Lost telephone connection some time today - line is totally dead, no dial tone, crackle or anything.

But Broadband OK.

Checked out the on-line BT Fault checker. It said my line was OK but that there were service interruptions to phone and broadband, which started at 13:30 and are targeted to be resolved by the same time on 13/04. That seems a hell of a delay.

Has anyone noticed any reports of service loss in NW London(Harrow) ?

Cheers.

Nick

From BT's status page -> https://www.bt.com/consumerFaultTracking/public/faults/tracking.do?pageId=31

Due to suspected Cable Thefts & damage caused by 3rd parties, a small number of our customers in the below areas, may experience a loss of telephone and/or broadband services. We hope to have service restored as quickly as possible and apologise for any inconvenience this may be causing.

>snip<

South Harrow- 0208, 0203 ( estimated clear 13/04/2013)

>snip<

Could explain why it's going to take them a few days to sort it....

Chris

Thanks for that. That's the report I saw.

Went onto the BT Fault Report chat service and they confirmed that here was a cable theft but wouldn't confirm whether my problem was linked to this. Chat line person told me that the engineers said it was a "Network" problem, whatever that means.

They wanted to send an engineer with the usually proviso that you become liable to £99 fee if the fault is in your premises. I said no, wait until the cable theft problem is resolved and if mine persists then I'll make a separate report.

So what do they do ? When I log-on to my on-line BT account after the finishing the chat session, they've already logged it as a separate report against my number, for resolution in 24 - hours !

I already told 'em I won't be paying further bills until its resolved and certainly won't be paying for an unnecessary engineer visit.

Nick

Edited 9 April, 201313 yr by Clunkclick

My line still out.

But it appears that the other affected service Virgin (0203), slightly outside my area, has been put right already:-

http://www.ispreview...by-vandals.html

That's a large number of two major services customers over the whole of NW London.

HMG are going to have to get serious with this.

Nick

Edited 10 April, 201313 yr by Clunkclick

Line still out this evening and having heard nothing from them (Fault report logged against my account said call if I didn't hear anything from them within 24 hours).

I called to enquire what was happening but the CS guys (In Asia somewhere) couldn't give me any further information than yesterday i.e. its a "Network fault" - I suggested that this meant the fault was in BTs 21CN apparatus at the exchange and he didn't deny it. So possibly its the cable theft that's causing this.

Annoyingly, they tell me that under the system they cannot "Escalate" the enquiry in order to contact the engineers for further information unless I upgrade my fault report into a request for an engineer visit to my premises and a further three days has elapsed without the fault being resolved.

Looks like I'll have to wait till Saturday, before I can see whether it needs to be taken forward.

Nick

Nick -there's two scenarios. Your phone don't work, but BB does . If you are on a fast service, then it's fibre to local cabinet, then BB injected to you copper line. If somewhere along the physical telephone line ,pi keys have made off with cable this would explain why . Sounds most likely scenario to me. BTW- I've had similar words with BT,saying they'd come out at my risk. I told them I was reporting a fault, which I EXPECTED FIXED UNDER THE TERMS OF THE CONTRACT AND THAT ANY TEST VISIT WAS AT their RISK . If I got excuses, I always asked for Level 1 involvement . That means a manager gets involved and the fault gets progressed upwards by the day . Except in cable theft situation it gets speedy results /answers .

Thanks VWD. I bear that in mind if I have to speak to them again.

I'm going to wait to early next week to see what happens. Hopefully, the cable theft fault will be cleared by then and my phone will either be reconnected or I will be contacting them.

I hardly use the landline phone anyway - 2 outgoing calls a week max. I get more incoming calls - x 4 cold callers a day. So at least i'm getting relief from that.

And as the Infinity service seems unaffected, there's always E-mail and IM/web calling and plenty of free wifi locally should Infinity go down which I could access using the laptop, tablet or mobile.

Nick

~Well at least you can't be annoyed by cold callers

Hi Nick,

I had the same symtoms last week. I logged in to www.bt.com/faults and when i first logged on and tested the line I got the same question regarding the £99, so like you I said no. After checking my home equipment I rang BT faults and the lady I spoke to said it looked like the fault was in my house, so she suggested I use their on line video to test whether the fault was inside my house or not. After doing the above test by isolating my wiring at the master socket I proved it to be outside and reported it on the sunday. My phone was fixed lunchtime on the Tuesday and I got a phone call from their engineer on my mobile (which i missed) to say it was now working.

the £99 is standard stuff as due to the monopoly regulations bought in by HMG BT Openreach who own the network are not responsible for anything past the master socket (same as any other utility, e.g. gas and electric).

If your phone is still out I'd suggest you 'do the test' to establish if the fault is your responsibility or not if you're a BT customer or contact your service provider for guidance if you're with someone else.

cheers

Ade

Thanks for the info. Line is still out.

I've already isolated the master socket from other internal connections and always have the telephone handset plugged into the master socket. No joy. Changed the handsets ( I have a spare). No joy.

I see from the "Known faults" web site, they have moved the reporting time of the South Harrow report forward from 08:43 Monday 8th to 01:35 today (12/04) and that SH is now top of the list. So perhaps somethings moving or they are manipulating the reporting system to cover their tracks !

