Plusnet has been the single worst ISP I have ever had to deal with

[#1]

I have never had more trouble with an ISP, your customer service has been extremely disappointing. I have attempted to resolve my issues over phone, e-mail and every possible contact point provided on your website. I have attached my most recent letter of complaint to plus.net
"I originally called plus.net in May of 2014 to find out if Fibre was available in my area BT****. I was advised that it was and partly on that basis chose to rent a house in the area. When my installation date arrived an engineer came and connected my phone line but advised me he could not activate my fibre connection and had not received an instruction to do so. I called plus.net again and was advised that "the cabinet was full" but that this would be rectified in 1 month and in the mean time offered me a discounted rate for your broadband (this ended up being 2mb 20x less than your smallest fibre package I had intended to take the largest) and I accepted this. I called back in a month and was informed that fibre would not be available for another month. This pattern repeated every month until January 2015. I was told I would be advised when fibre was available but had to discover this for myself then call plusnet again to book an installation. This apparently required me to start a NEW 18 month contract despite the fact that I had originally ordered fibre over 6 months ago and to compound this I am now receiving daily updates about my installation that seem to amount to nothing more than "your question is now off hold" "Your question is now on hold".
I am not sure what you can do about this situation but to be honest this is the worst service I have ever received. Please advise me of anything you can do to either give me a shorter contract as I originally signed up in June 2014 or some form of acknowledgement/discount or otherwise as to be frank I am considering my options regarding leaving as the terms of the initial contract were broken and I am still within my cancellation for this new 18 month contract that I still have not received an installation date for."
Today I get yet another on hold off hold and still no answer to my complaint. I am astounded by the continuing failure to give accurate dates for availability, that I have been asked to take out a new 18 month contract when the initial agreement was for an 18 month Fibre plan  and now that fibre is finally available in my area I cannot even get an installation date. If the issue is not with Plus.net but with engineering availability perhaps I should be going to an ISP which has a better relationship with Openreach. I am utterly fed up with attempting to sort this out at this point.

[#2]

Hi and welcome to the forums. I’m really sorry to see the problems that you have experienced. Your complaint will be answered shortly, but I hope to explain the situation here for you.
It would appear that an order has been placed for you and as such we keep checking for updates, hence the holding of the tickets. Even though the exchange itself has been enabled, it seems the order cannot go through due to the cabinets already been full. Unfortunately, we cannot get the information about when we can provide service to you. I doubt BT themselves have this information as it depends on external factors.
Fibre itself is contracted to us, and so we offer this to our customers on contracts from 18 months. Should fibre eventually become available to you, the fibre contract would replace any contract you currently have.
When your complaint is picked up, I am hoping someone takes personal ownership to take this to resolution for you.
I trust this clarifies a few matters for you.

[#3]

So are you telling me that for a second time plus.net has sold me a service that they cannot provide? Will I now be expected to accept a new 18 month contract of  your 2mb broadband?
It has now been 36 hours since I submitted my complaint (average answer time 10 hours according to plus.nets own numbers) 5 days since I was sold fibre AGAIN and no sign of an installation date (1/2 days according to plusnet) and 7 months since I was originally mis-sold fibre.
I appreciate that these things will have varying degrees of accuracy but please try to understand my frustrations with this. The only place I have been able to get an answer out of all week is this public forum and that seems to amount to "yeah well we again cannot fulfil what we have agreed upon, you'll just have to accept it"
I would truly appreciate a proper response from Plus.net or "someone" taking personal ownership of this case today. As for now I will be contacting citizens advice and trading standards to see what my options are.

[#4]

Plusnet won't be able to give you an installation date until extra capacity is put in at the cabinet.  It doesn't matter which ISP you go to for fibre, the situation will unfortunately be the same.
Your 18 month fibre contract begins when the fibre is provisioned.

[#5]

Yes, I understand what they mean when they tell me there is no capacity in the cabinet. I accepted this and the offer of broadband as an interim option when they first informed me 7 months ago. (after already selling me the fibre package)
But now finally I check Plus.nets own availability checker which (even now) shows my address as finally having fibre available (as well as the BT checker which shows my area has gone from "High demand" to "Available").
I call plus.net and the guy "double checks" since I've had so many problems in the past and confirms that I can definitely get fibre and I'll have an installation date inside of 48 hours.
.
Please do not tell me again "the cabinet is full you just have to deal with it" I'm AWARE of why this couldn't be done I just want to know why after 7 months of back and forth I've been sold it again when its not available?

[#6]

I understand your frustrations. You've been told fibre is available, most likely because it is showing as available on your telephone line on the availability checker. Sometimes, even though this is the case we later discover the service isn't actually ready for use (due to cabinet issues or capacity). An order has been placed for you but as it's only showing as "issued" and not "committed", I am not convinced it will succeed and therefore we haven't advised of that.
The ticket times you quote are for general customer service and technical queries. The complaints are more generally more detailed and as such take long to respond to. You are likely to get a reply within five working day.

[#7]

I think the Openreach ordering systems have changed so that when a cabinet is full (and awaiting extra capacity), orders can still be accepted. Previously you couldn't place an order on a cabinet that was full.
Normally they would upgrade the cabinet capacity fairly quickly, but for some reason yours has taken a long time (which is quite rare).

[#8]

Alright, I shall wait to see what happens. Can you at least advise me that if this new attempt to install fibre is unsuccessful that I will not be entered into a new "make do" broadband contract as I have already had this one since last June and would really prefer not to get locked into a new one. Especially as I will be moving in 6 months!

[#9]

Your broadband contract will remain however it is now, we won't extend it, unless you specifically ask us to. Incidentally, moving shouldn't cause any problems contractually as long as you take the service with you.