topic Re: Broadband outage day 4 in Broadband

Broadband outage day 4

imcc20 — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 17:27:48 GMT

Hi, plus net community.

I have been a PN customer for 25 years plus, I have fortuitously had few difficulties with the Broadband service until Tuesday this week when inexplicably my internet stopped working. This afternoon i joined the community as i suspect I am not alone in experiencing a similar internet connection problem?

The following days have unsuccessful in finding remedy. PN promising to escalate, but did nothing, the help bot failing to call back relatively, and PN reps booking appointments with BT who arrived yesterday failed to identify any issue and left, having disconnected our land line. BT arrived a little after 8 fixed the wires they had damaged yesterday and left without checking my Broadband, as for remedy BT say its PN and PN say its BT. and so the merry go round continues , meanwhile I cannot work so using up my leave at my cost - no one seeming to take responsibility so in my first post to the forum is there anyone who can suggest a fix or a way to move forward. PN seem to overlook a long standing customer with a fault on the internet service and being given the run around with out any seeming action to fix the problem.

I have a ADSL connection via a TP link router ( incidentally renewed on Wednesday to eliminate a hardware issue) rebooted and reset several times to try to push through the connection. Still no internet.

I can see the DSL connection and have both up and down loads,
I have zero internet connection
PN advised a wire fault - booked BT - BY say they found nothing - but disconnected my phone
PN re-booked BT - BT refused to attend today.
I called PN again lunchtime after being told to call back in an hour, the notes to hand over my issues were incomplete so we started the description all over again . PN promised to call back after looking at a remedy with next steps............. hummm so far they haven't yet.
I suggested a re -provide e.g. start a new connection to get this resolved quicker but PN didn't respond.

Any advise from the community and info gratefully received.

Thanks

Re: Broadband outage day 4

jab1 — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 17:40:20 GMT

@imcc20 So, your connection is live, as you can see 'both uploads and downloads'. IF you have this activity, exactly what do you mean 'I have zero internet connection'?

Re: Broadband outage day 4

Mustrum — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 18:58:00 GMT

@imcc20 also what do you mean BT disconnected your line? Is your phone working?

What lights are on/off or red on your router? And have you looked at the logs to see what errors may be shown?

Which router do you have? Have you configured it properly with your username and password?

Do you have a PN router?

Sorry for all the questions, just trying to establish a baseline.

Re: Broadband outage day 4

jab1 — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:02:42 GMT

@Mustrum He has a TP-Link router, and says he can see upload/download traffic, so he has a connection.

Re: Broadband outage day 4

Mustrum — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:08:37 GMT

@jab1 could just be one leg.

It's all lacking any useful detail though.

Hopefully we have given them some help in order to help them more!!

Re: Broadband outage day 4

jab1 — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 19:10:43 GMT

Agreed, @Mustrum - but they have not been back since~1830, are are offline now, so who knows. 😀

Re: Broadband outage day 4

imcc20 — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 10:43:34 GMT

Thank you for the responses so far and sorry I have not responded,

I ought to say that I live in an area which has little if any mobile connectivity, to connect I have to go to the end of the garden and even then it is hit or miss that you connect so to hot spot with my laptop is a challenge particularly this morning when it is blowing F7 gusting 8 and monsoon season appears to have hit the south coast. So to respond to posts so far to provide greater detail

We have an ADSL connection, Fibre is coming but not to our village just yet. We have had PN for 25 – 30years moved here 19 yrs ago and aside from a couple of hiccups the connection has been generally good and sufficient for three of us to work at home during the pandemic. BT have recently installed new infrastructure locally for their Fibre network, and engineers have been around on and off for two weeks working last week on our telegraph pole, we had a brief internet outage of internet on 24^th July. Last Tuesday afternoon 1^st Aug our Internet disconnected and despite resets, checks of settings, visit from BT and multiple calls to PN and including purchase of a new replacement router nothing has worked so far and internet connection remains dead.

I do not have a PN router but have a TP link 2800 and bought a TP Link 2100 modem router last week as a contingency and to ensure the router wasn’t at fault.

