Getting fed up of Plusnet

[#1]

I've been a Plusnet customer for a while now (phone & broadband) and up until a few months ago had no complaints and great service..... then a few months ago some fool gave my line to someone else and I was without internet for a week or so (I was on holiday most of it so don't know the exact length). When the line was returned to me it was 2mbit average slower. Now allegedly this is because I've had a lot of connection drops, a problem I never had before, and my connection fluctuates tp an even lower speed on occasion. To make matters worse my connection has stuttered constantly for the last 2 days, dropping for a split second then coming back . I tried to contact support but they were quick to try and pass the buck "It's my router, it's my ADSL filter etc" which it isn't (as I've swapped out both to check things) and straight away before even bothering to do anything their end, wanted me to agree to pay service fees for an engineer call out, if it turns out to be my problem. I don't have that kind of money to risk wasting & distrust these engineers as I've dealt with them with BT in the past & they proved unreliable and tried to charge me for their mistakes (such as not turning up).
I went to file another support query but apparently there's problems with my area at the moment, something I haven't seen mentioned anywhere else prior. Now I'm tempted to leave Plusnet but am left with the problem that even if I do switch I'll still be on the same rubbish line and end up dealing with someone like BT again who were completely useless, couldn't get my bills right & never even got my name right. I used to be happy with Plusnet's service & support but maybe in becoming bigger, Plusnet is becoming worse.

[#2]

@serpantino,
I'm sorry to hear about the issues you've had here. But it is well worth bearing in mind that an engineer visit may well be a likely outcome of investigating and resolving this fault for you.

Quote

they were quick to try and pass the buck "It's my router, it's my ADSL filter etc" which it isn't (as I've swapped out both to check things) and straight away before even bothering to do anything their end, wanted me to agree to pay service fees for an engineer call out, if it turns out to be my problem

We're not trying to pass the buck and we don't want you to pay for an engineer visit. In fact the reason we try and encourage customers to eliminate their equipment is to avoid having to pay for an engineer visit. This is as charges will be levied if the fault is with your equipment.
With that in mind, if you don't have access to a spare router or filters we can provide those to you, that will help eliminate the risk of charges from an engineer visit if things go down that route. I'd seriously recommend raising a fault via the checker again (I can see you started this yesterday and then closed the ticket) and let me pick things up from there.
I hope that helps clear things up in relation to some aspects of fault handling.
Adam

[#3]

Quote from: _Adam_Walker_

@serpantino, I'd seriously recommend raising a fault via the checker again (I can see you started this yesterday and then closed the ticket) and let me pick things up from there. I hope that helps clear things up in relation to some aspects of fault handling. Adam

I would but I forgot to mention that this doesn't work either. Every time I get to the stage where you put in the contact details and click next/submit it just hangs and tales forever loading the next page until 10 minutes later or so it times out, so I can't raise a ticket. I had the same problem with this last time and it took about 10 goes to get it working.
  What bothered me with the whole engineer thing, as I mentioned, is that before you did any real checking your end before wanted me to agree to an engineer visit down the line & potentially pay out money. Surely that's a later stage and should be discussed when it comes to it?  I'd also need more detail as to what charges might be incurred and under what circumstances before I agree to that and if nothing is going to be done to try and fix the line without me agreeing to a possible engineer visit in the future, then I may as well hunt for a new internet & phone provider.
  With BT's engineer, they tried to charge me for tampering with the box because I'd removed the cover plate to access the test socket, despite this being something they had told me to try doing. Plus the engineer never turned up the first time and they initially charged me for it which took ages to recover due to their abysmal customer service. This is one of the reasons I don't want to mess about with engineers coming out unless necessary; I can't afford to waste money.
Thank you for the quick response anyway.

[#4]

As mentioned engineers may be the only way to resolve the issue, so I'd really advise being open minded about that.
There is only so much we can test remotely when it comes to this type of issue, whilst I'm not trying to force you down the path of doing this I want you to know that engineer charges are £60 and the main reasons for such a fee is if you're not in when they visit or the fault is attributed to the latter. I hope it belays your concerns by saying that we can help with the latter as mentioned by lending you a router.

[#5]

£60 is a lot of money. That's a month of electricity for me or 2-3 weeks of food. I don't understand how lending me a router will help when, as stated, I have already tried an alternate router. (my connection has dropped 3 times in the short time it's taken to type this message. I still can't post a support message either. It just hangs or takes me to a page with the following and only gives the option "My problem is fixed" which it isn't.

A major service outage is affecting the broadband network. As your local telephone exchange is included you may experience a loss of broadband service.
Further updates will be provided as soon as possible.
Fault was raised on: 30/12/2011 13:59:00
Telephone exchange(s) affected:
Fault was fixed on:
[INTERNAL NOTES]
Service outage reference: 40658
Reason this was cleared: Reset
Service ID: BBIP29627448
Case ID: 191484