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Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

Athanasius
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Registered: ‎09-10-2013

Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

Hi,
After being a loyal Zen customer for close on 9 years I decided to jump ship to PlusNet based mostly on being much cheaper, but also reputation from friends/gaming communities.
I placed the order yesterday, with the MAC code Zen gave me.  During the order process I was NOT asked to pick an engineer install date or leave notes for the engineer.
The order progressed very slowly on PlusNet's site yesterday, finally going to "Checking your line" with a Problem flagged:
Quote
We've found a potential problem on your telephone line.
We'll look into this and will be in contact with you shortly.

This afternoon I noticed the "Member Centre" part of my profile which contains two "Questions".  Both questions are marked as "Awaiting support team answer". One (75493631) looks to just be initial placing of the order without other information.  There's a second one, 75530584, which says:
Quote
There's been a problem progressing your broadband order.
We'll get some more information on the problem and update this ticket with details as soon as we have them.
[internal note]
Order has been cancelled. Please check Install Diary and resubmit order once issue is resolved.

I put a couple of notes on this.  One querying what the issue was (as I'd heard nothing by email, phone or SMS) and making sure you knew I was currently on Zen 21CN DSL, along with information about bad placement of my master socket and possible solutions.  The other was acknowledging that I'd received an SMS this afternoon saying:
Quote
Your broadband service is due to become active by midnight on 19/10/2013.  Please don't set up your router until we confirm your service is active.

So, is the order progressing or not?  Given how early that date is (when I was checking on Friday your order form, when not given a MAC, would offer earliest engineer date of 21st October) would this be transferring just the 21CN DSL across before then being able to put the fibre order in ?
I feel like I'm being left in the dark here (and despite you not having charged me yet I can see you have at least put a hold on the money).
7 REPLIES 7
bobpullen
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Re: Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

Quote from: Athanasius
After being a loyal Zen customer for close on 9 years I decided to jump ship to PlusNet based mostly on being much cheaper, but also reputation from friends/gaming communities.

Welcome aboard Smiley
Quote from: Athanasius
I placed the order yesterday, with the MAC code Zen gave me.  During the order process I was NOT asked to pick an engineer install date or leave notes for the engineer.

That doesn't sound right to me. I'd have thought that you'd have been asked Huh
Quote from: Athanasius
The order progressed very slowly on PlusNet's site yesterday, finally going to "Checking your line" with a Problem flagged...

Quote from: Athanasius
I feel like I'm being left in the dark here

I'm not surprised. Strikes me as a bit of a communication breakdown so sorry about that Sad
Good news is there's an order committed and due for activation on the 18th. Bad news is, this seems very optimistic to me so I'd like a bit more time to look into it and make sure everything's progressing as it should.
I'll bump this thread tomorrow and provide you with an update...

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵

Athanasius
Hooked
Posts: 6
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Registered: ‎09-10-2013

Re: Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

If you're still meant to be able to pick an engineer install date when moving from another ISP with a MAC then the system is indeed broken.  As I said, when I checked on Friday without a MAC (hadn't gotten it yet) the order process did ask me to pick two dates/times.  But yesterday with the MAC it did not.  I'd hazard a guess that the order flow assumes that if you have a MAC you're doing a straight migration across, not also possibly upgrading from 21CN to FTTC at the same time, which is what I'm attempting.
If it turns out I do have to move over as 21CN DSL and only then can I get the FTTC install scheduled and done I'll not be too miffed, but it'd be nice to only be charged for DSL until the FTTC install date (indeed I'm paid up with Zen until 28th!).
jelv
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Registered: ‎10-04-2007

Re: Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

Zen ADSL -> Plusnet ADSL -> Plusnet FTTC has a lower risk of you being without any broadband if the FTTC install is delayed.
jelv (a.k.a Spoon Whittler)
   Why I have left Plusnet (warning: long post!)   
Broadband: Andrews & Arnold Home::1 (FTTC 80/20)
Line rental: Pulse 8 Home Line Rental (£14.40/month)
Mobile: iD mobile (£4/month)
Athanasius
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Registered: ‎09-10-2013

Re: Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

So, looks like that install date of the 18th is a go Smiley .  Also had the SMS about router in the post.
bobpullen
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Re: Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

Yep, it's all looking good for the morning of the 18th. I'll do a bit of digging and try and find out what happened during the signup journey in case there's a wider problem somewhere.
Edit: Looks like it's a known problem that our developers have been looking into recently (ref: 77295).

