topic Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up! in Plusnet Feedback

Outraged by engineer not turning up!

JakeCulpin — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:09:08 GMT

So, as I've seen many of these already I thought I'd throw my feedback here.
Had an engineer booked for today at 8-1, 2pm and no one has shown. To add more salt to the wound, you're on hold for god knows how long. This isn't the first time I've had issues with plusnet and engineers, had to wait an awful long time to get my internet up and running in my previous place. Had been roped in to extending my contract to 18 months, which i severely regret. After calling plusnet they told me another appointment had to be booked! No call from engineer and no update on their own systems. Had nothing but trouble with plusnet since I signed up. Day off work for no reason! [Censored] off to say the least!
Also, don't give me the same bs I got on the phone about openreach, I'm well aware it's down to them, but it's down to plusnet too, especially giving me a time window of 48 hours to be replied to is just frustrating.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

jelv — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:11:49 GMT

If you have to take a second day off work you can claim full compensation: see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/delivery-rights

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

JakeCulpin — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 14:23:01 GMT

Thanks for that!
If they could even come later on today I would be happy, but I know I have more chance on winning the lottery.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

LinnPlusnet — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 15:10:29 GMT

Hi JakeCulpin,
I'm really sorry to hear that the engineer hasn't arrived today.
I've had a look for you and I can see that this has been passed to our Supplier team who will be chasing our suppliers for an update within the next 24 hours and then they'll get in touch with you with further updates. They will do everything that they can to get your phone line installed as soon as possible.
Apologies for the delay and the inconvenience caused.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

JakeCulpin — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 15:47:27 GMT

Which means me taking another day off work, don't see how some of these engineers have jobs, they clearly like taking the [Censored] out of customers. Such a wasted day, it's alright for the engineers who get paid regardless.
Adie:quote

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

pjmarsh — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 18:42:53 GMT

Jake, it may not be the engineers fault directly. They only have a finite amount of time in their shift and if they are assigned too many jobs then they will have no choice but to miss some of them out. I can understand this happening from time to time. It is happening far to often though, so Openreach are certainly getting something wrong.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

Gel — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 21:34:46 GMT

No excuse for OR engineer not to call customer or sms his mobile, if appt. will be postponed.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

KK — Wed, 26 Mar 2014 21:36:01 GMT

As soon as a BTOR engineer realises that he or she is likely to have to reschedule one or more of his/her appointments, then at the very least, the customer should be immediately notified. It should then be for BTOR to take responsibility for the prioritised rescheduling of the appointment.
BTOR engineers seem to operate in some kind of pre-privatisation time warp, in which there is no requirement to meet any kind of performance target, just so long as they can maintain their stranglehold on productivity, job satisfaction, and potential earnings.
As long as BTOR engineers are at liberty to dictate their own terms, there is no point in having lots of companies competing to provide phone/broadband services.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

jab1 — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 06:53:42 GMT

I don't usually get involved in discussions on this subject, but as I have had OR out recently, can I add a bit of balance.
I have had disconnection/speed problems for a little while now, and merely posted a 'why' question in the BB and routers forum. This was picked up quickly by Chris P. from DCT, who provided my RADIUS logs, and suggested I raise a fault, which I did. Within 72 hours, I had an engineer booked for Monday (0800-1300).
pain
Got a call from engineer at just before 1400 (yes I know it was late), to tell me he'd be 30mins or so. Turns up, hooks up equipment and agrees there is nothing wrong with my equipment. Only thing he could initially suggest was to reposition my master socket - which would have been a bit of a pain as it would have disabled my upstairs extension. He then says 'Nah - lets look at the pole/cabinet, and goes off. Calls me from cab 'going to swap wires' - so I loose phone/BB for 20mins . That has very little effect, so next thing, he calls from the exchange 'We're going to change your E-side - expect further disconnections'.
It's now approaching 6.00PM, so I start to panic - if he doesn't get it done, I'm without connection till tomorrow morning. No worries though - call at 1810 -'changed over, got sync here @ 12298kbps - I'll ring PN and get them to adjust their side' Didn't expect that!
Anyway he does - and I'm connected at 10.851Mbps - 3 times faster than before and at a speed I was told I was too far from the exchange to ever expect.
After checking with me again, he finally leaves the exchange at 1845.
That's what I call service!

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

JakeCulpin — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 15:58:26 GMT

Well, John, I'm glad you have had an enjoyable service from plusnet, the only thing I can say is I've had nothing but trouble from them from the start. I had an update on my issue today, apparently an engineer needed to go and fix the line at the exchange and it was an external problem, even though the day before a BTOR engineer came round and checked the line and it was fine. I'm wondering why I was told to wait (take a day from work) and then not get told anything until the day after. Seems like they literally make things up.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

amcclean — Thu, 27 Mar 2014 20:23:17 GMT

I am with KK in that BTOR should realise in advance the attp. will not be met and contact customer straight away to re-arrange.
Sadly though they are one step away from the end user so I'm guessing they should contact PN who in turn should contact the End user.
I had nearly 5 months of BTOR re-writing what they were doing and when they were visiting the house un announced.
PN have like all ISPs no real control when it comes down to it. BT whjolesale control the network and BTOR the maintenance so they can do what they want and how.
OFCOM need to pick up on the whole shambles and sort it out but as there is no competition allowed to work on the wholesale network other than BT there is probably not much hope.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

