Monday 25 June 2007

Will I be reconnected yet?

I'm on hold with Orange...

...

...

... The indian gentleman tells me his name is also Philip which is nice. I feel like we're bonding well. He has an interesting telephone manner. After I ask him a question he puts me on hold.

For example:

Him: Can I take your BT landline number please?
Me:
Him: Thank you. Your details are loading now. Please hold.

I told him I wanted to be connected to the LLU by the time I get home. As a punishment I'm on hold again now. He is finding out more information.

He's back. I need to ring back on Thursday. Apparently it's not just my account, but several others in the area. That's nice to know. It really compensates for no broadband knowing that several other people are going through the same thing.

I asked if it will definitely be complete on Thursday. He said that I am welcome to call back on Thursday to find out.

I guess I'm calling back on Thursday.

Friday 22 June 2007

Migrating?

It feels like it's been a while since I spoke to my friends at Orange. As expected, the person I spoke to in technical support didn't pay any attention to the information I gave them from BT on the 14th. Fortunately he quickly tired of answering my questions (each of which prompted him to put me on hold for a minute or so) and asked me to redial 150 and select option 4 and ask for the "special provisioning team". (This is clearly code for "awkward customer" or something, as I'll come onto later).

I asked him at which menu I should select option 4. He repeated that I should redial and select option 4. I explained that in order to reach him I had navigated 5 menus and could he confirm at which of the 5 I should select option 4. After placing me on hold for a couple of minutes he told me it was the first menu.

I redialled 150 and discovered that the first menu only has 2 options. After some trial and error work I got through to a menu which had 4 options (I believe the combination I used was 224) and I ended up speaking to a human, but from England this time.

I asked for the "special provisioning team" and he completely ignored me and went through the normal detail confirmation (phone number, full name, password etc). I don't think there is a special team, I'm sure it's just code to let them know you've already tried certain options or something.

Anyway, I told him what the BT engineer had told me and he informed me that they have placed an order with BT to put me on the LLU at my exchange. You can find more information on this here.

He said that I should be able to call on Monday and find out when I will be connected to the LLU which should then enable me to reconnect my broadband. So, I guess we'll see on Monday.

I asked about compensation for the time I've not been connected and he said that could be discussed once I am reconnected.

Thursday 14 June 2007

BT get involved

A man from BT rang today. He told me that they (BT) were responsible for my broadband being disconnected. Apparently the "black box" at the local exchange which was being used for my line had been re-allocated to another customer because Orange hadn't notified BT of my need for the box. I guess this is because whoever lived in my house before me had broadband and they were able to hook me up without making a change.

I'm currently on the phone to Orange trying to convey to their technical support the need to contact BT and request a new piece of equipment be allocated to me at the exchange.

Tuesday 12 June 2007

01642 732785

01642 732785 gave me a busy tone for around half an hour. I googled the number and found a forum post which suggested calling 550 from my Orange mobile, which I did. Eventually I got through to a human who told me I had come through to the "speed modem" (?) department and I needed to call 150 from my mobile to get the Livebox help team. He helpfully gave me the menu options to use (22541) to get through to another human being.

This got me through almost immediately to someone.

His name I didn't understand (Onsall?). He asked for my home phone number and two letters from my password. He asked a number of questions which resulted in him saying that they need to conduct a line test. He asked me to leave the Livebox switched on and to try a factory reset every 24 hours for the next 5 days. After 5 working days, if it still doesn't work I am to ring back.

Apparently my problem has been upgraded to the "highest possible status" so we'll see what happens now.

Sunday 10 June 2007

The Saga Begins

On Wednesday 6th June, 2007, I got home from work and found that my Orange broadband connection wasn't working. The wireless network in my house was still working, and the Livebox was powered on and connected to the phone line. I connected a laptop to the Livebox using a network cable (this wasn't strictly necessary - I could still access using wifi) and browsed to http://configuration.adsl to see if I could glean any clue as to what was causing the problem.

Having signed into the secure area I found a status message of "PPP server down" being displayed.
I used another internet connection to google this error message and found posts such as this one which unfortunately didn't leave me very hopeful about getting the problem resolved quickly.

I decided to start this blog to:

a) document the process I go through to get my broadband fixed
b) leave as a resource for anyone who has the same problem in the future

As a first step I'm going to ring Orange today and explain the problem and see what happens next. I'm going to try the Broadband technical support/customer services number I found here instead of the expensive 0870 number. This is 01642 732785.