Going live on a Saturday

I have gone back to PlusNet because I needed a short term cheap service and PlusNet were easiest and I had a router that would work with it.

PlusNet systems are still diabolical for telling you what is happening. Middle of last week I asked what was going on as the status had got stuck and suggested the broadband order hadn't yet been placed - they confirmed it had and would go live on Friday (14th).

Then I got emails through and they said it would go live on Saturday. I was in Saturday and the line did get a sync around midday - pretty much dead on time. Then PlusNet's poor handling of new connections kicked in. You can't use the connection until PlusNet receive the notification of go live from Openreach and PlusNet enable the authentication for the account. So, a live line on Saturday - the date they said I would go live. I got the email this morning (Monday) at 8:23 to say PlusNet had enabled their part of it).

It appears that going live on a weekend is pretty pointless as PlusNet don't enable the line until the Monday morning anyway. Luckily I wasn't in the rest of the weekend but what is the point in telling customers they will go live on a Saturday if PlusNet won't actually enable the line until the Monday morning - PlusNet systems are still very poor for handling these things.

I was told years ago that the Provisioning Team, who actually place the orders on BTW and Openreach, only work Monday to Friday . I didn�t realise they had to do the account activation as well, and I�m fairly sure they don�t need to be involved in the circuit activation on the account.

On the other hand it would be why Plusnet always say it can be up to midnight on the activation day. I get the feeling that team do scheduled update requests from Openreach, not real-time notifications from OR.

Maybe it is the likes of Bob Pullen who are higher levels of CS that can do this account activation ahead of the Openreach notification.

If it is standard practice then they should have told me the line would go live on Monday rather than Saturday. Luckily I didn't need it over the weekend so I thought I would leave it to see how long it takes. I don't think it is coincidence that it happened a little after 8AM this morning. They really need to change their message to users or change their system. Generally ISPs don't manually activate the ID after the migration - most setup any IDs before the migration so that it is live as soon as OR do their work. Luckily I only plan to stay with PlusNet a relatively short amount of time and just needed something cheap and "good enough" rather than paying £60 to BT for a FTTC connection that I was hardly using.

I think PN's rational is that the billing for the account only starts from the day the line actually works. If they enabled your login in advance of the notification from BT you would start paying from then. That wouldn't be good if there was a delay by BT!

Will be interested to see when they start the billing from as my phone went live last Monday but broadband only went live this morning - as it is a package price I will be looking forwards to seeing if the 2 are split apart to provide partial billing for the broadband (not that the phone was any use to me as I am not using it as a phone line just as a way to carry broadband so until this morning I to had no service that was useful to me).

If there systems worked properly the line would be active as soon as OR do their work and the billing would start from the notification from OR to PlusNet of activation. It's not that hard to do. I wouldn't care if PlusNet had staff to activate it over the weekend when OR install but as they don't then telling me it will be activated on Saturday is wrong as the line was not of any use to me until this morning - their Customer service is about as good as it was when I left them the first time.

Monthly billing has always (in the past anyway) been on the broadband activation date. Whether it is the same with their new billing system...

In reply to a post by jelv:

I think PN's rational is that the billing for the account only starts from the day the line actually works. If they enabled your login in advance of the notification from BT you would start paying from then. That wouldn't be good if there was a delay by BT!

Although BT don't do that. They will bill from the commit date which if the Monday would be that (or a later live date if delayed). After all, they are already passing that data across to the end CP. You can technically use the service early if OR do the work ahead of time. No faults can be raised in that period but it would be provided as-is until you're officially live. Maybe PN are trying to avoid explaining that although it works, it's not really "live".

PN used to allow the component to be made active if this did happen in the pre-BT days but it appears with their size, they no longer do. This is also annoying when OR do the work, you have sync, but due to an issue with them sending the KCI through in time, you have to wait the whole weekend.

Many other providers allow you to login as soon as sync appears as it really does not impact anything in terms of billing if you're using the service a day early or not.

Matt

Edited by uno (Mon 17-Sep-18 12:28:43)

My sympathies on your delay but maybe it was the fault of Openreach rather than Plusnet. My fibre upgrade was confirmed by email with go-live date on August 23 but didn't happen.The Openreach status page had it scheduled for September 3, but even then OR did not carry it out. A helpful PN operator discovered that the BT technician "had not been able to make the appointment", and my fibre was connected two days later.

I'm sure it will be sorted soon, and you can look forward to meeting Plusnet's new billing system which has already delivered my first overcharge. I can see the smoke rising from the PN community forum from here ...

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

My sympathies on your delay but maybe it was the fault of Openreach rather than Plusnet.

It can't have been since the line was connected and sync'd on Saturday.

In reply to a post by kasg:

In reply to a post by Malwaremike:

My sympathies on your delay but maybe it was the fault of Openreach rather than Plusnet.

It can't have been since the line was connected and sync'd on Saturday.

Indeed. The line was a disconnected line and previously was FTTC. I ordered ADSL and on Saturday around midday I had an ADSL sync of around 10/1. So, it can't be that it was the previous sync as that was FTTC at 54/14. That means BT had done the work when PlusNet said they would. Had the account been setup I am certain it would have connected - but despite PlusNet giving a go live of Saturday it appears their provisioning don't do it until the Monday. PlusNet may blame OR for not telling them it had gone live but that wouldn't make any difference with most ISPs as usually they setup and enable the account before BT do the physical connection. It is PlusNet's bizarre system that causes the issue.

EDIT : PlusNet have replied on their forum saying their staff do work weekends and they would look into why it didn't go live. I have also asked if they can confirm when I will be charged from.

Edited by ian72 (Mon 17-Sep-18 14:38:14)