I should like say a big Thank You to all the Plusnet staff who helped sort out my internet connection.
I had changed my internet provider to Plusnet in June 2011 and received a pretty good connection at 2.8 Mbps download until December 2012 when things went haywire. Speeds dropped and sometimes I could not connect at all. I phoned the helpdesk several times and staff were always polite and helpful; my settings were tweaked and I was able to connect, but the problem persisted on an intermittent basis.
I joined the Plusnet forum and staff here were particularly helpful. They sent a BT engineer to my house. He changed the cable from where the line first entered the house to my master socket, about 60 feet in all, and renewed the master socket. I was then able to connect at 2.5 Mbps, but Plusnet said there were still errors on my line, and indeed pages would still hang when I tried to connect. A second engineer was dispatched. This time my intermittent fault was present at the time of his visit, and he couldn't connect at all even when using the test socket.
He went to the exchange where my line was perfect, then to the junction box on the road where the signal was again perfect, and finally isolated a fault on the pole outside my house. He changed a fuse/connector (whatever) and the errors on my line fell from 360 in the 5 minute test to 0.
I now have a steady connection at 5.07 Mbps downstream.
So here's a big thank you to Matt and Adam and Chris over here, and Dean and Sam and Michael and Richard and Luke and Nick and James and Rob and the others on the Help Assistant and to all those in the background who persisted until my line was rectified.
John
