Atrocious SLAs - quoted ONE WEEK to fix - PlusNet Fibre unlimited

[#1]

Returned home from work yesterday to find my Internet down, went through the usual checks, called up PlusNet - they ran a diagnostic (details below) and then told me it would take a WHOLE WEEK before anyone bothered to try and fix the fault.  
I could not believe my ears. Have we not moved on from the dark ages? The Internet is now an essential utility for pretty much all of us, to be told I will not have it (or my phone line) for at least a week is a downright disgrace. The bloke on the line gave me the riposte of "Don't you have 3G on your phone?"
No one from PlusNet EVER made me aware that I potentially would have to accept SLAs of a week or more to resolve problems - if they had I would NEVER EVER have signed up to this service.
Has anyone else similar experiences? What did you do about it? I intend to complain about this level of service on every broadband forum in the UK going unless someone from PlusNet does something about it - its not as if the service was that good anyway (25MB instead of estimated 78MB and some dropouts).

Quote

Fault Type: NDT Test Results: Dis In Network Fault Ref: TR0000003040064 Estimated Resolution Time: 04/11/13 21:00:00 Contact Details: On account Kind regards, Link:csa removed[Notification sent to: ] [Sms Message: Plusnet: Your fault has now been raised with Openreach and they have advised on the estimated time to repair being 5th Nov - 5pm. If your fault changes in any way please reply to this text advising on what has changed for us to investigate further..]

Adie:red csa name removed as per link:rules

[#2]

Hi lionheart79,
Unfortunately our suppliers are working through the high volume of faults following the recent poor weather conditions. Naturally the more faults that come through, the longer faults will take to get resolved. This does affect all ISP's and can be quite common as we near Winter.
I've taken a look at the fault myself and can see that the estimated repair time is by the end of the day on 04/11/2013 as you have mentioned. I do entirely appreciate your frustration, unfortunately we have to work with our suppliers, even through difficult circumstances where repair times can be longer than we would like.

[#3]

To the OP
No retail/domestic broadband supplier has any SLA anywhere in the UK
They will do their best to repair within a reasonable timescale.
Some repairs are simple - some requiring digging and civil work and take a lot longer.
If you do want some form of SLA on your line you buy a business grade service either from Plusnet or from one of the other ISP which are possibly more orientated towards business....and it will cost ya'
I'm not familar with business telephone/BB contracts but it will be the more you pay the better the service SLA/response time you will get.
All the above said, at times there will be circumstances beyond BT's control where a repair is going to take a long time.
This might include widespread severe weather leading to a huge number of faults or cable thieves cutting off umpteen hundred lines all at once - which is usually good for between 10 days and 2 weeks of no service.
If BB is vitally essential to you then you need yourself to ensure you have alternative methods of accessing the internet.  This may mean a second line in reserve or it may be a 3G connection with a business grade router that features auto switch over to 3G when the main line fails.
If you do believe that repairs of BB  on domestic lines should be a lot quicker then you are going to have to address the issue of how we collectively are going to pay for the the additional staff and equipment required.

[#4]

How can a non-existant SLA be atrocious?

[#5]

Quote from: Chris

Hi lionheart79, Unfortunately our suppliers are working through the high volume of faults following the recent poor weather conditions. Naturally the more faults that come through, the longer faults will take to get resolved. This does affect all ISP's and can be quite common as we near Winter. I've taken a look at the fault myself and can see that the estimated repair time is by the end of the day on 04/11/2013 as you have mentioned. I do entirely appreciate your frustration, unfortunately we have to work with our suppliers, even through difficult circumstances where repair times can be longer than we would like.

Thank you for your response. I now appreciate the problem lies essentially, with BT Open reach, however because I cannot contact them, I only have recourse to complain to you.

[#6]

Quote from: x47c

To the OP ... If you do believe that repairs of BB  on domestic lines should be a lot quicker then you are going to have to address the issue of how we collectively are going to pay for the the additional staff and equipment required.

You make some salient points in regards to possible elevated calls post the recent Storm. However you only need to do the most casual browsing to realise that Open reach provide poor 'customer' service, run off the back of their effective monopoly in the market. I simply do not accept that a week to come and check the exchange should be considered reasonable.
BT made massive profits last year. Other utility firms, with much lower margins, will work to fix faults round the clock when there are outages. BT's Open reach are laissez-faire in their approach in comparison. That is out of sync in this day and age where phonelines and digital connectivity are taken for granted as much as electricity and water.

[#7]

Quote from: jelv

How can a non-existant SLA be atrocious?

this is a pedantic and unhelpful contribution to the thread.
tell me, would be you happy with an Internet outage of 1 week or more? how about 6 weeks? would that be acceptable to you, if you did not have it explicitly written that it was not?
clearly there is an implied level of service one can expect when you take out a contract with an ISP, and in my world, a week to even start properly diagnosing the fault (which will fingers crossed be fixed in the first engineer visit) is unacceptable.

[#8]

Hi lionheart79,
I'm afraid there's not much more we can say that Chris Pettitt hasn't already said above. Sorry you're not happy, given the estimated repair time this is understandable, but there's nothing we can do to bring this forward I'm afraid - we do raise delays like this with our supplier and if we don't have any further information back by the time of the ERT we'll certainly be chasing this with a view to escalating.