Hey guys I am looking for a bit of advice as to how to deal with a problem on my broadband service with Sky. Around 2 and a half years ago my GF bought a house and we sorted normal bogo ADSL with sky. This suffered disconnecting issues, the line would never make 24 hours without a disconnect. Now as @ this time I didn't live there 24/7 at that point it was not such a issue but after 6 months I got round to calling CS about it. Openreach engineer came out and said it was all perfect. Problem unresolved and due to skys CS being absolute tripe I put up with it till 3 months ago when the frequency of disconnects got worse. Engineer out again, finds high resistance over the socket and line, meddles with a few things locally and up the street job sorted. Or not. Still disconnects. So call CS again and a solid hour of explaining things I have explained 6 ( I cannot say how soul destroying this is) times before brings me to another date for a engineer to come out. We have had 3 routers ( 2 normal and one fibre) 2 sets of house phones and a new wall socket. Now if this next visit doesn't sort it what realistically can I do? I guess any ISP would be using the same openreach engineers so is it just a case of suck it up till it is resolved? Would another ISP with better CS get me results faster however? Any advice would be super as I am pulling my hair out currently.
If an Openreach engineer is coming, explain the problem and ask him to carry out a tie-pair shift. Get a six-pack of beer in beforehand, and if he umms and aahs and jobsworths's, give him the beer.
^ Bribe engineer. Most Openwound engineers I've dealt with have been very reasonable people, so long as the ticket is open for that line anyway.
When we went to FTTC earlier this year we started getting loads of disconnects to the point where making a call was enough to cause it. Fortunately we got a decent engineer (although he was 3 days late). He initially changed the socket which stopped the disconnects but did another test and decided to replace the cabling from where the line came into the house all the way to the new socket. My speeds immediately went from 38mbps download and 15mbps upload to 72Mbps down and 15Mbps up. After a few weeks they stabilised at 75mbps and 15mbps. I still get the occasional disconnect but it's every few months or so.
Back when I had my first flat I had an intermittent fault with my ASDL broadband. After weeks of pissing and moaning to Virgin the Openreach engineer came. After doing some tests he found it to be the internal cabling, bloke said he shouldn't really do anything with it as it wasn't their equipment. With that, he goes up to the top floor and crawls in to the loft, bells out a spare pair and replaces the connection in my flat. Never had a problem again, top bloke!
Dump them !! I had Sky broadband and the connection rate too often went down to 0.01mbs, yes you read that right slower than a dead snail. As I was out of the 1 year contract period, I decided not to pfaff about any more, called Plusnet, then told Sky I was leaving because they were pants and now get 19mbs rock solid and saved on the old beer tokens into the bargain.
I've just been through exactly this with Sky. It's obviously not Sky's fault, instead entirely BT's fault, but whatever. Same story as yours MrBungle - frequent disconnects. At one point Sky recorded 48 disconnects per hour Engineer comes round, does something, it works for a week or so, then reverts to being utterly unusable once again. Rinse and repeat 8-10 times between March this year and a few weeks ago. The OpenReach engineers are good but are working with the most dilapidated old crap ever... and if you ask them straight they will usually concede that the problem will never be fixed. We had the same guy come round a few times and he usually left us with a smirk and "see you again in a few weeks" which really says it all Anyway, in the end, I rang Sky for the last time and asked to cancel. They (BT) were clearly unable to fix it - Sky admitted that and just agreed to cancel the contract no questions asked. They didn't even try to challenge it. I got a small refund but I wasn't bothered about that really Now I have 1gbit Hyperoptic. Sorted
Sounds like a nightmare, if a line lift and shift does't resolve it then its unlikely to get fixed. Migrating to another ISP probably won't help as the issue will more than likely just move accross aswell. Do your neighbors have simular issues? Is there any noise on the line like crackling etc?
I would check with PlusNet, they still use the BT line but they use their own equipment. BT was offering 2mg max and I was getting 17mg constant with PlusNet. I'm on fibre now and getting a constant 71mg with PlusNet
Might be worth checking Quidco too. Think they still have an offer running for £90 cashback with fibre. Went through them when I ordered and I should get the cashback through beginning of next month.
Plusnet are BT. Unfortunately Sky, by using BT lines, are at the mercy of BT sorry Openreach to rectify exchange/line faults. Even though Openreach are meant to be impartial its quite obvious they are not.
Yes I said they use bt lines but they use their own equipment at the exchange which is from before BT bought plusnet which is why they are better
Everybody uses BT lines, with the exception of Virgin Media and Kingston Communications in Hull. There aren't any other lines to use. Local loop unbundling (LLU) allowed rival telcos to put their equipment in BT's exchanges, but everything still goes along BT's wiring - otherwise you'd need someone to come and run a new cable to your house every time you switched telcos.
Yup, Plus.Net 'just' resell BT Wholesale broadband, same for Virgin ADSL for their off-net offering; they don't do any LLU like TalkTalk or Sky.
Can you go with Virgin? We were very happy since changing to them. I think if I had to move again I wouldn't go with another provider. It may even be a decision in the house buying process.
if you do go with plusnet - as well as quidco - look at putting a referrer as well? The person you put down gets like £1.50 off their bill/mo!
lets make it simple then SKY is Crap and a rip off and give you the worst service they can get away with, BT is almost as bad and if all ISP's could give the same max speeds why does sky give 2mg (and BT) and when the person moved to PlusNet their speed doubled?,Thats proof that sky is ripping them off then , and TalkTalk well enough said lol. Go with PlusNet
We will see what tomorrow brings. The line held up for 48 hours till last night where it disconnected about 5 times. There is on occasion line noise, which I guess highlights a problem somewhere. If I could go back to virgin I would but there's no service here.