Lost 12mbp off my sync and openreach find no fault

tipsy

tipsy

tipsy

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Joined
23 Feb 2004
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1,393
Location
Greenside/Tyne & wear
I have been with sky fiber for 2 years now and its been a bit of a hit and miss affair but generally good when sorting issues out. I have been synced between 34mbp & 36mbp for 2 years but as of 2 weeks ago my noise margin dropped from 6.7db down to 1db, decided to do a reboot of the router and it synced at 24mbp.

I contacted sky and they got OR out but they failed to appear on the first visit & sky said they had fixed the issue! sadly not as when the second engineer came they said no one had been allocated to the job. Anyway he spent about an hr testing the line and replaced the master for a new 5c from a MK2 plate & still the same, showed the engineer a copy of my sync speed from a screen capture and he said it maybe the port or someone had swapped my line. He suggested I ring sky and get an SFI so I did and yet another line engineer comes out & says the same as the first.

So after the second visit I ring sky & I get told to go through all the usual test the rubbish of do a test socket test & they said it could be the router. After a bit of your router is out of warranty so you have to buy a new one at a cost of £45 I said no way when its not the router so the next suggestion was ask a friend to borrow theirs!!! I cant believe that was the suggestion but as I know its not the router I went ahead and borrowed a friends & it synced at less so I rang them to discuss things further.

I was again asked to do a test socket test and I refused saying why bother when its been done and a second router has been tested. After much discussion I decided I would just do it to prove it wasnt the router or new face plate. We had a bit of stale mate as he wanted me to buy a new router which I said sadly I'm not prepared to have this and want an SFI out & he went away and booked one.

What do you think my chances are at getting my sync speed back? as I am far from happy at losing 12mbp and being told that is acceptably by a sky tech support agent and an OR engineer without a proper reason for the drop.
 
Slim to none unless the Engineer does a complete trace from your house to the cabinet. Which they likely won't do because his manager will be on his case if he spends more than a couple of hours at your house.

If you ask him really nicely they could phone the DCoE (The Engineer will know) and ask if they could allocate a spare port at the cab for testing purposes but they generally will only allocate ports of the ones you're on are faulty. Did any of the previous Engineers ask for a DLM reset do you know?
 
Then I shall be sacking sky as my isp and phone provider and going to vodafone, the deal is far cheaper and I bet their cs is just as good now due to skys tech support level 2 has been infiltrated with script readers.
 
It's not so much reading a script but every engineer that comes back as no fault found costs Sky money and gets reported on so they need to be 100% sure the Engineer visit is required and valid.

Also, good luck with Vodafone, you'll be asked to start from scratch with filter, test socket etc.

Also they have very high charges:

Vodafone Connect Service & Maintenance charges
Description Charge
Missed engineer appointment charge £110.00
Amend Order (prior to install) £15.00
Late cancellation of order - any time or day after 12pm (noon) two working days before your scheduled visit
£60.00
Connection Charge ( new line provision) £60.00
Connection Charge (for Fibre only) £30.00
Fault within customer premises - first hour charge £115.00
Fault within customer premises - hourly charge (chargeable after the first hour) £52.00
Customer requested service visit - phone socket relocation £130.00
Customer requested service visit - additional phone socket relocation £65.00
Replacement Vodafone Connect router £130
Failure to return Vodafone Connect router (for cancelled orders) £130
Vodafone Connect router returned in a damaged state (other than fair wear and tear)
£55
SureSignal discount removal (for cancelled orders) £40
Special Fault Investigation £150.00
and/or + Special Fault Investigation - Internal wiring issue £35.00
and/or + Special Fault Investigation - Internal equipment issue £22.00
Transfer of account ownership £20.00
Home phone number change £25.00
 
going on holiday for 2 weeks now so lets see what the issue looks like when I get back
 
The DLM reset (or not) is the important thing here.

I had a voice fault (noise on the line) that knocked my connection down from 60Mbps+ to about 18Mbps. It was fixed within a few days but no DLM reset (reported and dealt with as a voice fault).

My connection did eventually recover but it took about six weeks IIRC and nothing happened at all for about a week.
 
back from my holiday and its still only 26mbps, hopefully this will get sorted tomorrow when an sfi comes.... well hopefully an sfi not a line engineer
 
MissChief said:
It's not so much reading a script but every engineer that comes back as no fault found costs Sky money and gets reported on so they need to be 100% sure the Engineer visit is required and valid.

Also, good luck with Vodafone, you'll be asked to start from scratch with filter, test socket etc.

