid.

If not, the monkeys at BT have changed them.

[Zorba]

Stupid question - is there a manual 'connect' button in the config screen? Some routers show the line status (e.g. Showtime) and then the actual ISP connection.

Other than that, the dudes over at http://www.adslguide.org.uk/ are really helpful usually (in the forum).

[Euro-commuter]

I had similar problems, although fortunately with BT Business Broadband so it was easier to deal with the service centre. Try :-

- Getting them to confirm the network userid and password and then re-inputting it on the router. Reboot it the router.

- Get them to test the connection by giving you the test userid and password.

- Use wired connections for testing. Use the BT master box to connect the router so there is none of your own equipment in the way.

- Make sure every telephone outlet with a device connected has an ADSL filter. If necessary disconnect all unecessary devices.

I even tried the original BT wired router to prove it wasn't my equipment.

My problem was actually at the exchange, but it took a week of testing and messing about connecting, disconnecting and trying things to convince them that although their system said I had a physical ADSL signal and the account was live, the exchange was not actually connecting me through to the broadband system.

When you get connected, make sure they give you a refund for any days lost.

Thanks, yes that's what I'm worried about. I want to try what I can of these things, but I don't think I can find the original router any more, especially not after the move.