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
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Athanasius
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Registered: ‎09-10-2013

Re: Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

Quick version: It all went well in the end and I'm getting fantastic speeds.  The BT engineer deserves heaps of praise for a job well done.
The engineer was late, very late, due to a long job before mine.  The slot was 8am-1pm, but he turned up around 14:20 (after 3 or so phone calls to let me know about the delays, as they got longer...) or so and got straight to work.
He took my suggestion of utilising the yarn lines I'd pulled under the floorboards (using an old, very poor quality, phone extension cable someone else had left there) to move the master socket to our under-stairs cupboard.  Once that was all sorted he hooked up the VDSL modem and the PlusNet router, got sync after a couple of minutes, but the router just wouldn't bring up the Internet.  Checking the logs it was a PPP auth problem.  More on that later....
At this point he was running tests and found one failed, "insulation test" I think it was.  I point out the state of the wiring as it comes into the house, so he replaces one bit of that (which was pole line -> coffin box -> wire he replaced -> another length behind a skirting board -> the old master socket).  But the insulation test still failed (and PPP still wasn't playing nicely).  So he then had to take over an hour to replace my line off the pole (said pole is only just over the other side of a quiet side road).  He described the old wire as "speaker cable" and showed me where weathering had all but worn through the insulation between the two strands! Once that was done we got a clean test, but still the PPP auth issue.
So I got on the phone to PlusNet as I recalled the email I'd received saying things would be active by 12pm on the 19th (Saturday), rather than the install day of Friday the 18th.  Perhaps another piece of fall-out from the ordering process issue I hit ?  15-20 minutes in the phone queue and it was confirmed that Indeed my account wasn't yet fully activated.  The nice lady took care of that and talked me through poking the router to reconnect and all was good.
The engineer had tested the line at ~76MBps down and ~20Mbps up.  speedtest.net gives around 70-75Mbps down in use and 17Mbps up.
An hour or so configuring my linux router/firewall to do PPP and I'm no longer relying on a consumer-grade router Cheesy .  I've had bad experience with them.  My original Conexant ADSL router would need resetting every few weeks and it was a toss-up as to if it would actually reconnect automatically after any outage.  The NetGear DGN-1000 we'd most recently been using liked to occasionally refuse to pass traffic to seemingly random IPs, despite being configured to not do NAT, nor firewall, nor IDS and just pass the Zen /29 through to my Linux router.  So it's nice to not be relying on something which probably has too little CPU, RAM and internal bandwidth to cope.
Plusnet folk, if there's any way you can pass back up the line my praise for the engineer please do so!  He was most excellent and patient with all the problems getting the line up to spec, most definitely not wanting to leave me with an under-performing line.  I tweeted @BTOpenReach but have my doubts as to if anyone reads that, and couldn't find another way to offer praise.
bobpullen
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Re: Moving from Zen 21CN to Plusnet FTTC - 'problem' ...

Glad to hear everything's up and running Smiley
Quote from: Athanasius
Plusnet folk, if there's any way you can pass back up the line my praise for the engineer please do so!  He was most excellent and patient with all the problems getting the line up to spec, most definitely not wanting to leave me with an under-performing line.  I tweeted @BTOpenReach but have my doubts as to if anyone reads that, and couldn't find another way to offer praise.

You could try here?

Bob Pullen
Plusnet Product Team
If I've been helpful then please give thanks ⤵