Hi, Ever since the end of last week, our landline has not been working properly. This problem started in heavy rainfall, the phone would ring once or twice, but when going to take the call, it was evident that the line was dead. This happened a number of times throughout the day and even into the night. As such, we disconnected the phone overnight.Since then we have received a couple of actual calls, but the line was very fuzzy, constantly crackling and very faint. At times when we checked for a dialing tone, sometimes it seemed ok, but other times there was no dialing tone. Today, a friend phoned and said that he had been trying to call me last night, for about 1 +1/2, but always got the engaged tone. Today, I could hardly hear him, and, as there was so much interference on the line, we had to end the call. I then called '150' on our landline and spent, over 45 minutes talking to an advisor, who again, I could hardly hear, and he carried out a number of tests on the Landline. It would appear that my account details may not be up to date, as he was convinced that the problem was due to us not having been changed over to the Fibre system. But we have. He could not understand how our Landline was connected via a separate input terminal, nor why we could use Broadband and watch TV, whilst our landline was causing problems. He eventually, after I kept appealing for an engineer to visit , transferred me to another advisor, who then proceeded to ask for my identity, password etc, and then asked what the problem was. We only spoke for a few minutes before my call was cut off. I had expected a return call, but it never came.. We have already had 2 different engineers here to convert our Landline to Fibre, and now we have a problem with our phone line. Can anyone give me an idea as to whether this problem could be caused by rainwater entering the Fibre cable network.
Incidentally, although promised a refund of National Call charges, which we were forced to make after our old landline was cut off, we still have not received this. An engineer then came and connected a new Router, and changed some of the wiring connections, and probably spent over 2 hours doing this. (He said that it should have been a 20 minute job ).But, he did not have the new set top box that I had requested. He had only checked that our phone was working and, later on, when we switched the TV on, and also out Laptop we then found that we had no Wi Fi connection, nor any TV Channels. Following this, I called an advisor, informed them of the situation, which they advised would be recorded on our Account, and arranged for another engineer to call. When the 2nd engineer called and looked at the cable connections, he said that it looked like the earlier engineer had not connected the router properly. That Router then had to be changed again. He also said that our Cable connections were as old as the hills, and should be in a Museum. As such he then changed all the cables, connectors and the incoming sockets and also installed a new set top box. Again, whilst he was here, there was yet another problem with the new equipment, which he then had to change. He thought that following the initial installation of our new Router, which appeared to have caused the loss of Wi-Fi and the Television Channels, we should have received compensation for the loss of services following the initial installation of the new Router. But, again, we have not received any compensation payment for those periods.
I am sorry to have to write so much, but it infuriates me to think that we, the long term customers, are mostly using old equipment, and do not receive any discounted services compared to any new users. Many of us are not aware that our Routers/ Set top boxes are outdated.. In my opinion, the services provided are getting worse, especially based on the high costs that many of us are paying. Time to now seriously consider changing Internet/phone provider.
