Early this morning my DSL went off. So I checked my router and the line wasn't synced. I did the natural thing and rebooted my rooter.

Still no go, so I phoned my ISP to make sure it wasn't a billing issue. Not a problem their end I was told. So they left me on hold for a while they checked with BT wholesale to see if there's a problem. I was told there was some work going on at my exchange at the time my router disconnected so it may be due to that. They did a line test and verified there was a problem.

I was told to do all the usual tech' support type stuff. So I wired up an old Speedtouch DSL modem I had lying around (and spent an hour on an 0845 number downloading the drivers for it), changed the microfilter, plugged the whole shebang into the master socket, unscrewed the phone socket front plate to get to the back up socket and I was still getting no sync. I pretty much changed every piece of hardware that could be changed without rewiring the master socket to the external wire.

When I rang my ISP back I told them all of the above, they said it's almost certainly a problem at the exchange, and it's BTs fault. However... if BT can't find a fault at their end I will get billed (by BT) £50 for the cost of the engineer visit. This apparently gets automatically added to your next bill.

This isn't my ISP trying to rip me off, this is the third time this has happened to me in the past 5 years (with different ISPs). Each time it's been something failed at the exchange.

I fully understand why BT charge this £50 "fine" (so people don't call out an engineer everytime they trip over their modem cable). However, why doesn't this work in reverse? If it is BTs fault surely they should be made to pay the customer £50, if a BT engineer trips over a wire at the exchange and causes a problem it costs the customer as much time, effort and potentially lost wages as it does for a BT engineer to visit an exchange on a false call out. Probably more so.

If they are capable of imposing this unagreed "fine" system on customers of other companies (I am not a BT broadband customer!) for faulty hardware at customer premises surely they should be equally culpable when their hardware is at fault.

PS: Sorry for the long post, I'm just annoyed that I'm stuck on dial up when I have things I need to do that require broadband!

People fail to realise sometimes, that the vast majority of ISP's actually use BT equipment and lines for their services.

If it wasn't for BT's work, your net would be down more often.

I know someone who just joined Bulldog broadband, and were going crazy as to why they had to have a BT line fitted first. Well, how's it gonna work if not?

Think about this, how many ISP's are there, loads, and all using BT exchanges. There's bound to be problems, and it's not really BT's fault. AND, with more and more ISP's coming on the market, promising higher and higher speeds, theres going to be more strain on an already bulging and ageing infastructure.

I'm with BT, Broadband, and have been for the past year, I haven't had to make one call to a Helpdesk ever, maybe I'm lucky, or maybe it's the fact that I've not got sucked in to the "£5.99 Unlimited 2meg Broadband", (an exaggeration, but you know what I mean) that connects for about 20mins a time before dropping out.

Look what happened when Cable came on the scene with phone lines, loads of people switched from BT. But now, they're going back again to BT.

What do they say ..... The grass is always greener !

im on bt broadband too, i had some problems when i first joined after about 6 months, i ahve to say, when i did finally get put through to the real technical helpdesk, with people that know what they're talking about, we found the problem.

since then, i had a few problems with disconnections, but i narrowed that down to my bt usb modem, as soon as i got a router its been fine