Fibre woes

[#1]

'Appreciate the up-dates.

[#2]

In the meantime Plusnet's preferred speed test is back on-line and an up-dated graph is attached. Is the speed variation normal for the fibre product? Poor speed is principally an evening phenomenon. Presumably this indicates a network issue not local to me?

[#3]

Hi toodeep,
I have responded to your support ticket with regards to the data extension kit.  In terms of performance it may be worth waiting for the installation to be fully complete before we review this.

[#4]

An engineer has been booked for 19/08/11 AM for an engineer to visit and fit your data extension kit.  It's worth advising the engineer on arrival that the visit is simply for the extension kit to be fitted.  No doubt you could request the master data socket to be moved if possible.
Let us know if you have any problems or need to re-schedule for another date/time.

[#5]

Thanks Alex. I look forward to the visit. As appropriate, any explicit instructions from Plusnet to Openreach to have the engineer bring a spool of white cat5 and RJ11s or RJ45s could only help, presumably.
In the meantime Openreach has replied to the complaint I raised with them at the instigation of your colleagues handling my original ticket. Openreach quite reasonably write that any issue I have with their engineer's work is to be resolved between myself & Plusnet, which happily now seems to be in hand.

[#6]

Quote from: Peter

Plusnet don't sub-contract the service or installation. They get the fibre service (like their normal broadband) from BT wholesale. BT Wholesale then tasks OpenReach to do the installation. Also the fee is not kept by Plunset as it is the fee charged by Openreach for the installation. That said, it is still up to Plusnet to supply the service as detailed and they should be the ones you contact. Making direct contact with Openreach or BT Wholesale will go nowhere as they only deal with ISPs.

Not that bright eh!
Plusnet sell a product and their suncontractor/supplier is BTW(Openreach.) It doesn't matter how you spin it,  Plusnet supplies a product via A N Other.....and as such has final responsibility for what A N Other does or doesn't do. 
Does the extra fee paid for an extension get paid to BT?  My engineer was quite happy to do any sort of install and I hadn't paid any such fee.
Please don't be put off though, my install from Openreach was excellent, just hadn't had my router in time (2nd router didn't even arrive) and Plusnet had no idea I had moved on to fibre for 5 days!!!  Put this down to them only having a YEAR to develop the product.........DOH!

[#7]

Quote from: Jezzerash

Does the extra fee paid for an extension get paid to BT?  My engineer was quite happy to do any sort of install and I hadn't paid any such fee.

We don't charge any additional fees for the extension kit.  This comes as part of the normal installation as an additional option.

[#8]

Alex,
This morning's appointment time has come and gone but no engineer has visited. I called plusnet to enquire why and was told that openreach cancelled the appointment a couple of days ago. Why and why wan't I advised of this? Today is further time taken off work and wasted on the installation. What now?

[#9]

I'm really sorry about this. 
I've check through the faults notes and it looks like when I booked the appointment the request for an Openreach engineer reached the Openreach systems but when the line test was performed (This happens before any engineer visit) the testing system suspected a line issue and so the engineer issued was for an FTTC1 engineer.  This type of engineer is dispatched to look at the local network only and not to visit your premises.  Sadly there isn't a work around for this but I have raised this to the systems support team at BT some weeks ago and a fix is currently under development.
The only thing we can do in this situation is to re-book the appointment.  I've updated your support ticket request further appointment times.  Once booked, as a double check, I will contact the FTTC helpdesk at BT to ensure this goes through as a site visit engineer.  A weekend visit is not off the cards but I can't confirm engineer availability at the moment due to the current fault status.

[#10]

Can the engineer visit this weekend? I can be flexible if I have a reasonably specific appointment time.
Why was I not informed of the cancellation?
Is the apparent line fault real and possibly the cause of my speed variation?

[#11]

Quote from: toodeep

Can the engineer visit this weekend? I can be flexible if I have a reasonably specific appointment time.

Hopefully, I've been waiting for a few hours for the fault status to update so that I can book the engineer visit.  It's currently with BT diagnostics.  Although this isn't required for this issue it's standard practice and un-avoidable.

Quote from: toodeep

Why was I not informed of the cancellation?

We received confirmation that the appointment was accepted so assumed that everything was ok.  Sadly it wasn't for the right kind of engineer.

Quote from: toodeep

Is the apparent line fault real and possibly the cause of my speed variation?

According to the notes from the trouble report a local network fault between the cabinet and your premises was resolved so at least something was gained from this.  Sadly we have no further details as to the nature and severity of the issue.
As the fault status has not yet changed to allow me to book the appointment and I am coming to the end of my day I am passing your fault to a Lead Advisor on the faults team who is very experienced with this type of issue.  I have asked him to contact you before the end of the day to confirm the booking.  Hopefully there is some weekend availability!

[#12]

In case anyone's still reading, here is news of my on-going fibre installation.
Today's (Saturday morning!) engineer was a superior one, and no the least because he was the first to manage to both arrive on time and to walk up to the front door. Yesterday's engineer apparently made it only as far as the cabinet outside, and the first engineer produced the Franken-installation to begin with.
Today's engineer arrived with a variety of cables and offered me the choice of brand new separate voice & data extensions from the master socket or the migration of the master socket. Stunned, I opted for the latter. After expressing his views of his colleague's work, today's engineer ripped-out and replaced the old extension wiring that the first engineer had co-opted and removed the superfluous I-plate from the original master socket leaving just the one in the recently installed new line box. Modem & router were attached and... didn't sync. It transpires that the line box installed by the first engineer was faulty. A second new line-box installation latter I finally had what plusnet now long ago sold me! For thoroughness, the engineer also remade the joints where the line comes into the home, replacing screwed-terminals with crimps. Finally, he left me a parting gift for when the original fibre modem overheats and fails, as they will apparently.
Thank you Alex & Matthew for the fine customer service. Can my line speed now be raised? I don't know what fault yesterday's engineer may have rectified in the cabinet outside but maybe the broken line-box wired in parallel with the original master socket was causing problems too. I'll duly monitor my speeds and report back.

[#13]

It would have been great if the first engineer was as good as the last one but I guess with the number of engineers BTO employ they cannot possibly all be of the same calibre.
Great news that it's all properly sorted now.
I'm keeping my fingers crossed now that the engineer who comes to install my fibre knows what he's doing though mine should have no excuse because I have only one BT socket (NTE5 master), it's close to a double socket and it's also where I want the modem placed (close to my curent router which has EWAN as well as ADSL and 3G USB ports so I've already configured the ethernet WAN port for PPPOE and my plusnet login ready just to plug into the VDSL modem and change the default WAN port).  

[#14]

Quote from: toodeep

Finally, he left me a parting gift for when the original fibre modem overheats and fails, as they will apparently.

Was it a spare modem?  If not, do tell!

[#15]

In hindsight the first engineer was thrown by the faulty new line-box. He subsequently improvised and bailed rather than properly complete the installation. More disappointing than that, however, has been plusnet's response, with the notable exception of those previously thanked. The installation ticket became long, irrelevant and never helpful. Instead it's taken a month and >1000 views of this thread to make matters good. Sometimes installs will go wrong and plusnet should be prepared to offer quick redress. I'm grateful for the various supportive comments made here, and not the least because I'm incidentally unwell and found the installation experience rather stressful.
'No more to tell modem-wise.