Cease on the line

I'm on ADSL with Plusnet. About a month ago there was a bit of a debacle, triggered by an attempted move to NOW Fibre Broadband, which fell through when it transpired there was no capacity on the cabinet - even though they'd accepted the order.

I've been checking regularly and it turns out there's now capacity on the cabinet again. So I asked Plusnet (whom I'd never left) to upgrade me.

This order too has failed, this time on the grounds there's a cease on the line, effective 29/7.

Plusnet said this must have been triggered by NOW at the time of the failed move, and they'd forgotten to remove it, so I needed to ring them and ask.

This I tried, but NOW categorically denied it, and said it's nothing to do with them, as they are not and never have been my provider - it's down to Plusnet to sort out.

Relayed this back to Plusnet, and they say they can see the date the tag was placed on the line DOES correspond to the date of the failed order with NOW (15th June) but stopped short of saying they can see the identity of the placer.

They say I should go back to NOW and urge them to liaise with Openreach, as the tag may persist on the latter's systems, even if it is not showing on NOW's internal systems.

Judging by the response I got last time, I'm not optimistic about NOW's willingness/ability to fix this. They weren't rude or anything, but quite adamant it's wholly Plusnet's problem, so I don't think calling them again is going to help.

And surely it's not for the customer to have to act as intermediary, telling one ISP what another says they should do, anyway?

If it isn't sorted by the 29th, will my internet stop working? Assuming Plusnet are correct, and it IS NOW that placed it, why would the cease date have been more than six weeks away from the date of my order? I agree NOW are the most likely culprits, but have no actual proof of anything, so I'm on quite shaky ground to keep badgering them.

Down to Plusnet to sort out.

Any advance on just "It's Plusnet", please? Why is it them, how do I get them to accept responsibility, and what happens if it isn't sorted by the 29th? Do I lose internet? And then what? Get charged for recommencement?

If there is a cease on the line (you may be able to check if there are open orders on the line here https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL) then you will loose the line, and therefore internet on the 29th.

You will then need to talk to PlusNet who would have to place a new order to get the line reconnected and fibre connected - this is likely to involve quite a few days downtime.

If you want to check for sure I would go to the PlusNet community forum and send a PM to a chap called Gandalf - he is excellent at sorting out tricky issues.

Edited by flanzm (Wed 21-Jul-21 19:44:54)

I am starting to get somewhere, as 40 minutes on the phone to NOW still got categorical denials that it's anything they can remove. Told Plusnet this, and they've apparently now got an admission out of BT that the status got "stuck" somehow (internal system problem) even though there is no longer any pending order with Openreach.

So looks like NOW were correct all the time when they said they'd already cancelled everything, and there was no longer anything left for them to remove.

It may be complete coincidence, but my connection quality seems to have improved. Lately I have had not speed problems, but connectivity problems that look rather like a DNS issue. It was something and nothing, so I never did raise a fault with Plusnet, thinking that I'll be upgrading to fibre soon anyway, so whatever it is will be history.

But since BT admitted late this afternoon that they'd found some anomaly, I seem to have a more responsive connection. No idea if those two things are linked.

In reply to a post by TLM:

Any advance on just "It's Plusnet", please? Why is it them, how do I get them to accept responsibility, and what happens if it isn't sorted by the 29th? Do I lose internet? And then what? Get charged for recommencement?

Just jumping on here - but the responsibility for a circuit is always with the current service provider/communications provider - so if Plusnet is the active provider, only Plusnet can request or cancel a cease.

If you placed an order with now, what would happen is they'd request takeover of the service. If that didn't happen - in this case because no fibre cabinet capacity, the current service will remain in place.

It sounds more like Plusnet has put a cease in as they think the service was to be cancelled, but unless I've missed some obscure scenario, and I doubt it, only the current service provider can request, issue or cancel a cease.

A migration order on Openreach placed by the gaining provider generates at least two orders in the Openreach system. A cease and a provide. That's just the way their system works.

Here the provide failed. Openreach themselves should in my opinion automatically have cancelled the cease.

The problem is to get Plusnet to cancel the cease, assuming they can seeing as they didn't place it. Explaining it to a script-monkey on first line support would be almost impossible.

The best place would probably have been on the Plusnet Community forums, where some useful reps are present, with more powers than first line Help.

The question now is, is TLM still online, as it's the 30th.

In reply to a post by pluralist:

A migration order on Openreach placed by the gaining provider generates at least two orders in the Openreach system. A cease and a provide. That's just the way their system works.

I understand how the system works - I place orders daily. The point is, if there is a problem, the responsibility is always with the CURRENT service provider - which has been Plusnet the whole time.

Plusnet have the route to get Openreach to resolve the conflict, but of course that will require Plusnet support to be sufficiently clued up and I have no way to know if they do understand that, but I suspect likely not as edge cases are rarely well handled by general support companies.

In reply to a post by therioman:

In reply to a post by pluralist:

A migration order on Openreach placed by the gaining provider generates at least two orders in the Openreach system. A cease and a provide. That's just the way their system works.

I understand how the system works - I place orders daily. The point is, if there is a problem, the responsibility is always with the CURRENT service provider

It isn't always. Far from it actually.

There are many problems that can arise during a migration where the current service provider isn't allowed to do anything.

For this issue it may be down to the current provider to sort, but definitely not always.

An example.

Edited by j0hn83 (Fri 30-Jul-21 20:40:32)

Still here, and I did indeed turn to the PN Community forums, where a staff member took up the case.

It wouldn't be fair to name them here.

I was initially still bounced back to NOW and asked to try again to get them to remove the cease.

After 40 minutes on the phone to them at my own time and expense (to be fair, their agent was very sympathetic, and spent the extra time to check with more than one colleague in case the first was mistaken), they could not find anything residual at their end that was even possible to cancel. They were adamant the order failed and was cleared down within about an hour of being placed, so no work was ever done in pursuit of it, and there was nothing outstanding that they could remove/revoke.

Relayed all this back to PN, who then went to BTW, who admitted the status of my order had "got stuck" due to an internal system problem, and although they accepted there was no order pending from Openreach, they couldn't close it down for reasons unknown, and opened an enquiry called a bridge case.

This fortunately resulted in the cease getting removed (I'm told it wouldn't have taken effect in practice anyway, as it wasn't backed by a real order and they knew it - but I wasn't keen to test that).

I've now got a rather tentative upgrade date of Tuesday, as in: "The engineer will go there and visually inspect whether it can be done, but he might report back that it can't."