Router is set as follows:

Broadband username : YouUserName@plusdsl.net

Connection type or encapsulation: 'PPPoA' or 'PPP over ATM'

Password: The password I use to log in to My Account

Virtual Path Identifier (VPI): 0

Virtual Channel Identifier (VCI): 38

Multiplexing method: 'VC Based' or 'VCMUX' or 'VC-Multiplexing'

In the Router - advanced setting page I see no internet connection but see the following –

On my router I have a red light showing for internet connectivity

DSL is showing connected which my initial post referred to as follows:

Upstream Downstream

Current Rate (kbps) 888 9722

Max Rate (kbps) 888 12124

SNR Margin (dB) 14.3 7

Line Attenuation (dB) 20.8 36.5

Errors (pkts) 0 114

DSL modulation : ADSL 2 plus

DSL annex: A/L/M

Internet and Lan are using IPV4

I have found PN support to be ineefective to date, I was promised a call back on Friday before CoP but that didnt happen so I had to call once again and go through the now painful narrative from the start, I was told it will take 48hrs to escalate for BT to respond so have no resolution hope until monday at earliest but i suspect no action to remedy will be received. Anyhow...

Hope the added detail makes sense, any help or suggestions are welcomed and sorry I am unable to remain online, this just isn’t possible so have to depend on unreliable mobile connectivity.

Thanks all

Re: Broadband outage day 4

bmc — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 10:55:00 GMT

@imcc20

Can't help with your problem but keep an eye on the following. Full Fibre shows up as WBC FTTP in the left hand column and Available to the right.

https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL

If your phone number matters to you you'll need to look at VOIP providers in advance as PN don't do phones on FTTP.

Brian

Re: Broadband outage day 4

Mustrum — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 11:44:11 GMT

@imcc20 from what you say it sounds like either a password problem, or your ADSL port has got stuck. PN should be able to tell you if that is the case.

Have you recently changed your password in the PN portal?

Logging into the router and going to the system log may show more details:

16. 9. System Log

System Log can help you know what happened to your modem router, facilitating

you to locate the malfunctions. For example when your modem router does not work

properly, you will need to save the system log and send it to the technical support for

troubleshooting.

1. Visit http://tplinkmodem.net, and log in with your TP-Link ID or the password you

set for the router.

2. Click Advanced > System Tools > System Log page

You could also see if changing your username and password to :

Username: bt_test@startup_domain

Password: testing and see if you can get internet access.

Re: Broadband outage day 4

Spiralofdoom — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 12:20:20 GMT

Hi and welcome

You may find my thread "Another blackhole - fault not fixed after 3 weeks" useful, though it is depressing!

I am not at all technical but I can tell you:

1) you need 2 OR engineer visits before they will escalate your problem to the CAT team (Customer Assist - apparently for more complex issues)

2) push PN on your working from home - they should send you a EE Mifi/dongle to use for free (we got 3 x £20 credit to use BTwifi hotspot for 5 days at a time, then they sent us a mifi)

3) we got far more action in the 5 days after I first posted on here, than in previous 3 weeks

4) a hard cease and re-provide worked for us

Good luck

Re: Broadband outage day 4

Dan_the_Van — Sat, 05 Aug 2023 12:56:02 GMT

@imcc20

The fact you have been with plusnet for all those years will hold no advantage in getting the issue resolved, it's down to Openreach in the end.

If you are unhappy with the service they (plusnet) are proving you can raise a complaint I have in the past.

See https://www.plus.net/help/legal/complaints-code-of-practice/

HTH

Re: Broadband outage day 4

imcc20 — Sun, 06 Aug 2023 10:56:43 GMT

Thanks for responses to date. PN called this morning to advise BT say a line fault.
Expecting BT to arrive tomorrow .... just had text so another lost work day!
I am utilising sons wifi just now but will try to fix later:
BT test engineer check on router
I haven't yet but will try a change of my PN password.
If BT don't fix it will be complaint time;
Thanks folks !

Re: Broadband outage day 4

imcc20 — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 09:04:32 GMT

while I await BT to arrive I used the following settings as suggested on router to test internet :

Username: bt_test@startup_domain

Password: testing

it had no success. No change and still not internet connection.?

Assuming this may well be a OR issue.

