Continuous drop-outs, 3 engineers and a whole load of excuses from SKY. Please help.

[RUNITDIRECT]

I once had a fault that took over 10 engineer visits & went on for over a year. In the end it was fixed by the an engineer. Not someone who has been with OR for 6 weeks & claims to be an "engineer". This was with BT mind so much easier (believe it or not!) to get to the bottom of it.

[gymno]

10 engineers & over a year?

That's terrible.
Surely there's a point long before that where they should effectively give up & just switch to a spare line?

They could then mark the bad one as 'needing attention' & leave one of their gadgets plugged in to detect the fault.
If they really wanted to.

[kuplion]

Gymno and RunITDirect, thank you for the support. I'm waiting until Friday (the 5 working days) and then I'll be chasing this up further with SKY. I can't fault SKY on the manner, but I certainly wish their system was a bit more forgiving and customer friendly.

[RUNITDIRECT]

10 engineers & over a year?

That's terrible.
Surely there's a point long before that where they should effectively give up & just switch to a spare line?

They could then mark the bad one as 'needing attention' & leave one of their gadgets plugged in to detect the fault.
If they really wanted to.

They DID switch the exchange pair, TWICE! The issue was with ADSL2 equipment. The most annoying part of it was BT management were fully aware of the issue! I forget the exact cause but the engineer has his JDSU tester actually on the tie pair in the exchange (so no line what so ever!) and it was still showing errors (would drop when phone rang/within minutes of a call).

[kuplion]

Having read through your issues and resolutions, I'm incredibly wary that I could end up enduring another one of these ongoing problems. Would you recommend I contact SKY before Friday and see what else can be done?

[RUNITDIRECT]

I think the problem with Sky is you get them going between you & Openreach. As a BT customer they claim the companies are separate but the reality is it is much easier to get to the bottom of faults like this. If it's still dropping waiting until Friday is time wasted....

[kuplion]

What would you recommend? I'm almost certain if I call them they'll just tell me to wait until Friday.

[kuplion]

I've just noticed that when I lose connection, my noise margin is falling into the negative values. Can this be indicative of REIN or anything else that could be affecting the line?

[gymno]

I don't think that the phenomena is specific to any one cause or type of fault.

Many faults tend to be caused by high resistance somewhere along the line, such as a loose joint or corrosion etc.
In these cases customers often report the same sharp dip in noise margin immediately prior to a disconnection, however identifying the source of that noise is a different matter.
That's what the openreach gadgets are for.

[bubblegun]

Probably not helpful but when calling Sky about broadband issues you tend to get better help when you speak to (in-house) Scottish advisors. If you know a Dunfermline accent then this means you are probably speaking to Broadband Centre of Excellence where fixing things is much easier. If you get a northern Ireland accent then you should test their knowledge if you're not sure of their competence. This is a generalisation (of course) as I've spoken to plenty of idiots at First Source (Sky's technical business partner for broadband) but I've also spoken to plenty of experienced people who know what they are doing in these centres.