topic Re: No Home Phone Connection in Home Phone

No Home Phone Connection

katzholme — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 17:14:39 GMT

I previously had broadband and home phone via John Lewis, provided through PlusNet and had good service.

With the demise of the JL service I recently switched to PlusNet and every thing appeared to run smoothly to start with, however:

While the phone initially worked OK following the switch over there was no dial tone. I reported this and heard no more from PlusNet, however I could dial out and receive calls O.K.

Now, 3 months into my new contract with PlusNet my home phone connection has failed. I still have good broadband speeds but the phone line is not working at all - no dial tone, no calls in, no calls out!

The only way to contact PlusNet appears to be via text on my mobile which replied ".....there is an outage in your local area........Estimated completion time 19/09/2023........If you still have problems after this date........

I cannot believe that I have to wait two weeks to see IF things improve.

Normally I would just go with this but unfortunately I am currently relying on my home phone for contact with my local hospital regarding treatment / appointments.

What is extremely frustrating is the inability to speak to anyone at PlusNet to discuss this poor service. No doubt I will still be charged for the phone service I do not have!

Does anyone have contact details for PlusNet where I can speak to a person rather than a bot?

Re: No Home Phone Connection

Mustrum — Thu, 07 Sep 2023 18:32:31 GMT

Why not call?

Re: No Home Phone Connection

willcutforth — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 08:45:15 GMT

@katzholme I can see you managed to get through and they found the issue, is that right?

Re: No Home Phone Connection

katzholme — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 10:55:34 GMT

Yes indeed.

Thanks to this community I at least have some indication of what is happening, and although the problem has not yet been resolved (apparently thieves have moved on from stealing copper cables from the railways to that from telephone infrastructure) replacement / repairs will take a while but there is now a sort of work around in place that means I will not miss any calls from the hospital (or Tesco delivery driver).

Previously tried the phone number Mustrum posted but because of the way the message has a strange delay part way through I I thought the recorded message had finished and didn't realise that there was an option to report a fault (press 9) which comes after a long pause.

Anyway, thanks to Mustrum I at least know what is happening, and although it is not possible for Plusnet to give me a timescale it was nice to have a conversation with someone who understood the problem and explained what and why.

Basically, although the underlying problem has not been resolved I am happy to mark this thread as "fixed" as I have been reassured that work is in progress.

Cheers

Re: No Home Phone Connection

greygit1 — Fri, 08 Sep 2023 20:10:31 GMT

Copper thieves have been disrupting telecoms infrastructure for longer than 'recently'.

I think I remember an area of London been disconnected from the internet when the light-fingered gained acccess to some BT infrastructure. That'd be 15+ years ago.

Copper cabling used to 'relocate' in other countries as well, so it isn't a UK-specific problem.