Thanks

Re: Broadband outage day 4

MisterW — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:12:53 GMT

Username: bt_test@startup_domain

Its actually bt_test_user@startup_domain and the password is blank

If that works try bt_test_user@plusdsl.net ( again blank password )

Re: Broadband outage day 4

imcc20 — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:29:01 GMT

Thanks for this, tried the BT test and Plus net test , with zero result.

as before both showing Lan is sync but no internet on either attempt.

Re: Broadband outage day 4

MisterW — Mon, 07 Aug 2023 10:55:38 GMT

An Openreach problem then...

Re: Broadband outage day 4

imcc20 — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 10:29:56 GMT

Day 7 the outage continues but we have a result.....

OR engineer arrived late morning and spent all afternoon yesterday testing and trying to tracing the line back though the village up to exchange, in the end he could find nothing but resupplied via the boxes and changed exchange connection. Last night no change still seeing a DSL sync and attempted to connect - but no internet.

Having no response from PN I updated PN last night. Still no response from the escalation team which placed the ticket on hold at 7 am Monday.

However, sometime in the last few hours i have internet connectivity restored, I have requested an update of the resolution from PN so that i can understand if this was a OR issue which appears not the case or something with my PN ADSL account settings. I may be pre-empting a close to this issue and my connectivity may well drop out just as quickly as it was restored. but for now it appears fixed.

The log on my router will determine how it performs but at least I am now able to start to catch up on the work which has been backed up since last Tuesday, with no office to return to WFH has its downfalls sometimes

I am disappointed at the lack of customer support provided by PN from the outset, the automated 'help bot' didn't help at all, mostly ignored my 'adviser ' requests many times and it wasn't until my issue was escalated that i received any resemblance of 'support' .

I have two positives from this experience:

1. joining the community forum, no doubt when I migrate to fibre which, so i am reliably informed by the OR engineer in the cabinets already and is planned to arrive/roll out in the village next year I will need a stiff drink and PN 'community support'

2. I have bought a new router which, may have been an un-neccessary expense but i can, if required in future put a data sim into the box as a business contingency.

thanks for your post and support I will post an update of what the causation / issue fix was for reference ( if PN provide one).

Re: Broadband outage day 4

willcutforth — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 10:40:44 GMT

@imcc20 Glad there has been some traction with this but I am sorry about the Customer Service issues that you have had. I will feed back so that this can be addressed but if you need anything else from us guys just give us a shout on here and we should pick up on it.

Re: Broadband outage day 4

imcc20 — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 11:23:11 GMT

Thanks Will, appreciate the contact, I will continue to hope of course to receive a customer service call to sign off the fault, and to extend PN apologies for the delay etc but just to feedback my predominent experiences:

The help bot, was totally inconsistent and didn't not generate a call back on multiple occasions when it did prompt a call back ....
Having to repeat the same issues time after time serves little purpose save to waste PN's time and the customer, a ticket number or reference might save everybody time. Also if the notes had been better then PN customer service reps would be better briefed to respond to customers and would save time for everyone.
When i did speak to PN and was promised a call back which did not happen that is simply unacceptable practice, if PN say they will call, they should call back to update, doesn't matter if no change but if you set an action to deliver something (a call) their is an expectation for the customer to received that . Not to fulfil an action/call is basic customer service error and poor practice at best.
When i had sight of the ticket notes the messages scribed by PN team members were of poor quality, empty of detail, some incomplete and I saw inaccuracies which serve no purposes when trying to follow coms and identify problems, it perhaps is a training issue but accurate contemporaneous notes are essential to achieve a prompt resolution of problems.
lastly OR visited twice: one engineer was dismissive, unhelpful and did not complete his line checks and left us having disconnected my landline. The next engineer spent most of his day working back from the master socket, though the various network cabinets and then at the exchange. he also repaired the damage the first engineer had caused to the wiring apologising for the inconvenience caused. The two engineer visits could not have been more different.

Thanks again Will.

Re: Broadband outage day 4

willcutforth — Tue, 08 Aug 2023 12:57:08 GMT

Thanks for the extensive feed back! This is being put into an email as we speak so that we can find out the failures of what's gone on! It's always helpful when customers like yourself break it down like that so that we know where to improve.