Peter's Blog

After a week I got an answer to this message to pipex. Apparently 'preactive' bounced my mail to customer services on 6th October who, five days later, sent me a generic email about what to do if you have no signal. I print it below in case it ever saves anyone from having to contact Pipex customer support and wait five days for a reply. If you do all this before contacting them it will save some to-and-fro.

Dear Peter Wilkinson

Thank you for your email

Sometimes the signal can come back by a reboot or re-installation of the modem drivers but if this fails, you will need to follow the below steps.

Firstly, try swapping over the Microfilter which your modem plugs into. These can sometimes prove faulty which can cause this problem. If you received the microfilter from PIPEX and it is in warranty, we can replace this for you.

If this does not work, you will need to take your equipment to something we like to call the 'basic circuit'. This means removing all non-adsl equipment and trying your wiring in the below order:

Main Socket - Microfilter - Modem/Router - PC

Why do you need to try this?

We fully appreciate that it may be a nightmare to move your PC to another room but unfortunately BT will not accept a fault without this being completed. If the fault is escalated to BT and they decide to send an engineer out, they would try their laptop and modem on the 'basic circuit' and if that works, they can charge you a £58.75 call out fee.

PIPEX obviously do not want you to incur unnecessary costs so trying this yourself will dramatically reduce the chance of being charged. Also if you are able to do so, try another modem/router which will rule out the possibility of your equipment being faulty. If your PIPEX supplied modem does cause the problem and it is in warranty, we can replace it for you.

If you notice a lot of noise on your line or cannot make voice calls at all, please phone BT on 151 from your BT line and they will be able to run a check on the line to rule out a voice line problem. Please also ask them for a reference number as this will help us with our investigations.

We hope this helps with your enquiry, but please feel free to contact us if you require further assistance.

I guess this means they won't suddenly respond to my message and cut me off so I'm safe to buy a wireless ADSL modem. Amazon, here I come.