Has anyone been having problems with BT broadband constantly dropping out?

[teejwood]

Just that really. There was a fault in the area a couple of weeks ago and since it was "resolved" my connection has been completely unreliable.

Anyone had similar problems and if so, how did you get BT to sort it out?

[MisForMumNotMaid]

My dad has this problem at present. He's having to reset the box every day or so. I'm trying to get BT to send him a replacement to see if that works.

[teejwood]

Mis the funny thing is they say not to switch off/reset the box on a regular basis, but to leave it on as much as possible!

[MisForMumNotMaid]

For my dad its the only thing that seams to work. Their customer service isn't to great at present. I'm seeing my dad on Wednesday so will have another attempt at moving things forward then.

[CruelAndUnusualParenting]

Email to [email protected] used to be a good way of getting stuff sorted when I ran out of patience with the Indian call centres. Gavin Patterson was, and might still be, CEO of BT Retail. I doubt if he'll deal with your mail personally, but it will probably be taken seriously.

[teejwood]

Thank you, Mis and Cruel
DP is doing some sort of check at the moment (I think, or else he is just playing WOW while pretending to check the line) but I'll google & email the CEO of retail, whether it's still Patterson or not, if we don't get any joy in the next 24 hours

[Naoko]

The reason they don't want you to reset the router frequently is that their systems are set to detect connections that drop a lot, assume these are unstable and limit their speed to something that will be more stable. If there is actually something wrong with your line that's a good thing (because although slower it'll be more reliable) but if the connection is dropping because you've turned the router off and there's nothing actually wrong with the line, you could end up with an artificially lower speed for no reason. This is also why you shouldn't turn them off at night.

Of course, if the reason you're resetting the router is that the connection has already dropped, that's a bit pointless, so go right ahead and try the reset to see if it fixes it. Keep at them too, they should be doing diagnostics from their end to establish the problem.

[NetworkGuy]

There can be certain problems (at the exchange) where there can only be a reset if you switch off for about half an hour, and then reconnect.

However, as Naoko says, it's generally not a good idea to turn them off more than about once a week. Clearly if someone is having to reset more often then it's time to get ISP and/or Telco (if noises can be heard on calls) to investigate with/without Openreach.

If ISP asks you to test from the Master Socket test point (it's in the socket and you have to unscrew about half of the socket top to see it), they aren't being deliberately awkward but trying to ensure your wiring (extensions etc) isn't causing problems (by introducing noise) because if they do call out Openreach, the fee can hit about 125 to 150 if there's a problem caused by your wiring!

[HazeltheMcWitch]

Our BT router used to drop out all the time.
We changed to a home hub (negotiate on price), and it's honestly not dropped out once in 8 months. I look back and marvel at what I out up with!

[HazeltheMcWitch]

out put

[FuriousRox]

We had this and it was a total nightmare to get it sorted.

My amazing dh spent hours on the phone to bt doing this test and that test and we had engineers out blah blah. Eventually yhey decided it was a problem with the old telegraph pole.

Getting that fixed would have boggled Kafka. Eventually, one fine day, after 10 zillion phone calls and failed attempts, a man turned up out of the blue, fixed the jeffing pole and went away. And thus worketh the Internet in our house again. We swore never again to have any dealings with bt beyond the absolute bare minimum line rental.

So, er, good luck, op.