Hi,
*edit - TL;DR, telstra sent an incompetent child to fix our phone/DSL, which he pantomimed doing, our internet has been broke for over a month and still going, TIO can't compel Telstra Wholesale to do anything. Does anyone know how to speed Telstra wholesale up and make them fix incompetently performed work on our phone socket/phone line, extract an apology for a bad worker, or get them to refund service charges for eg. Netflix, which have been unusable due to their pissfarting around?
Sorry, kind of at a loss with what to do here. We've had sub-1000kbps connections for over a month now and I'm just wondering if anyone can help getting a better response. I feel like to truly get into everything that has happened would be so far beyond anyone's patience I'll just try and chop this down to the basics:
Had connection problems last year where we lost dialtone and DSL speed then fell off. Took about 3 weeks to get fixed properly. The telstra techs severed our phone line in two places to test the last leg of the connection between us and the pit, and left it looking very bodgy.
https://abload.de/img/clipboard01-sidetaps16yac.jpg
https://abload.de/img/img_20170707_13143394wao6m.jpg
this lasted about a year, to now, where we've gotten horrible internet connection speeds - dropping from 16000kbps, to 9, to 3, to 1, to now, where it can't hold more than about 500kbps for a few hours at a time.
Visionstream and Telstra have both been out here to examine the fault. Visionstream's tech said it was likely something to do with the nearest exchange, and something very close to the telstra side. Telstra's tech insisted it was our phone socket instead, and after giving us the runaround and wasting 5 days (he marked the job as completed on his end without ever attending our house or testing it locally), finally showed up.
Here's the job he did to replace the phone socket:
https://abload.de/img/p7110771-interior19yln.jpg
that's a gaping hole in a loose face plate with wires hanging out of it, with two post it notes he stuck over the rest of the hole. This thing will survive contact with a pet or child or vacuum for about 3 seconds, I think, and so much as touching it loses our net connection.
He also cost us our dialtone, again without performing any real tests on the site he marked the job as finished, and tried to leave. Had to chase him down in the driveway to get him to come back. Fixed the dialtone, didn't fix the internet connection (7000kbps or so, held for about 4 minutes, he left before it dropped out). Called up again, got him to come back, briefly dropped in, didn't say where he was going or what he was doing, later saw him working in the pits on the street opposite us. Eventually by about 4pm (he started at about 8) we got a 14000 or so kbps connection, but he never dropped back to check.
That connection lasted 28 hours or so, and then it did the familiar 9000 > 3000 > 1000 > 500. Where it has sat since the 11th.
I've since performed some tests of my own and I believe the problem is something to do with the line resistance on the last bit of line between us and the pits. Ringing our number, with or without a phone or line filter attached, will knock our connection offline. We can train the DSL to about 7000-8000 if we're currently on an active voice call, but not with just a dialtone. I ran this by our ISP's support team after I tested this out, and got told this was all well known in DSL support circles, and that it can often be to do with poor cabling that is frayed, or open to the elements and oxidising.
This is incredible to me, because I've specifically used the word 'oxidising' to describe what's happening to those open tap points I posted earlier. Every tech who has come out here and the ones last year have said this is no possible issue and this quality of work is fine. The telstra tech openly sneered at this idea and when I asked him to sheathe or cover up that first open tap point, he got annoyed and thrust electrical tape at me and pissily said, "show me how YOU would fix it then". I told him that while I'm not going to tell him how to fix it, legally he's the only person here who can, so it would be nice if he would at least try. He then blamed me asking him to tape this up - which he feigned doing, and then, it turned out, didn't actually leave tape on there at all - for the loss of dialtone on the line later.
I'm starting to think Telstra know for a fact that the problem was never anything to do with our socket and was always to do with the poor workmanship and maintenance of the local cabling and/or telecoms pits near us. They have pantomimed fixing it and wasted a months worth of our internet stuff and cost me dozens of hours on the phone or waiting or chasing them up for work.
I lodged a TIO complaint right around when the Telstra tech 'fixed' it and severed our dialtone and tried to bugger off, but I was told by my ISP that this doesn't actually do anything to Telstra wholesale, it just gets my ISP in the poo. Which is terrible, because they've been truly great all through this, and done pretty much everything possible to get this worked on ASAP and provided as much help as I could want. It's Internode btw.
It seems like Telstra wholesale are basically immune to any kind of prodding and are content to be horrible at fixing their plain old telephone system stuff. I'm sure they think the NBN will fix this, but out rollout date, about 2 mins from the centre of brisbane, is 2019. They are doing work that lasts 28 hours and it needs to last 2 years. We have requested a different tech to attend the site, but this now looks like happening sometime into next week, bringing us to about 5-6 weeks of terrible connectivity.
Does anyone have any suggestions on what to do from here? We have the option of Telstra cable on our street, and I was tempted to switch to it, but that was before it became clear that we would basically be paying them 4-500$ for the service of having stuffed us around.
TLDR; might want to make a summary there buddy :)