4 weeks and counting for broadband

[#1]

We moved house 28th September and and the 26th Sky told us they couldn't supply broadband to our new house so I came to Plus Net who said they could. 4 weeks later we still aren't connected, something about a split line that openreach need to fix. I've found out today that open reach don't expect it to be fixed (hopefully) until 7th November! That's 7 weeks since I ordered broadband. I'm now starting to feel like I'm gonna get told we can't have broadband here and I really wanna complain for it taking so long but I'm pretty sure it's not Plus Net at fault, but openreach.

[#2]

Hi there, 

I'm disappointed to see there's been such a delay so far but I'm glad the end is in sight now. I've double checked and the work is still set to take place on the 7th. 

I appreciate that might not provide any comfort or reassurance but if you can let me know via here when the service is up and running I'll ensure we refund you for the downtime and provide you with a gesture of good will. 

[#3]

Update ...

I phoned 8th November to get an update, having been told that an engineer was due to work on our problem on 7th. Apparently nothing had been done and this DACS thing was causing problems but it hadn't been looked at. I was given the 17th as the next date that my broadband would be live by. The lady I spoke to was really nice though, she said she would keep checking it every few days to make sure it was being worked on by an engineer. The next message came through on 13th after I had missed the phone call. To say I was frustrated at what I read would be an understatement - "Suppliers say no DACS on line so the exception that was raised for this is now being removed"!! So 7 weeks after ordering broadband, countless phone calls from me, 2 live chats and 3 lots of extra data on my phone, the problem that I had been continually told was the reason we still didn't have broadband wasn't even a problem in the first place! I got a text message this morning to say our broadband order was now complete. As happy as I am that it's all connected, it's been stressful and frustrating and not a good start with Plusnet and Openreach!

[#4]

http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php?topic=12485.msg235475#msg235475

How the process should work (in days of yore), is that upon receipt of an EU's order, Openreach will check the routing and records of the feeding DP and if indeed a DACS is found to be in play, an additional task should then be 'built' for the planners to come up with a solution. More often than not, this will require underground intervention to 'push a pair' on from another DP with spare capacity, to the DP with the shortage, or to 'pull a pair back' from a DP further on from the one that has the shortage. These are called 'Pair Divert' tasks.

The above is a bit dated but I guess the process still applies.  If you factor in that (in reference to the bit I underlined) Openreach have significant issues with the quality of their infrastructure database (records), the revelation that a line thought to have DACS on does not actually have DACS on ... is not so shocking.  The big issue however is when anything goes in to Openreach planning it seems to take an age for anything useful to happen.

[#5]

Now we have no working phone line ... again! This happened 10 days ago when someone came out to fit a panic button for my mum and what we thought was a phone problem turned out to be no phone line. Engineer was out last week to fix it and we got a new phone and all was good. I'm not home atm but my husband went to phone me when he got home from work to find the phone not working again! Tried plugging the hub in and all he got was static on the phone and a flashing broadband light. So I've just sat on the phone with him whilst on live chat to someone from plusnet and apparently there's a fault at the exchange! Should be fixed by Monday. I should have known it would be too good to be true.

[#6]

I'm sorry to hear things have gone wrong again.

Can you let us know how it goes over the next few days? Hopefully an engineer will fix that soon.

[#7]

We have phone and broadband! My poor mum lol, the openreach engineer turned up today (she was in her jammies) so she phoned my husband to try and figure what to do (her speech isn't the best). The engineer spoke to him and he sorted our phone line and connected the hub up, so it's all FINALLY working!!