Fibre - Plusnet vs BT - Preferential treatment going on?!

Morning all. I'll try and keep this sweet and simple.

Example A. (myself) orders Fibre broadband as an existing plusnet adsl customer on December the 3rd, self install, engineer booked for December 18th.

Examble B. (neighbour) orders Fibre broadband as an existing BT adsl customer on December the 6th, self install, engineer booked for December the 14th.

Same cabinet, which went live on the 3rd of December.

This seems highly unfair to me, I order two days before the neighbour, yet have to wait four days longer for an engineer to go and do some quick wiring in the cabinet?

What's going on here?

On the face of it, it does look like BT have booked an engineers slot 4 days ahead of Plusnet. However, BT have a history of making errors due to their reliance on the 3rd world.

I wonder if the CP's are offered 'blocks' of availability ?

Openreach goes overboard to show NO preferential treatment to BT.

TBF it's only 4 more days, not really life and death is it ?

Resourcing plans can change daily , and with openreach frantically trying to clear a backlog of blocked/ out of capacity cabinet's, more resource may have been made available in the rush up to Xmas

What's the big rush ? Four days isn't going to break you. Just sit back and enjoy your increased speed.

Pure luck really. When my friend's cabinet went live, his neighbours went with BT and he with Plusnet. The neighbours appointments got cancelled en masse and his didn't. No logic to it.

His neighbours did eventually get connected.... 2 weeks later!

Thanks for all the replies, it isn't life and death as discussed.

It's obviously more efficient for an engineer to come once a week and connect two new services, than have to come out again to the same cabinet and connect me up four days later.

My anger/confusion is based around the assumption that Openreach clearly don't use a system that works out how many customers need a connection in Cabinet X for that week, and then bundle them all together on the same day.

That's right, they don't plan work efficiently, they use panic-mode firefighting instead.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

That's right, they don't plan work efficiently, they use panic-mode firefighting instead.

It all similar businesses, when there is always panic-mode firefighting, the good fire-fighter gets promoted, and then promotes others. They think panic-mode is the natural way of running a business.

That rules out the promotion of and often causes the departure of the good planners who organise things to avoid panics, making the occasional one easily handled.

Sounds like a fantastic way to lose money hand over fist.

Update from the Neighbour, he has had an email through moving his connection date from the 14th to the 22nd of December.

Upon receiving the email he logged into the BT user web panel and moved it back to the 14th again, I hope this doesn't end up a major headache for him!

It's possible that between you ordering and your neighbour ordering someone else may have rescheduled or cancelled an engineer appointment freeing that space for a short space of time.

An end-user may be able to move the date in the web panel for the retail ISP but whether that drills down to Openreach is very suspect, i.e. probably what will result is ISP asking for the move and then Openreach shifting it back to the 22nd again.

Or even worse, knowing the "one step at a time" systems they seem to have, the request to move to the 14th at BT Consumer will trigger a cancel of the 22nd. Then the request for the 14th to Openreach will be refused as somebody else will have collared it, and the 22nd slot will have also gone to someone else while that is all going on.

Edited by RobertoS (Sun 06-Dec-15 16:31:50)

It sounds like Openreach need to upgrade their systems to some 2015 spec equipment!

Nothing to do with the equipment . It's to do with crisis-management specialists (that's the management speak for panic-mode management, see earlier) not seeing that they need new sales order, local loop job scheduling, and related billing systems.

In reply to a post by TaKeN:

It sounds like Openreach need to upgrade their systems..........

They certainly do need to do that. Whether their current hardware limits having decent software is a possibility but it's more likely the software just doesn't produce a sensibly organised booking system.

In reply to a post by BatBoy:

On the face of it, it does look like BT have booked an engineers slot 4 days ahead of Plusnet. However, BT have a history of making errors due to their reliance on the 3rd world.

Hmm, interesting - I don't know about BT Retail failures but Plusnet also have a bad record with cancelled Openreach appointments ...... now what's the common factors here.....Openreach is obviously one of them, but I'm led to believe that Plusnet's and BTr's provisioning systems are similar but how accurate that is I don't know.
I've also noticed on Plusnet's Feedback boards several times a while back that people who went to Sky after having cancelled appointments and then another lengthy wait, seem to have managed to get earlier bookings. This I strongly suspect is down to the Service Level Agreements that Sky and Plusnet have in their contracts with Openreach.

In reply to a post by TaKeN:

Update from the Neighbour, he has had an email through moving his connection date from the 14th to the 22nd of December.

Upon receiving the email he logged into the BT user web panel and moved it back to the 14th again, I hope this doesn't end up a major headache for him!

That was a very silly thing to do IMHO. I'd suggest that he actually speak to his provider to make sure that doesn't get shifted to an even later date as has already been suggested. He could ask if the same date as you is available.
However, I also suggest that you speak to Plusnet soon (chat or phone) to make sure your appointment hasn't been cancelled. There are too many cases where people only find out when there is a no-show of the engineer. Make sure Plusnet actually check with Openreach and not rely purely on their own systems.