to think our phone company are a bunch of bollocking tossers who take us for idiots?

[QueenOfFlamingEverything]

Long story short - we live v rurally. Our phone/broadband worked fine until one day in late 2010 when BT engineers working on a neighbours line accidentally disconnected our line.

Since it was supposedly 'fixed', we have had constant speed issues. We have had to complain about once every 6-8 weeks and have had engineers out 6 times to fix various line faults. Our internet frequently slows down to a speed where online banking logs you out before the pages have finished loading . So far we have had the master socket replaced (which we were charged for, even though it didn't fix the problem) and bought a new router because we were told our router was the most likely cause of the problem. Every time engineers come out, they reset the line speed and it runs fast for a few weeks, then slows back down.

Now, there seems to be a new fault. It slows down every few minutes to about 0.01 mb/s (we are meant to get 2 meg), then speeds up again.

Phone company's response??

Oh, they said. You should try getting a new phone

How the actual FUCK will a new phone make our internet work properly???

Wankers.

write a letter of complaint detailing the dates of faults and fixes. The more (accurate) detail the better.

In my experience in utilities trades. letters get treated more seriously than phone calls.

Head up the letter "Complaint re Broadband performance, account no. ##nnnnnnn"

Complain to OFCOM. It's an ongoing issue that they have not addressed properly. Once it is sorted then demand compensation from bt.

Ofcom won't get involved in individual complaints - been there, tried that!

And we have complained in writing, oh boy we have complained, but all we get is them coming up with ever more ridiculous ways in which this could be our fault not theirs (like suggesting our phone is faulty and somehow causing the internet to stop working )

And BT, the lying toads, say they were not responsible for disconnecting us in the first place. Yeah right. They were just up a cherry picker outside our house and then the internet and phone went off entirely by coincidence...

Can you use someone else?

Our internet was off for at least 6 hours every day for a month. They suggested it was the fault of the router and sent a new one (didn't pay as we were still on contract to them). Then they sent out various engineers. By the third one I'd told them we were going with virgin if it wasn't fixed by the end of the week. They sent out a chief engineer who discovered the phone line needed replacing and did that. Still had a few minor niggles since but nothing major.

It was amazing how quickly it was sorted once I said I was changing provider.

We had this problem and had many BT engineers out and they couldn't find the problem. It was finally fixed when it actually happened when a BT engineer was present. It turns out that there was a slight break in the overhead cable and sometimes it connected and sometimes it didn't (normally when it got colder and the cable shrank a little).

Obviously, this doesn't show up when they do a line test as generally it's working fine.

Get in touch and ask them if it could be this?

We think the whole mile-long line up to the house from the box thingy (?) in the village needs replacing. The engineers have found and fixed four different faults in the last 15 months and have commented each time on how old the line is and how the connectors are getting corroded (I think thats what they said).

But the phone company aren't prepared to listen to that. Oh no. Its definitely our fault somehow.

Unfortunately we had just signed a 24 month contract with them when this all started

You need to put a formal complaint in to BT via the website. We did that after having some shocking service, and actually when they got the complaint, it all got sorted out PDQ, we got 6 months free Internet / line rental, and a box of Thorntons chocolates with not one but two layers.

We had this problem right from the start when we began using BT (the internet was even slower than with talktalk despite it being the same phone line) Luckily we have cable in this area. I wish we'd gone to virgin 5 years ago instead of waiting until now.

BT are not our phone company though - when I say BT engineers I mean BT Openreach.

Our phone company (get this...) doesn't have a complaints department or formal complaints procedure.

Shame 'cos I like the sound of chocolates