Zen fibre 2 regrade and telephone service

Hi all

I placed an upgrade order on Saturday for Unlimited Fibre 2, I already had the Pro ADSL2+ and phone line rental plus 5000 minutes.

Now I expect to be billed for the fibre at 30 quid a month, but I see there is some extra £4.50 a month due to not having line rental. Except that I *have* got it already.

Can this be sorted out and rationalised or is it some sort of bundle vs new order vs legacy service thing.

I notice I wasn't offered a self-install, actually I'm happy with that as I want an ethernet connection to my Vigor 2830 with the Openreach-supplied modem and an engineer install.

Is there anything I can do about the charges? Naturally I would prefer to pay the minimum monthly amount that Zen will allow

Afternoon,

Can you shoot me over you acc details please and I'll this looked into.

Kindest Regards,

PM sent...

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

Hi all

I placed an upgrade order on Saturday for Unlimited Fibre 2, I already had the Pro ADSL2+ and phone line rental plus 5000 minutes.

Now I expect to be billed for the fibre at 30 quid a month, but I see there is some extra £4.50 a month due to not having line rental. Except that I *have* got it already.

Can this be sorted out and rationalised or is it some sort of bundle vs new order vs legacy service thing.

I notice I wasn't offered a self-install, actually I'm happy with that as I want an ethernet connection to my Vigor 2830 with the Openreach-supplied modem and an engineer install.

Is there anything I can do about the charges? Naturally I would prefer to pay the minimum monthly amount that Zen will allow

Interesting that it will be an engineer visit as Zen are now doing self install although I guess you could request a visit for extra payment. Either way you will get there "all in one" router which won't see an Openreach modem provided. So if you want to use your own router, you may need to source an Openreach modem yourself. I gather they can be picked up relatively easily for £20 or so.

As for line rental, it does seem as though your phone service is already with Zen and if that is indeed the case you certainly won't have to pay a surcharge by being a customer of another POTS supplier.

Could I ask what are your reasons for selecting a 2830?

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

Hi all

I placed an upgrade order on Saturday for Unlimited Fibre 2, I already had the Pro ADSL2+ and phone line rental plus 5000 minutes.

Now I expect to be billed for the fibre at 30 quid a month, but I see there is some extra £4.50 a month due to not having line rental. Except that I *have* got it already.

Can this be sorted out and rationalised or is it some sort of bundle vs new order vs legacy service thing.

I notice I wasn't offered a self-install, actually I'm happy with that as I want an ethernet connection to my Vigor 2830 with the Openreach-supplied modem and an engineer install.

Is there anything I can do about the charges? Naturally I would prefer to pay the minimum monthly amount that Zen will allow

Interesting that it will be an engineer visit as Zen are now doing self install although I guess you could request a visit for extra payment. Either way you will get there "all in one" router which won't see an Openreach modem provided. So if you want to use your own router, you may need to source an Openreach modem yourself. I gather they can be picked up relatively easily for £20 or so.

As for line rental, it does seem as though your phone service is already with Zen and if that is indeed the case you certainly won't have to pay a surcharge by being a customer of another POTS supplier.

Could I ask what are your reasons for selecting a 2830?

I didn't want an all in one router from Zen, I've always used Draytek Vigor routers and found them very good (with the odd problem with firmware bugs), so when I bought the 2830 I checked that it would interface to an Openreach modem via the ethernet WAN ports and went for that (and of course Zen have only recently started doing self-install which I didn't think I got because it isn't specifically mentioned anywhere in the order). I have had confirmation of an engineer install appointment on the 27th February in fact.

The advantage to an engineer install is that Openreach are responsible for the modem at my end and I don't have either an NTE-5 or anything like that, the wiring is untouched since the house was built roughly 20 years ago so I am expecting that to be fixed with an NTE-5 and I-plate or whatever the latest VDSL filtering approach is. All I need from my router is an ethernet cable if this is what is installed.

Edited by rippedcotton (Mon 16-Feb-15 18:06:22)

Agree with your sentiments entirely. A engineer install is the way to go and providing you don't have a contractor on the case you will always be better off especially if you abandon all existing house wiring and have a service direct to a new master socket.

I was just more interested in the features you considered desirable with the 2830 and whether your needs were for VoIP.

In reply to a post by trolleybus:

Agree with your sentiments entirely. A engineer install is the way to go and providing you don't have a contractor on the case you will always be better off especially if you abandon all existing house wiring and have a service direct to a new master socket.

I am hoping that I get an actual Openreach engineer, but of course I have no way of knowing who will arrive. My plan is to have a good stock of chocolate Hobnobs anyway and to offer the output of my coffee machines too.

The difficulty is that the master socket is in the corner of the room with a built-in bookcase in front of it (there's a hole cut through the back of this) and my existing modem is plugged in via a phone extension on the opposite side of the lounge.

I intend to have a data extension kit fitted (I have two of these sitting waiting) and for the master socket to be upgraded (I have a new BT-marked NTE-5 and i-plate that came from Clarity last year). My existing ADSL2+ gives me 5.5-6Mbps at about 4.2km as the cable travels from my exchange so I have been loath to change anything as some of my neighbours get less than 3Mbps despite all being in a development built at about the same time.

I shall also have the fun of trying to keep my amateur radio HF signals out of the VDSL cabling but at least the twisted pairs used for the BT and internal wiring are well balanced unlike mains-borne PLT signals that have a tendency to radiate all over the place.

In reply to a post by rippedcotton:

PM sent...

Did you get the details @Azzaka ?

An Openreach engineer arrived nice and early this morning, having already done the work at the cabinet (he called to let us know that the ADSL connection would drop).

Spent about an hour doing master socket and data extension kit fit, and installed the modem. Drank coffee, turned down the Hobnobs though (chocolate overload!) and then tested it all.

80Mbps down, 20Mbps up sync, apparently I am connected to Port 1 at the cabinet although there were 2 previous connections in slightly higher port numbers already.

Very happy with everything, re-configured my Vigor 2830 for WAN2 and it all sprang to life pretty much instantly.

Excellent! (Thanks Shane!)