Also they have very high charges:

Vodafone Connect Service & Maintenance charges
Description Charge
Missed engineer appointment charge £110.00
Amend Order (prior to install) £15.00
Late cancellation of order - any time or day after 12pm (noon) two working days before your scheduled visit
£60.00
Connection Charge ( new line provision) £60.00
Connection Charge (for Fibre only) £30.00
Fault within customer premises - first hour charge £115.00
Fault within customer premises - hourly charge (chargeable after the first hour) £52.00
Customer requested service visit - phone socket relocation £130.00
Customer requested service visit - additional phone socket relocation £65.00
Replacement Vodafone Connect router £130
Failure to return Vodafone Connect router (for cancelled orders) £130
Vodafone Connect router returned in a damaged state (other than fair wear and tear)
£55
SureSignal discount removal (for cancelled orders) £40
Special Fault Investigation £150.00
and/or + Special Fault Investigation - Internal wiring issue £35.00
and/or + Special Fault Investigation - Internal equipment issue £22.00
Transfer of account ownership £20.00
Home phone number change £25.00
Click to expand...

I have noticed that you post these prices each and every time Vodafone is mentioned. Yet there is no evidence at all to indicate anyone has ever been charged them. All very similar to every other ISP who also "reserve the right to charge, should the fault turn out to be internal wiring" - the difference being Vodafone post their charges and all other ISP's hide under "a charge".
 
Line engineer again!!! DLM reset done and speed still the same, rang sky and went my ends & they said an SFI was booked despite the engineer today say that was impossible. Sky has contacted openreach and I shall get a call direct from them tomorrow to book an appointment with them. Lets see what happens! more rubbish I bet, vodafone is looking more attractive now due the price.
 
You want a speed boost not SFI engineer (Speed boost costs the CP more money of course).

SFI will just check if the line meets RFC specs for voice services, if it does then no fault is found. Assuming the line syncs up.

If the JDSU check passes and GEA is a pass then openreach are unlikely to cooperate on fault finding.
 
chrcoluk said:
You want a speed boost not SFI engineer (Speed boost costs the CP more money of course).

SFI will just check if the line meets RFC specs for voice services, if it does then no fault is found. Assuming the line syncs up.

If the JDSU check passes and GEA is a pass then openreach are unlikely to cooperate on fault finding.
Click to expand...
Sky don't subscribe to broadband boost engineers. What you're after is an FTTC3.
 
stoofa said:
I have noticed that you post these prices each and every time Vodafone is mentioned. Yet there is no evidence at all to indicate anyone has ever been charged them. All very similar to every other ISP who also "reserve the right to charge, should the fault turn out to be internal wiring" - the difference being Vodafone post their charges and all other ISP's hide under "a charge".
Click to expand...

Just keeping people aware.
 
MissChief said:
Sky don't subscribe to broadband boost engineers. What you're after is an FTTC3.
Click to expand...

this is what sky keeps booking but a line engineer appears, you can check my notes on the account to see sky have requested that specific engineer and its openreach not checking the notes. I dont need a speedbost I want my speed back that I had from when I was connected. I'm sure an engineer has switched my good like with someone elses but proving that is something else. A line attenuation increase is proof of that so lets see what happens now!
 
The last time l reported my connection dropping out which had been going on for quite some time, four previous engineers said my line was ok.

After a few weeks again l reported the same fault again a engineer was sent out he had read the past engineers reports. On arriving he checked the condition of the line from the master socket to the pole it was in poor condition he said this could be the problem.

After renewing the line he ran the line tests again and the results were a lot better, on leaving the engineer said with a bit of luck you should not have any more drop outs.

My connection has been fine no drop outs and my down/upload speeds have improved as well.

So why did none of the previous four engineers pick up on the condition of my line?
 
FTTC3 visits will be useless unless is an obvious fault, is pretty shocking thats all sky support for home vists (I guess they dont want to spend more than the minimum on callouts).

If you pay peanuts what do you expect, basically an FTTC3 engineer is the cheapest option for an engineer home callout on FTTC.

Whats not known to normal punters, is that there is a lot of different modules for engineer callouts, additional modules cost more money but it allows the engineers to look for more faults in different parts of the network, the cheapest engineers aka SFI/FTTC3, will just check the socket, run a JDSU test, check GEA status, and if those 3 are good they will usually cite no fault and leave. The isp then tells the customer its openreach's fault and it loops.

This situation has came about because isp's keep pressuring ofcom to restrict openreach revenue (so is cheaper for them) and in return openreach reduces the quality of the services offered to meet those financial requirements, its a race to the bottom on quality.

Some engineers of course are also just plain lazy, but every now and again you get an engineer who does more than the job demands, and this is what the likes of sky are hoping for, that an engineer will give them more than the modules they paying for.

I was lucky on my recent fault, as the line was completely dead, bit hard to claim is no fault in that situation, the line failed the GEA test so openreach recognised the fault and fixed it without even coming to my house.
 
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Of course the engineers are told to trust their equipment and if their JDSU says there's no fault, tell the customer that and close it. Not always ideal as not every issue results in a fault. They also have their managers on their back constantly to clear more jobs daily.
 
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