Be There - I'll be there in 5 minutes when the page loads

Posted on Thu, 2008-03-06 19:09

UK ISP Be have been well known over recent years for a very good ISP. Owned by O2, Be offer up to 24MB Internet. Of course this varies depending on how far you are away from the exchange and the quality of the cable from the exchange to the household.

As of late, problems have been arising. They started off with disconnections that could last up to 6 hours. Often resynching at 50% the speed that it should be. This continued for a week. Of course, I didn't just stay quiet. I sent a ticket using Be's online ticketing system for members. I stated the problems that I had been having as well as a list of things I had tried, such as:

Unplugging all phones from the sockets.
Trying a different router.
Changing microfilter.

Also seeing in to the future, I stated that I had no BT test socket.

But none of this helped.

So what did Be recommend?

1 day later, they recommended that I connect to my BT test socket to see if it helped the connection. Wait. Didn't I clearly state that I didn't have a BT test socket. So I replied saying I had no test socket.

A day later they suggested that I manually set my DNS servers. Which isn't really going to help when the router isn't synching at all, but I did it anyway.

Over the next 6 days the connection was a bit more reliable, losing connection every 18 hours or so, which was a lot better than before, but still synching at below average speeds. I then sent another message in response to the previous ticket stating that the loss of connection was "completely unacceptable".

So how did Be respond to a completely unacceptable connection?

Well, with this:

According to our terms and conditions you need to be without any service for five consecutive days, in order to be credited from us.

I must not of been sure what I typed in the previous message but I wasn't asking for a refund, and I didn't mention anything to do with money or refunds.

11 days after the original ticket they were still no closer to solving my problems. So I paid a visit to the members forum to vent my frustration.

Later the next day when I got home from work there was a message on my answer phone. Be had phoned me asking for my mobile to contact me. Without asking them to they had phoned me up. I guess they don't like it when other people can see other peoples problems.

So the next day I got a phone call at work on my mobile, only to be told that I needed to be at home for them to do some tests. Why on earth ask me for my mobile if you need me at home? If I am at home, I will answer the house phone. So I arranged to be phoned at home at 6:00PM. At 6:45PM I got a phone call from some Bulgarian chap who asked me to unplug all my phones and leave them out for 5 minutes while they test the phone line. So I complied and checked the updated ticket in the morning. So what was the major problem then?

As we checked your line and as I have the results from the 2 tests it seems like that there is a serious issue with your internal wiring.

Oh right, my internal wiring which hasn't changed is suddenly causing a problem.

I know for a fact that BT will charge in excess of £200 to come over and check the internal wiring.

So I sent another ticket to Be.

I have tried the quiet line test but I only have digital phones so I don't know it that will give a very good result, but there was a little bit of noise. This might of been down to the phone though.

I have asked BT to check the line and they state that it is fine.

I don't want to call BT out for £300 and find out that there isn't a problem.

If you are confident that it is the wiring in my house would you be willing to pay the BT charge if their work does not improve my connection?

That was 3 days ago. Be haven't responded yet. I can only assume they are thinking about it. Why else wouldn't they reply?

So as another day passes, the problems continue with no fix in sight. My connection has now dropped to speeds that are pretty much unusable, although they don't look like that from the stats the connection actually loads web pages slower than a 56k modem.

Many people on the Be forums are blaming all problems with the recent increase in users which were brought in by O2 who started their own broadband service for their mobile customers. Be, of course deny this.

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