6 weeks of calling, 6 months of bad connection, faulty DSLAM, stuck with no resolution in sight.

[Jinkz]

So i've had a really terrible connection from going on between 6 months and a year now, all the regular calls made with reboots, firmware upgrades etc and me demanding an engineer come out to investigate as I know the problem is not within the house. 

Quelle suprise - the fault lies within the DLSLAM down the road. There's a note in there from a previous engineer explaining the same issue. He plugs me into a few other ports and having the same problem so it's that. My lines not balanced at all, reading 20db on one and 60db on the other. This causes around 6 dropouts a day on average, and sometimes the speed goes down to 3mb on a service that should have a minimum of 40mb (62mb advertised).

The engineer can't touch anything but those cables, he had to ring someone in India to diagnose it. Openreach I assume are responsible for this box. There's a huge disconnect from the operator and the provider. Where do I go from here?

I've called every other day for the last 5-6 weeks now, promises of call backs, money off (had £20 off my bill so far) and all sorts but ultimately I just want it resolving. 

Any advice?

[Jayach]

If there is a fault in the cabinet, it is up to Openreach to fix it. Nothing we can suggest except to keep on at Vodafone to get Openreach to do their job.

[Jinkz]

Which is what i've been doing, but I don't consider this normal customer behaviour, me having to constantly do this. What extra steps can I take? It's getting quite boring - I know every single question and answer, even the three songs they play in rotation in the hold music off by heart. 

Is 6 weeks not long enough, when do I quit? It's not even like I can come out of contract and go with someone else because i'll have the same issue. 

My question to Vodafone every time is, how can we progress this so an engineer can come out and fix it.

[Jayach]

The only extra thing you can do is raise an official complaint.

Complaints Code of Practice | Vodafone UK

If they can't fix it in 8 weeks you can take it to CICAS.

[Jayach]

If it is as you say, then there must to lots of people locally suffering the same. Try to connect with them (local social media?) and petition Openreach as a group, or take it to the local papers?

[Ripshod]

As the fault is with the DSLAM, even if you end up with another provider for FTTC chances are you'll still face the same fault. Face it, with the move away from copper it's getting less likely that'll ever be replaced. 

How about, if FTTP is available, you ring the sales team and discuss an upgrade to superfast100? That's what I did for my failing superfast 2 and they did it for me without any penalty for early cancellation - I had 11 months left. And it was cheaper. Must be done on the phone, online upgrades generally fail. 

Just a thought. 

[Jinkz]

FTTP isn't available in my area, the houses are about 13yrs old, so after they dug up the UK, but not new enough to be standard. 

[Jinkz]

I'll give this complaints procedure a go as well, thank you. 

[Gemma]

@Jinkz - I’m sorry to hear how long the connection's been like this for and how many times you’ve had to contact us.

We can look at the fault ticket from here and liaise with the relevant teams for you. So that we can so this, please contact my team through Social Media.

[Jinkz]

Complaint ticket ref is - ref: 26793786 

The complaint is a copy and paste of the above pretty much. I've sent a message through the Facebook team.