The elusive spotted telephone engineer

Oh dear......we are at these people's mercy!!

Oh my goodness

What an appalling service you have had..I think a threat to get in touch with Watchdog,or the Press might make them sit up and take notice,if it happens again..do you think you may be reimbursed for the £110 ,or is it just goodbye and thank you ?

We have just run a test of our Broadband speed. Only getting 0.4! We are thinking of rejoining "which" and setting them on them. They have said we will get compensation but will not talk about till it all sorted. We have to stay with BT because of the Redcare we have to have on our alarm to trade or I would have given them notice by now. We did say to them thinking of going to press as they left our company without it's alarm fully working. The mobile signal was still working thank God.

That's disgusting. I would go to another company !

We have broadband speed of 0.65 here even though there is a green cabinet three miles away. Several businesses are run from home and these people are at a disadvantage. We have written to BT's CEO and been given "executive" help but the result is the same: no chance of an improvement in our broadband speed as the poles are 9 kms away.

We have been told that rural areas can ASK for an improvement in speed : that a direct application must be made!!!!! It could possibly happen then that BT pay for half the set- up and users pay the other half. It seems that rural villages have done this. Expensive!

We are offered help for a satellite connection by our CC but unlimited access is not offered and this could prove very very expensive.

BT have the monopoly and they are being draconian.

Change to Plusnet. They answer the phone and do what they say they will.

Hubby and I was only saying last night that we wished we could change to Plusnet. It comes out best with "which" every year. The police insist we have BT as the Redcare we have to have on our alarm is monitored with police and guaranteed with them arriving within so many minutes. We have to have the same level of alarm as a bank. You see we are gunsmiths. I said to BT that in this day and age I'm sure the press would love to hear that they left us with our alarm not working on all levels. They said it's not up to them what you use your line for! We are only getting such slow speeds since its come back up yesterday. We live only 150 yards from the exchange box. This Executive Level team are sending us a free upgrade hub. We will see if that makes any difference but again not holding my breath.

I fully sympathise with you. If you read my first blog you will see that I was a BT "sufferer" myself. My internet connection was either very slow, or having no internet connection at all, for many - many months. I phoned them many times, I spent hours on the phone talking to them and they even sent an engineer here to say that everything was fine. In the meantime the problem got worse, the connection was so slow that I could not even open the photos here at G.O.Y. I decided I had enough with them, found their email and sent them a very strong email threatening to close my account. They phoned me immediately and asked me to unplug the Hub for one minute. I do not know what they did, but when I pluged it back the miracle happened. The internet now is very fast. It is still fast after two weeks and hope it stays so.

Hi costas, I've got my fingers and everything else crossed for you that it stays working. I did read your blog before all this happened so not realising that you had sorted it I had sent you private message last night for Executive team. Glad you don't need it.

Costas4: I am always unplugging my TalkTalk router and re-setting it. It works for a while and my speed goes up to nearly 1. Great while it lasts. Then it's back to watching paint dry.

Father's Day I took my I-Pad along to our daughter's and revelled in accessing a speed of 10!

BT want to charge my neighbour £35 a month for their "faster broadband" with no guarantee it will work. No idea what they mean by "faster broadband" as TalkTalk isn't allowed access to it.

Steragram: What can PlusNet do that TT can't?

Nothing that BT can't, but it actually does do them when you ask and you can actually get through on the phone and talk to them (though once connected you can wait up to 20 mins) The only thing we are worse off for is that obviously we can't be in the BT phone book but that rarely matters. Seems like an extremely helpful and efficient setup, and no dearer than BT.

Well today we are supposed to have an engineer coming. Our new hub arrived yesterday but once plugged in, it didn't make any difference. Speed still only 0.3. The engineer today is a land line engineer as our phone line is so bad now we can't hear the dialing tone. We're been warned he may not look at the Broadband as it might again not be on his work sheet. The engineer that was book for monday was a broadband engineer but they cancelled him when they booked one for today. Give me strength! I emailed them to say I was not prepared to go to the back of queue for my broadband if it can't be sorted today. They have now booked broadband engineer for Tuesday on the agreement that after todays appointment we test speed, and if working them ring them to cancel. We have got a book running here as to if the engineer even turns up! Finger crossed but not holding my breath.

ENGINEER TURNED UP! Said problem with the phone was the broadband and gone away. Waiting to see what happens Tuesday now.