Broadband Support chatting more rubbish

[gazbiggs]

I know this has been done to death, but I feel that the more people that mention this sort of stuff, will be the only way anything will ever get sorted.

My connection in Leeds has slowly deteriorated to a crawl over the past several weeks.

I have a 10mbps connection could only download the 50MB (on Net) test file from - http://homepage.ntlworld.com/testmyspeed - at 15KB/s.

Not exactly 10meg I thought!!


I partook in a 40 minute phone call to BB Support - unplugging cables, power cycling the cable modem etc, etc - all to no avail.

Finally - an engineer was scheduled the next day and my cable modem was replaced with a shiny new ntl 250.

Hold on a mo - it cost me £4 for them to establish their modem is duff!!!!



Next day came - modem replaced and all ok - NOT!!!!

I don't know whether this is just all coinciding with the latest bout of upgrades but for the past two weeks now the connection has been up and down like a whores drawers!

This morning was the final straw when I couldn't browse the internet at all.

However, Skype was connected, MSN messenger was connected, my VPN to work in the US was connected, my VPN to work in the UK was connected, I could browse the company Intranet, e-mail was coming and going fine, I could ping remote Web sites but still could not browse the rest of the Web.

Another phone call to BB Support to report this and the cycle all starts again - unplugging cables, bla, bla, bla until the guy homed in on the fact that I had a router and a static 192.168.0.x IP address on my PC.

"ntl do not support static IP addresses any more" I was told, to which I exclaimed "ntl have never supplied static IP addresses on a residential account"

He then went on to tell me I had to reconfigure my PC with a dynamic IP address.

"Why", I asked "when it is my router that is connected to the cable modem not my PC".

I then went on to explain that I had been using a router for 3 years and my latest configuration for the past 6 months with no problems at all apart form the last few weeks.

"Well that configuration is not supported any more" he said.


By this time I was getting pretty peeved knowing that I had to pay for the privilege of talking to this nit-wit so I hung up.


The connection has been rock solid the rest of the day - now figure that??


Seething all day about this I just decided to phone ntl to officially complain about BB support and their lack of understanding of anything beyond turning the modem on and off and imagine my surprise when I was told I had to phone BB Support to complain about BB Support.

That is typical ntl??

We wonder why things never get changed???

If the only way to complain about BB Support is to phone BB Support then I wonder how many complaints ntls board get to hear about?

None - would be my guess.


Anyway - rant over - and if this is the only was my complaint will get seen by ntl in the UK then here it is.

Regards all,

gazbiggs

[James Henry]

Why troubleshoot it properly when you can get the call cleared and make the stats look better?

I am not sure anyone with enough 'clout' will read your post, though, it may be worth sending your feedback through responsetek

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/forumdisplay.php?f=81

as, messages via that do get seen.

Unfortunately though, the support guy was correct - NTL do not officially support routers and it is always best to connect direct when they are trying to 'tech' a problem. The support guy was just following his training, NTL's stance is that they will support the connection to the modem, anything other than that is down to you - and will often be scapegoated as a potential cause of the problem, even if logic dictates otherwise.

[~Dan~]

Originally Posted by gazbiggs

However, Skype was connected, MSN messenger was connected, my VPN to work in the US was connected, my VPN to work in the UK was connected, I could browse the company Intranet, e-mail was coming and going fine, I could ping remote Web sites but still could not browse the rest of the Web.

Sounds like it's the webcache. Go to this site and choose a webcache (the ones in the green box about halfway down the page), it helps to choose a local one (or a neighbouring town). Then enter it into your browser settings. For IE it's tools-internet options-connections-lan settings-advanced. http: enter your proxy here. port: 8080. That's port 8080 NOT 80. For Opera it's tools-preferences-network-proxy servers and enter the http and port as with IE.

[nffc]

Originally Posted by James Henry

Why troubleshoot it properly when you can get the call cleared and make the stats look better?

Well we get statted on first contact resolution so there's obviously a trade-off, seeing as the evident ideal of all problems being resolved quickly on the first contact is rarely met.

But then I don't work for ntl.