Terrible comms from Openreach around ongoing fault

[#1]

Our Internet has been extremely slow, to the point of unuseability, for the last four weeks. As of Wednesday lunchtime, it's down completely. According to Openreach via Plusnet, the cause is a significant cable fault - apparently a power supply cable exploded and quite a few people are affected. We were restored to a backup connection, hence the slow but functional speeds, but it's not clear why this has now stopped working altogether. The agent I spoke to on Wednesday couldn't even get through to reset my router remotely.

Plusnet have been very good at communicating the information they get from Openreach and chasing for updates. Unfortunately, the quality of that information is awful. OR refuse to explain why the repairs are taking so long or why their estimated fix dates (they've given me four so far) keep being missed.

Out of desperation, I tried contacting Openreach via their web chat, but it was worse than useless - the agent tried to hand me back to Plusnet, then referred me to the company that manages the local telephone exchange, which couldn't help me. I also posted on the Openreach subreddit, and was basically told that I was an idiot for expecting a consistent service and should look into Skylink or similar.

Week five now. Still nothing. Plusnet's service has genuinely been great, but there's only so much they can do when Openreach won't tell them or me what's going on.

I appreciate that I'm probably yelling into the void here, but do I have *any* other recourse? At this point I almost don't mind if it takes ages to fix; I'm sick of being given nothing but contextless estimated fix dates that come and go with no explanation.

[#2]

I appreciate that I'm probably yelling into the void here, but do I have *any* other recourse? At this point I almost don't mind if it takes ages to fix; I'm sick of being given nothing but contextless estimated fix dates that come and go with no explanation.

I'm sorry to say this, @shiftyhmncls , but where OR are concerned, the end user s an irrelevance - they work to their own timetables and do not communicate with the public at all. Although CPs are their customers, even they can get very little information.

In answer to the highlighted question, the answer is 'no'.

[#3]

If 8 weeks have passed  since you opened a call to PN, or you have a deadlock letter contact the relevant Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) scheme.

https://www.commsombudsman.org/

[#4]

@shiftyhmncls  Welcome to the Plusnet Community Fora.

Assuming this is a FTTC or SOGEA connection, have you checked to see if Full Fibre is available to you? Try putting your address in here: https://www.broadbandchecker.btwholesale.com/#/ADSL/AddressHome.

[#5]

Not available in my area yet, unfortunately.

Thanks everyone for your responses. As expected it doesn't look like there's much / anything I can do at this point... good to be sure, I suppose.

[#6]

@shiftyhmncls 

If a power supply cable exploded then it's possible OR have been waiting for the Electricity company to fix it. If this requires road works then that would further add to the delay.

Brian

[#7]

A deadlock letter has no bearing here as your dispute is not with Plusnet.  Whatever the engineering challenges, providing no answers is not acceptable.

You do have options here: send an email to the CEO of BT Openreach requesting DSO assistance.

A major problem is just that and it could take weeks to fix … but that should not preclude sharing clear communication of the plans for resolution.  There again based on many stories seen around here, BTOR might have lost visibility of actions … especially if both left and right hands are engaged in the matter.

I would suspect delays around A55 PTW from the local authority … but is such being progressed proactively by BTOR?  In my personal experience it would be foolish to presume active management of third party wait states.

[#8]

In this kind of scenario where the fix may be some way off I would have hoped Plusnet (or OR) would provide a temporary 4G solution - I have heard of that happening when there is a delay in provisioning, so I don't see a problem doing that here.