hutton_d

I know I know, I've flipped .... Broadband went t!ts up Wednesday evening. Rebooted the router but still nowt.Thought it might have sorted itself overnight as these things sometimes do (the engineers doing some work, fixing a *common* problem or summat) but it hadn't. Rather than call first thing I anticipated what they would ask me to do so I a) plugged my router into the master socket - still zip. b) tried several different ADSL filters - no joy. c) tried an old BT USB router - still nowt.

So, rang BT - checked their status line. problems in the SE and Ipswich. As I'm in West Cornwall I guessed they didn't apply to me! Called back and spoke to their Indian branch. Explained the issue and what I had done, fully expecting them to tell me to do it all again just becaes they had their *script* to follow. But no, they did a quick test that verified that the problem had to be between the exchange and me and said 'we'll get an engineer out Friday pm'. Not bad I though.

Friday at 11am - 'can we come earlier sir'. No problem. The the engineer calls and asks what I've done about the problem 'as the notes are a little muddled'. I edplained so she said (yeah, she .... ) she'd check the exchange first. Came down to the house after replacing a line card there that had failed, tested my line and all was well with the world again.

Now, I have always found the Openreach guys to be very helpful, especially if you cross their palms with folded readies, but the Indian call centres to be very obstructive and unhelpful. Glad to say from on this issue they seem to have upped their game! Credit where credit is due. Though the cynic in me says that this is how they should be anyway .....

Oh, and the Openreach speed tester agreed with my router over the line speed - 8Mb/s And my local exchange is already wired up for BT Infinity with the first local customers going in next week. Time to get myself on the list!

Dave