Ordered phone and BB 3rd Jan with Plusnet

Hello. I`m posting here to let other people that are thinking of moving to Plusnet know how my order has gone.

A brief history:-

Ordered Phone and Fibre broadband on the 3rd of january this month and choose the 21st,22nd and 23rd as install dates.

On the 7th January I was contacted by a Plusnet agent who informed me there were no Spare Pairs and a Line Plant was required.

I was given a Commited phone Line install date of the 29th. a week later than I had chosen but As I had just moved and although my new property has a BT master socket the phone line had been ripped out from the outside plus it needed the line plant work. So an extra week to sort that out seemed fair.

I was Phoned on the 25th of January and the Plusnet agent told me that I would be getting a simultaneous Phone and BB installation. Thats what I call service.

At 5.28pm on the 28th of january I recieved a text "Unfortunately, there's been a delay to the order for your telephone service." I phoned Plusnet i was told my order had gone back into a delayed state and it was being passed back to the planning department, Plusnet couldn`t get the full details of the nature of the delay.

Since the 28th of January Plusnet has said on no less than 8 ocasions that work would be carried out to get my services up and running. each time apologising for the work not being done and blaming BT Openreach.

I joined the plusnet forum and started a thread in their feedback forum, "Continually have to call Plusnet", It was replied to promptly by a member of Plusnets Digital Care team. I was assured that everything that could be done was being done to resolve the situation.
A Plusnet Digital Care agent wrote on the 15th of February that I would recieve daily updates from him and he was personally going to take ownership of the matter. The last update I recieved from him was the 15th of February!

An Openreach Engineer phoned unexpectedly on the 19th of February. He was outside my property and wanted confirmation that he was at the right address. I met him outside and he told me he was going to put a new line in from the pole to my property. He then noticed the existing wire, went to his van came back with his BT Hawk device and informed me the line terminated about 45m away?. I left him to it.

To date there has been NO new line installation and I am unaware of any other work carried out to expediate the problem. Plusnet has reneged on their promises of daily updates and I have been left with no firm date as to when the services I ordered on the 3rd January will start to be supplied.

Although I am extremely annoyed with Plusnet I hope i havent been too biased..

will let anyone thats interested know how this situation develops.

pod

Yeah, not good. Have you been given any reason for the delays? Fibre cabinet capacity shortage?

I wonder if ordering ADSL2+ and upgrading shortly after moving in might be the way to go, with most ISPs I suspect there would be no financial penalty for doing it like this. And at least then you'd have some form of internet.

The lack of a spare pair of wires at the pole was the initial reason given. This required a pair divert but I was told there were spare pairs in the next box so not that big of a job, not 3 weeks worth anyway. Plusnets Customer services have on the whole been charming but charm only lasts so long.

Perhaps they need to kick Openreach a little bit more...

I find it very frustrating to be continually told by Plusnet that it`s the suppliers fault. Its been escalated twice so I have been told and the outcome seems to be slower service. openreach should be given a large kick by Plusnet.

There have been service status messages over the past 6-8 months about Openreach MBORC (Matters Beyond Our Reasonable Control) mainly starting from the time when there were some floods.

One of my clients in Chester has recently ordered a simple phone line, for a business, and the earliest date given for Openreach to attend was a month later. Unfortunately, it really is outside the control of most any ISP what Openreach does, or rather does not do for them, and not sure what can be done to get a better service from them, to be frank.

Before my client placed their order for the phone line (with a firm other than BT), I had rung around for various quotes for a line, with and without ADSL. Plus.Net business sales guy indicated a lead time of 3-4 weeks for a line (which would have been broadband and phone service, as they don't offer phone service alone) and I spoke the next day to another firm to just get a date for voice service, in case it was the addition of broadband that caused the delay. It was simply the (non) availability of staff and is quite deplorable.

Unfortunately, it's far from ideal for the ISP staff, who are let down by delays and cancellations, and have to talk to the end user, not knowing whether anything they say (based on what Openreach has told them) will actually come true or whether the staff at the ISP will be made to look like liars because someone in Openreach didn't do what they said they would, got delayed by an earlier job, or was otherwise affected by matters beyond their control.

Don't get me wrong - I feel for you and can understand the frustration, but can think of no way around it, and equally I feel for Plus.Net staff, left with egg on their face when they cannot alter what happens, either.

In reply to a post by doop:

I find it very frustrating to be continually told by Plusnet that it`s the suppliers fault. Its been escalated twice so I have been told and the outcome seems to be slower service. openreach should be given a large kick by Plusnet.

You wouldn't think that Plusnet was part of the same group of companies as Openreach.
It makes me wonder how other ISPs are coping.

In reply to a post by Wagstaff:

You wouldn't think that Plusnet was part of the same group of companies as Openreach.
It makes me wonder how other ISPs are coping.

That's exactly the point of EOI (Equivalence of Input). OR are not allowed to show any CP favouritism over any other CP, including the BT Retail group.

In reply to a post by Jaggies:

OR are not allowed to show any CP favouritism over any other CP, including the BT Retail group.

I'm not sure I want to know that Openreach are treating Plusnet as badly as every other CP.
But I wonder if the fact that they are sister companies means that Plusnet are not dealing with OR as aggressively as they might.

In reply to a post by doop:

A Plusnet Digital Care agent wrote on the 15th of February that I would recieve daily updates from him and he was personally going to take ownership of the matter. The last update I recieved from him was the 15th of February!

The whole situation is really not great, but this is failure unacceptable. I'll make sure this is picked back up.

Hi there,

I'm sorry about the lack of daily updates. I believe this was chased on Monday and I've chased it again today, though the news was less than ideal on each count. As of today we've had to escalate further again but regardless have been advised that the issue is due to be reviewed on the 25th - our suppliers have advised that there's only two engineers trained to do the work required and both are unfortunately booked until Monday hence the review date.

As is stated on your ticket, as soon as that's done we'll be requesting an expedited engineer visit for you - we'll be in touch to let you know the first available date and book this when you're available.

I'll check on this again tomorrow for you but suspect there will be no change, I'm sorry you weren't kept updated daily as promised. We'll make sure to do so from now on.

I received a phone call from Plusnet, thank you Matt. unfortunately I didn't get to my phone in time to answer it. I was left a voicemail inviting me to phone Plusnet for an update. So I phoned and the update is, drum roll please.

NOTHING has been done regarding the pair divert work. The Engineer sent on Tues wasn't skilled enough to do ... Anything?

I have been told that:
There are only 2 engineers skilled enough in the whole of the North of the country that can do the work required!!

One or both will be doing the work required on Monday the 25th and this has been Guaranteed.( honest to god guv).

When the work is done on 25th I have been promised an expedited installation for no extra charge. ( this might of sounded good a couple of weeks ago.) Having waited so long I would expect this to be the norm not a special dispensation.

I am wondering if this was chased up on the 19th as was promised would the engineers of been able to come out sooner. It wasn't followed up till the 21st so we'll never know.

Well wonders will never cease.

The pair divert work was carried out yesterday the 25th february..

BUT still haven`t got a dial tone and have been advised by Plusnet that more external work is required and that this SHOULD be done in the next 3 DAYS.
Any time youre given a time frame prefaced by a SHOULD isnt exactly a time frame more of a HOPE.

I will be phoning Plusnet yet again to try and get some definite answers though I wont hold my breath.

Hi doop,

I can see Adam's talking to you on Twitter about this so will leave that with him, but I can assure you - if we were able to give you a time and date for the work, we'd have put it on the ticket. I'd be extremely surprised if you were able to get a set time by calling.