I would actually agree with jelv's assessment at the present time, unfortunately.

I have been with PN for 8 years now, 2 years at my parents and then I have had my own account for nearly 6 years and was, until now, perfectly happy to recommend them to anyone. However, I've had nothing but issues since I moved premises in September.

I had a house move ticket opened on October 7th and it took until November 3rd for the actual install to be ordered because my address apparently wasn't on the supplier's system (yeah, there's a BT NTE5 in the premises and three neighbours all have ADSL with BT themselves and not on LLU).

The engineer dispatch was set for the 11th, the engineer who turned up was not with BT but was a contractor who showed up at 7.58pm, looked at the NTE5 and said he would be back the next day to connect the line. He did come back, couldn't find the test tone on the cabinet and then said he had to leave. Didn't show up again then until the Monday (15th) when he found the tone at the cabinet and patched it, phone line was active. The ADSL order was then placed to be completed on the 22nd.

So, since I knew then response time for ADSL orders at my exchange (2-3 days) I plugged the router into the NTE5 test socket and waited. On the 17th the DSL light became active so I knew it was connected at the exchange. However it never synced. Phoned on the 23rd to ask about the order and to say I thought it was completed and to then report the behaviour of the connection.

Rather than checking to see if it was active I was told to wait another 24 hours because a house move can take that extra amount of time. Stupid me.

Phoned again on the 24th, finally got through to the faults department who closed my original house move order, was asked the standard questions (router in the NTE5 test socket, tried 2 routers known to work, etc.) raised a fault and then started the BT Wholesale test process. Which promptly completed with an error within 2 minutes. I then had to phone back the next day to ask what was then going to happen.

I was asked if the router was in the master socket (2nd time for that question). Nothing was done according to the ticket except a comment logged.

The house phone rang on November 29th and my housemate was asked if the router was in the test socket (3rd time...) and another round of tests was performed.

That night the line connected for the first time I was aware of but when I checked the line stats I got a downstream attenuation of 63db (lol) and a sync speed of 160kbps... ok so minimum line sync. Upstream? 15.5db, upstream sync of 480kbps and a speed test was getting 0.03MBps down and 0.36MBps up. ADSL but the wrong way lol

Updated the ticket that night and the line was going up and down the entire time.

So, when I got home today I looked at the ticket and seen another round of tests done and an attempt to call me to... guess what? Ask if the router was in the test socket... for the 4th time and each time was logged on the ticket.

So 10 days after the order was scheduled to complete the line isn't stable and there has been no record of BTW getting involved.

I know it's not the line distance as the exact same line was getting a sync of 1920kbps down when with TalkTalk and nothing in the house has changed. So it seems that the issue lies either at the cabinet (hello Mr. Contractor who doesn't know how to play with pairs!) or at the exchange. And since it's only the downstream that's affected I know it isn't a physical issue with the line outside of one of those two places.

So... TL,DR: 2 months after raising the request for a house move I still don't have an ADSL connection, have paid 2 fully months for it, and am still stuck in the PN support queue as they don't seem to have engaged BT for an engineer to check what should be a simple pair switching. I work US hours in the office but also do on-call so have a requirement for ADSL meaning I've been paying to use the BT FON WLAN from a neighbour's place at £5 a day... on top of the PN charges (which I probably won't be paying this month until the ADSL is working, DD cancel maybe...).

In reply to a post by VidX:

Was it TT LLU? if so, I wonder if it was ever disconnected? That could explain why the line/address wasn't on BT's system.

You could be on a different pair now from the cabinet to the exchange, with TT on the original. That could get interesting. Is the previous occupant's post being redirected by the Post Office?

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

In reply to a post by VidX:

Was it TT LLU? if so, I wonder if it was ever disconnected? That could explain why the line/address wasn't on BT's system.

You could be on a different pair now from the cabinet to the exchange, with TT on the original. That could get interesting. Is the previous occupant's post being redirected by the Post Office?

It was TT LLU and the pairs that lead to the premises were apparently switched from TT LLU on the cabinet to the new BTO number. That was set up at the exchange end prior to the engineer coming out for the first time. So, from what I've been told, the TT LLU kit is no longer in play.

(The previous tenant is still living here but is moving out next week, TT were called in August to cancel the line, no movement by October so PN just got a brand new line in... completely different story involving TT's useless CSR performance).

That does seem to explain the non-existence of the address . LLU phone lines do not appear on BT (broadband) checker databases, though obviously they appear elsewhere in the system.

HI VidX,

Can you post the ticket no. so I can take a look for you?

Jojo

In reply to a post by jpilson:

HI VidX,

Can you post the ticket no. so I can take a look for you?

Jojo

Hey Jojo, the ticket dealing with the line fault is 37405138.

Cheers!

Anyone who watches the Community forums will know that since I made the original post there has been no improvement (my gut feeling is actually that things are worse). We regularly see complaints about tickets not being dealt with for many days (I've seen one this morning where it took 5 days for a ticket about a totally dead connection to be looked at and passed on to BT).

We regularly see promises that there are more CSC agents being recruited, in training, about to hit the floors but it never makes any difference. It's blindingly obvious that the growth in customer numbers and the associated problems it outstripping the ability of CSC to cope.

Didn't we go through all this a few years back prior to PN being sold to BT. I regret to say PN is now a quantity ISP rather than a quality ISP.

Sorry if this seems off topic, but what does their recruitment process and policies got to do with you?

I'm staggered by that question as it's blindly obvious why it's an issue.

They haven't got enough experienced staff to deal with the problems generated by the rising number of customers. What they are doing to address that issue is obviously of great concern to both existing Plusnet users and to anyone thinking of joining Plusnet. If you get a problem it may take an inordinately long time for Plusnet to respond and resolve the issue.


PS I'm still waiting for an apology for the duff information and insults you posted over the capped upload speeds.

Edited by jelv (Mon 14-Feb-11 12:32:15)