This week has been an unusual one. At the beginning of last week I had notice that our broadband connection had been getting very slow and dropping allot. I did all the normal things, rebooted the router, made sure all the cables were ok but found no obvious errors.
So, I contacted our service provider BT and was advised to reboot the router as I had already done and call back if the problem persisted. I rebooted the router once more and again noticed no improvement so called back. The person who I got through to on the second call advised me that no call notes had been entered from the initial call and insisted I rebooted the router again.
After a brief exchange of the 'I cant believe it's' I asked the gentleman to call me back on my mobile before I rebooted the router so that I maintained a line of communication. He did and again the router was rebooted.
This time I did notice a vast difference in the broadband speed. It was now taking around 60 seconds to two minutes to load a simple web page such as Google and or Yahoo. The support operative ran some tests on our line finding no faults. He asked me to monitor the speed that day and if there was no improvement within 24 hours they would log a call with an engineer.
On the morning after the day before I checked the broadband and everything seemed to be fine, however when I returned from work that evening the broadband was pretty much non existent, again taking longer than dial up to load a white page with some blue text on it, 'Google'. Our BT Vision service was also jumping all over the place flashing faults V03 this and V04 that every five or so minutes.
I once more phoned BT and once more was told that there were no call notes from either of the previous day's calls. At this point I was quite frustrated. I explained to the support operative that I am paying for a service that for the past week I had been unable to use as advertised by BT and that I was not happy to find out none of the previous calls had been logged or passed on.
Again a line test was conducted and I was asked to monitor the connection, this time for 48 hours which I did.
Monday, one week later I got so fed up of the speed and connection dropping and not being able to watch any TV I called once more.
This time I was told that BT did not have any record of me ever having Broadband or BT Vision and that if I wished to order to product I should call another number?????? This came as a surprise seeing as I was actually calling them from a BT Hub phone from a BT Broadband Talk number.....
After some tiring and continual moaning at the operative she found our records and said that there was nothing they could do so they would book an engineer to visit the house. We arranged a day and time and left it at that.
Today, the engineer arrived right on time. I offered and made him a coffee, white with one and he set to work.
He replaced the main BT socket advising me that this was the problem and around an hour later departed, advising me that I would receive a phone call within 30 minutes to advise the state of the line after some further tests had been carried out.
I waited and 20 minutes later I received the call. It was the engineer that had carried out the work. He advised me that my line was now error free and that I would have full speed broadband back within an hour once the hub had settled.
An hour past and I tried the PC, still slow. I plugged my laptop directly into the hub, still slow. I tried my BT Vision box, which advised I had no physical broadband connection..... You guessed right I called BT.
This time, they had no problem finding my records and after I explained that the problem had not been resolved advised me that it normally takes ten days for the line and hub to sync correctly and that my speed would be slower than normal until the synchronisation was complete.
The support operative asked me to direct my browser to a BT speed tester which returned a download result of 84kb/s and an upload of 276kb/s. He said that this was unusually slow but it would be back to normal in ten days.
In the mean time I asked whether we would still be charged for the BT Vision and Broadband services that we were not able to use. I was told I would be charged as normal as there was an active broadband connection to my house and that I would have to wait the ten days before lodging and request for a refund. He went on to say that it would be very unlikely that BT would honour a refund, again due to there being an active but unusable broadband connection.
There is a semi silver lining. Vodafone, my mobile phone provider called me around 1600 to advise that my contract is nearly 7 months over the upgrade period. They tried to flog the latest iPhone to me again but ended up answering question with a very pleasing answer.
When I took my business contract out with them I added an unlimited data package that remains with me until I upgrade to a newer contract.
After the call, I connected my phone to the PC and hey presto. 1.8Mb broadband.
Below are some pictures taken this week that I have been able to upload with the help of the wonderful people at Vodafone :) No thanks go to BT!!
The Orbiter, I took this on Saturday night. I had headed into town to try and get some shots of the carnival. There was quite a crowd and I did not want to get in anyone's way so I settled for this.
Hawker Hunter FGA9 XE601, taxiing to Hunter Flying Ltd, Northside, Exeter International Airport.
Hawker Hunter FGA9 XE601 forms part of Team Viper.
Team Viper ™ is the only Strikemaster & Hunter Team in the World. Flying a combination of Supersonic Hawker Hunter jets and BAC 176 Strikemasters the jets convey an aura of classical elegance, which we affectionately describe as Power, Heritage and Soul.
As the only such team in the World, we aim to show these unique and incredible fighter jets and classic jet aviation, in a way that is both elegantly extreme and totally unique.
The team is named after the Rolls Royce Viper engine found in the Strikemaster and both aircraft have a very rich heritage around the World, as a significant export success for Britain and were flown by many air forces globally as front line fighters.
The team is completely unique being both privately owned and flown by military pilots from the British Royal Air Force.
I took this at work one evening. The light has blown out an area where the sun penetrates the clouds but I love the 3D look of the clouds and the rays of light bursting through them.
Stay tuned, more to come soon....... And I promise the next post wont be so much of a rant.