JakeCulpin — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:05:08 GMT

So, plusnet called me yesterday saying there was an issue at the exchange and it WOULD be fixed yesterday, and they would call me today to arrange an engineer, had no call so I decided to call them myself, was put through to someone who clearly didn't give a damn, I mean literally, he wanted to go home and genuinely didn't want to be on the phone to me. Unprofessional and rude to say the least! Sort your shit put plusnet. Anyway, fault wasn't fixed as promised and have to wait until Monday by the earliest, I'm literally disgusted by their service and some of the their staff from the home move team. I would definitely avoid signing up to this company, absolute joke!

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

LinnPlusnet — Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:58:09 GMT

Hi Jake,
I'm very sorry if the advisor that you spoke to came across as rude and unprofessional. I will feed this back internally to ensure that their manager is made aware of your comments.
I've had a look for you and it seems that the issue at the exchange hasn't been resolved yet. Unfortunately in this situation we were provided the information from our suppliers and they did inform my colleague yesterday that the work should be complete by the end of the day today. She was passing the information back to you and believed what our suppliers was telling her. I'm sorry that the work hasn't been completed yet.
Our Supplier Team will chase our suppliers again on Monday and obtain a further update for you. Unfortunately the team we need to contact are not in over the weekend, hence the wait for Monday.
I'll keep an eye on this for you and ensure it's chased for you on Monday and that you are contacted by the end of day.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

DoughPea — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 00:01:28 GMT

In my few years i've had 2 engineer visits. One was right on time, and resolved flawlessly, the other was an early afternoon appointment.
I received a phonecall from the engineer at 11am to say he was sorry but his current call was going to take a while longer than expected, and he would be late.
he arrived about 3 hours late, was very apologetic and professional, and did a great job getting me back up and running.
I guess some of us are just lucky like that.
With all services, there are problems, and those problem calls are always the ones that get press. I wouldn't mind knowing some stats for engineer callout times successfully achieved, i'll bet they are mid to late quarter into the successfully attended range.
That said, when things do go wrong, i fully agree with the other posts. Alot of leeway can be achieved if plusnet were just to give us a quick ring (like this engineer did) and let us know they are still there, even if its just to say "I'm sorry i have nothing further to tell you, but i am still here, and i am still dealing with it for you!"
We can all give a little wiggle room if we are kept in the picture!

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

PeaBea — Sun, 30 Mar 2014 22:17:44 GMT

Join the club!! I had a 3 month wait. Eventually got connected and given 6 months free service only to be billed at month 5. So it looks like that not only does Plusnet fail to connect customers in a timely manner they also cannot count.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

LinnPlusnet — Mon, 31 Mar 2014 11:23:25 GMT

Hi JakeCulpin,
As promised I ensured that this was chased for you this morning and you should have now had a phone call from my colleague in the Provisioning department.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

Fireant — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 15:26:53 GMT

same here with openreach they sooo unreliable but if your not in its a different matter and they charge you for not been in should be same with them idiots for not turning up when they should whats good for them is good for us and compensation from them for the customer .

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

AndyH — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 15:34:28 GMT

There can be legitimate reasons an engineer over runs and is unable to make his last appointments as a result.
Both mine and my neighbour's fibre installs took longer than planned (neighbour's install took a full day - engineer came at 08:00 and was still working on it at nearly 19:30 in the evening trying to get things going) and resulted in other installs being missed.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

Devonian — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 17:31:12 GMT

True Andy, but there is simply not a single excuse in the Plusnet/BTOR hand book of excuses to explain why the CUSTOMER doesn't get a phone call, on the day, explaining that there is a problem, and informing thee customer about a possible solution.
Last year I had a fault on my line, which granted, was a real pig to diagnose and fix, however!
I had atleast 20 BTOR appointments, some engineers turned up, some didn't. 1 even turned up unannounced at 8am on a Sunday morning. Every single one gave me a different diagnosis, even though myself and Plusnet told them what the problem was.
In my view the problem is in the lack of training, the use of subbies, and no reproach when appointments are simply scrapped.
Plusnet should be hammering BTOR, but for whatever reason they let their 'suppliers' do what they like.
Plusnet's great service is let down massively by the that hovel called BT OpenReach.
We can all see how the PN customer service has started to deteriorate now the BTinfluence is starting to seep in.
There are some brilliant staff working for PN, but they can only work with the tools they are given.

Re: Outraged by engineer not turning up!

Fireant — Sun, 06 Apr 2014 19:42:02 GMT

Exactly so they have you waiting and waiting then ring you at last minute to tell you that they wont be arriving they could at least ring you to let you know in advance but no openreach just take the piss as ive experienced and makes you wonder go out and waste there time calling see how they like it . even if they charged for not been in and they called wouldn't get fuck all off me