Unable to connect - AGAIN!!!!!!

[#1]

Plusnet, this can not continue.
We're unable to connect again. This is after you and BT cocked up a number change which has resulted in some sort of line fault killing 6 routers.
I am on the phone now for over 6 minutes trying to get through to you. I tried speaking with Abbie who invited me to chat to her through a liveperson type system on your website to be told she can't help - despite saying on the right of the window I'm talking to a plusnet specialist. Specialist?
Come on PN this malarky must stop.

[#2]

and after 1/4 of an hour, topping up the dongle, being on hold to you idiots for over 10 minutes you're now letting me online again.
Are you refunding the £2 for my dongle top up?

[#3]

Looks like a general PPP fault somewhere. Getting continual CHAP authentication errors here since our connection went down at about 17:36. Now posting via my trusty Nokia E71.

[#4]

Oh you've had it too eh?
This will be fun then to see PN try their usual denial of fault stuff.

[#5]

It's due to a problem affectign parts of BT Wholesale's network and will be affecting other ISP's too. There was a similar issue during the early hours of this morning as well. See my post here.

[#6]

Just spoken to Abbie on your Liveperson thing bob.. despite it saying she's a plusnet specialist she wasn't able to tell me there is "a major outage"? - Thats not very specialist bob is it if she can't tell me that and then insists i must ring your circus of a call centre and stay on hold 20 minutes.
RIDICULOUS.
I want my £2 back for my dongle connection. This won't go away now bob, I'm FURIOUS. Abbie could of told me there was a general fault but no, instead I'm told to ring your incompetant call centre.

[#7]

Why do you want the £2 back?
Is your landline broadband up and running again?
Is it in PN control to restore your broadband?

[#8]

Quote from: okrzynska

Just spoken to Abbie on your Liveperson thing bob.. despite it saying she's a plusnet specialist she wasn't able to tell me there is "a major outage"? - Thats not very specialist bob is it if she can't tell me that and then insists i must ring your circus of a call centre and stay on hold 20 minutes.

Our Liveperson advisors are *sales representatives*, they are not there to advise you about service wide problems that may or may not be affecting our customers. That's what our Service Status pages, email and RSS feeds are for (oh, not forgetting these forums). If you're able to get online via alternative means then why not check there before calling our support centre? (who for the record had in excess of 400 calls in the queue a short while ago).
With the exception of AAISP, can anybody point me in the direction of another ISP that's reacted as quickly as we have to the problem?

[#9]

Bob, your the only communications company I know (apart from BT) that doesn't like to communicate effectively with its customers.
What status page? - Where is the link to it on your main webpage? - because it sure as hell isn't very visible bob.
I HAD to call you because ABBIE told me to. She said there was nothing she could do. YOU bob and your company have used the words 'specialist' on your liveperson chat window and NOW you turn around and call them a sales rep? - Do you EVER admit ANY wrong?
@itsme: I shouldn't of had to use my dongle should I. Now I'm £2 out of pocket for something that is not my fault. This is PNs problem. As the service provider they legally have a responsibility to provide this service. Our dealings are not with BT who probably supply PN and they will simply send me back to PN so thats who I am dealing with. Now if you'd like to poke your nose into someone elses business..

[#10]

Quote from: okrzynska

What status page? - Where is the link to it on your main webpage? - because it sure as hell isn't very visible bob.

Check my forum signature for links to the email and RSS feeds.
You can browse to the version on our website directly by visiting http://status.plus.net
From our home page it's two clicks in - 'Help & Support' > 'Service Status'.
Oh, I posted an update to our Twitter feed earlier too.
We also have a recorded message on the Customer Support Centre IVR although admittedly we struggled to get this recorded initially due to the sheer volume of traffic hitting the phone system.
Open to suggestions on how you think we could have communicated it better? Your main cause for complaint seems to be that our Liveperson representatives aren't kept in the loop about service affecting outages? That's despite them not being trained to offer technical support per se.
At least you know where to find the information now, so you wont have similar problems the next time something like this happens.

[#11]

Actually there's a link on the home page - Service Status in the footer.

Personally, I find shouting and insults counterproductive when trying to get someone to help you. YMMV.

[#12]

Quote from: sanderton

Actually there's a link on the home page - Service Status in the footer.

Well I'll be damned, so there is!

[#13]

okrzynska - keep your hair on - looks like a major BT cable has been cut.
If you want corroboration from another ISP see http://status.aa.net.uk/apost.cgi?incident=904
You can see the drop in the number of users online and the affect it had on the incoming calls in the attached snapshots of the PN graphs.

[#14]

Looks like it more than just a BT wholesale problem..
My connection was down, and after rebooting the router it came back up, with DSL and Internet up, but I was unable to connect to anything from my computer.
The problem I have now is that my connection has been given a DNS  server address which is not reachable  (62.6.38.125)
After switching my machine to use 212.159.13.49 I'm able to connect without problems!
And in classic redundancy measures,  the Primary and Secondary DNS servers are allocated to the same address... 

[#15]

The Users Online graph is very useful, I work nights and got in at 5am to find that I had lost Internet, saw it was a PPP problem but could not see any MSO but what do you expect at 5am So even though I run an email server for the family I went to bed to leave it to work itself out. Which it did and the graph show that the MSO was between 12:30am to around 6am