Thread: Help with BT & 2 phonelines

Hi,

My parents live in a village with only one telecoms provider supplying it: BT. Two weeks ago the lines deteriorated so much so that they can't make calls out, or accept calls longer than 30 seconds IN.

Numerous phone calls followed not only from myself on behalf of my parents, but also from then when they can actually get a line out to BT long enough to complete the call.

BT report when I call that they've sent numerous 'engineers' out to test the line and can't really find the fault, they accept there is one but just can't find it to eliminate it. They seem content to dawdle along untill they do however, but with no emphasis on speed. Unfortunately my parents NEED the phone line what with my Father just being diagnosed with Pancreatis, Gallstones etc BT don't seem too bothered only promising to get to the end of the problem sometime in the future.

Is there anyway to get BT to pull their finger out? My parents have 1 Business Line, 1 Household line (as designated by BT) along with one ADSL line assigned to Pipex. All deliver periodic downtime, but nothing but problems for the last 2 weeks other than what sounds like a buzzing sound and 'your call has been connected' only for it to then disconnect again and again and well you get it... BT assure us that we're waiting for the DACS guy to figure out if there's a DACS on the line. But that's been it for the last 2 days.

Is there anything we can do?

Thanks.

You should't have DACS at all. Sounds as though the Business Line has the copper pair, and is carrying ADSL, whilst the Residential line is using DACS, meanwhile all suffer with the problem.

For your emergency scenarion, get a PAYG handset (last one I saw was a nice nokia on ASDA for £9.99). That will give you resilience agaist a coms fsilure.

Next, Business lines have a much higher service level against outages (which is why they cost more) to ensure you complain about THIS line being faulty, and you'll also be requiring their compensation package for as long as the problem exists.

To be fair, intermittent faults can be a pain to resolve, especially if their testing kit shows it to be fine when the tests are run, but even if this is the case, the can offer to replace your dropwire (from the pole to the houe) as this can deteriorate rapidly after 10+ years of use.