Estimated resolution date is still 13/04.

https://www.bt.com/c...ng.do?pageId=31

I'll leave it until after the weekend before chasing it up. That gives them (Both Customer Services and Openreach) at least two complete 3-day fault resolution cycles to do something.

In any regard, its a pretty ****-poor service (On fault resolution) they offer the residential customer nowadays -me remembering back before privatised BT and the earlier publicly owned BT when the telephones were in the hands of the G.P.O.

Nick

Edited 12 April, 201313 yr by Clunkclick

I certainly understand your frustration on the timescale front, though if it is the wonderful cable thieves that are to blame it'll be a big job to restore service (that openreach has to pay for) and back in the good old days we didn't have pikies causing mass disruption cutting cables and stealing metal on a large scale like we do now. if this is the case then depending on what's been stolen/damaged a new cable will need to be installed to replace the one that's been cut/damaged. This could even involve laying new duct between boxes if the cable they attempted to steal is still there as it may be stuck in the bore or if they've cut it flush with the duct mouths in the boxes either end the engineers won't be able to recover the old cable and pull a new one in the same duct and there's no other space duct space available they're stumped and it'll then be a case of getting the contractors in to lay new duct which would typically be several hundred metres- if it's between the exchange and green cabinet that connects to your fibre broadband then this will be a large pressurised cable that may have been there for years and depending on what type of sheathing is on it they tend to settle in time and effectively become stuck in the bore and can be difficult/impossible to remove, so either way it probaly won't be a quick fix, but that's not to say Openreach were not quick to take action, just that it'll be a big job to fix. If they cables have been valdalised rather than stolen that could be even worse! My BIL does this elsewhere in the country and often has to work extended unsocial hours repairing the cables that have been stolen.

Hopefully you'll be back on soon

Just checked (00:15, 13/04) telephone service re-instate.

BT's fault check web site shows the South Harrow fault as still unresolved at this time. Unrelated ?

Nick

08:15, Sat 13: South Harrow fault along with those in other areas e.g. Chiswick, no longer shows as "Ongoing" (Red) on the BT Fault report web site. But unlike other recently fixed cases it hasn't been moved in to the "Resolved" section (Green). Its status doesn't show at all - other faults with a report date of the 12th (To which the SH one was revised) show. Is this evidence that light massaging of the recording system is possible?

Lets hope the threat board underneath the mountain in Colorado doesn't suffer the same defect.

Nick

Edited 13 April, 201313 yr by Clunkclick

I certainly understand your frustration on the timescale front, though if it is the wonderful cable thieves that are to blame it'll be a big job to restore service (that openreach has to pay for) and back in the good old days we didn't have pikies causing mass disruption cutting cables and stealing metal on a large scale like we do now.

Just as well it wasn't BT, or come to that, any of the other current "Service providers" responsible for telephones during the Battle of Britain, otherwise the indigenous language would be German - plenty instances there of completely severed main cables to RAF stations /Sector stations being repaired, including filling in the crater within a day of occurrence.

Nick

Edited 13 April, 201313 yr by Clunkclick

Try changing the name of your House to FOB Clunkclick, see if you can get a Signals regiment to fix it for you.

Given your history with BT Nick, perhaps time to try Virgin?

Given your history with BT Nick, perhaps time to try Virgin?

No, I more than satisfied with the service, when its working.

It just the "Front facing" non-indigenous, corporately dumbed down, customer service that's a waste of space and the seeming arrogance of the Open reach operation, in not telling customers when there's going to be a planned outage or providing adequate information in the public forums when there's an unplanned one. In this respect, there appears to no difference in operation between BT and Virgin, judging by the personal accounts I've had related to me or, come to that, what's reported on the web sites - the comments regarding Virgins's response on the recent Virgin BB outage to the West of London (Slough, Hayes, Ruislip, cable loss again), appearing on the ISPReview web site, being case in point. The model of Customer Service that both use is wrong - veremore today, its designed by corporate accountants and operated to maximise corporate profits, not to ease the suffering of consumers.

Quite coincidentally, these incidents always seem to coincide with a Virgin mailing (In plain white wrapper) through the letter box. Their marketing apparatus can't be up to par otherwise they'd know that I signed-up to an 18 month contract with BT with penalty's for early release.

As I've said, I don't intend to dissapate the diminishing remaining total of my waking hours available to me or my meagre financial resource, keeping marketing men in jobs, by changing telecoms supplier every 5 minutes - a review every 18 months to 2 years is sufficient (Moore's law pertaining). And the prospect of further "From first principle" dealings with the exceptionally intellectually equipped and corporately constrained Customer Services necessary to effect a service provider change fills me with a dread that not even the junior North Korean leader could engender . . . . "First there was green grass and blue sky . . . then invertebrate creatures emerged from the primordial slime . . . . . then man started walking upright . . . shortly afterwards someone invented accountants . . . .and that's when Bangalore Telecom decided to relocate their call centre. Now about my telephone hand set". "Are you saying telephone hand set sir ?" And so on and so forth.

Nick

Edited 14 April, 201313 yr by Clunkclick

Given your history with BT Nick, perhaps time to try Virgin?

Wouldn't be anything for Nick to complain about then