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Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

kopiearlestown
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Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Posting here to see whether anybody may be able to help, as almost an hour of PN hold music has me ready to head for the scotch! 

@Gandalf I'm looking at you, haha, as you were the one who finally managed to resolve our @newtondeli issues!

 

So on this account we've ordered a transfer of line and fibre and the existing supplier for the premises, XLN, have cancelled the order for some reason - despite not having our authority to do so. First I knew of it was an email from PN today - the transfer was due to complete 17/11. I called PN who advised to call XLN and make sure they do not cancel any future orders, which I duly did. I've then called PN back to get the order re-placed, and the chap I was speaking to said he'd sort it and asked me to hold. That was an hour ago, still holding. not even been back to the call once to update me. 😡

 

I realise that the XLN cancellation isn't PN's fault, but keeping me on hold without having the courtesy to come back to me isn't great at all. 

 

Any help greatly appreciated. Smiley 

 

Cheers, 

21 REPLIES 21
Gandalf
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Hi @kopiearlestown 

I'm sorry for the issues with transferring your service across to us. I've checked the order that the adviser replaced today and it's still processing in the supplier systems. We should be able to confirm a new transfer date within the next 24 to 48 hours.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
kopiearlestown
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Thanks @Gandalf 

I eventually gave up after being on hold for 90 minute without the advisor coming back to me, and re-dialled. It was the second advisor who has hopefully sorted out the new order a short time ago.

 

It was more the being put on hold for an hour a half that frustrated me, and then for the second guy I spoke to to tell me that the advisor hadn't actioned anything either! Such a waste of my time. Sad

 

Fingers crossed the order all goes through this time!

Gandalf
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

No problem @kopiearlestown I'm sorry for the long wait times and experience you've had. Sad

Fingers crossed all goes through well moving forward.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier


@kopiearlestown wrote:

Thanks @Gandalf 

I eventually gave up after being on hold for 90 minute without the advisor coming back to me, and re-dialled.

...

It was more the being put on hold for an hour a half that frustrated me, ...

Such a waste of my time. Sad

There is a fair possibility that this was a call routing failure.  Many staff are working from home - by some magic calls are transferred to agents working wherever they can.  One can well imagine the possibility of a call being placed on hold, the tail end of the call then being lost and the caller being left parked on a lost connection.

I recently arranged a business service contract renewal and teh call was dealt with start to finish in around 10 minutes.

 

As for your present supplier cancelling your migration - did you advise them that you intended to cease service with them?  Such can give rise to THEY placing a service cease order on the line, which (under BT Open reach business rules) totally inhibits all other CP/ISP parties from placing new service orders on the line until after the cease order completes.

Existing suppliers are only permitted to cancel another ISP's takeover order (where the gaining supplier leads the process) as an anti-slamming measure AFTER the user has responded to their existing supplier's notice that a third party line takeover advice has been received.

HOWEVER some ISPs have taken the approach of rejecting all takeover requests unless their subscriber has opted out of such measures - for example see https://www.revk.uk/2015/05/anti-slamming-service.html

"This means we'll be taking a set of "standing instructions" to reject all migrations."

And

"... if our customer has more than 10 people working for them then we can reject it anyway and none of the rules apply ..."

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

kopiearlestown
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Hi again @Gandalf  I've heard nothing further, so presuming the order is still progressing as it should be? (We've spoken to XLN and made it quite clear they should not be placing any cease order or objecting to the transfer in any way)

 

Could you take a look for me please and if possible confirm the new date? Just don't want to be sat here waiting if nothing's happening - although last time I was notified when the order cancelled, so presumably the same would happen?

 

Cheers,

Gandalf
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Hi @kopiearlestown I'm sorry for the delay with the order. From what I can see it's stuck in a certain state within the supplier systems and not progressed as a confirmed transfer. I've raised an escalation with Openreach to try to speed things along and we should know more within the next 24 hours. Will let you know as soon as we know more. Cheers

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
kopiearlestown
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Ah you're joking?

We originally placed the order when we did as we really needed the line to switch over on or as close to 16/11 as possible, due to a change in how the business is going to run moving forward. Totally realise the original cancelled order was XLN's fault, and we could work with an extra couple of days delay, but now to find out the order hasn't even been progressing, and worse than that nobody had thought to get in touch to let us know?

Not great at all. Sad 

Gandalf
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Thanks for getting back to me @kopiearlestown 

I can see our business support team have been chasing this up with our suppliers in the background leaving notes on ticket 207906187 although I'm sorry to see there's been little contact with you about this. Sad

I'll provide an update on the escalation once I've got a response back from Openreach.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
kopiearlestown
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Just wanted to update this thread in the interests of transparency, as sadly we're still no further forward - lots of kicking of the can down the road, no actual progress. Sad

 

Order placed with PN 03/11 - appointment date selected as 16/11.

Notified 04/11 that the order had been cancelled by existing supplier - contacted PN to query, spoke to existing supplier to confirm authority to transfer and to ensure no cease order placed - order re-placed by PN, awaiting date confirmation.

Queried with PN 10/11 as no further update received, advised order was "stuck" with BTOR and was being escalated to resolve. 

Advised by PN 10/11 that order was cancelled in one of BTOR core systems due to a system error, and would need to be cancelled in all other systems and the re-placed (again!).

Advised by PN 11/11 that case was being escalated again.

Advised by PN 12/11 that BTOR had confirmed order will be fully cancelled by close of play and can then be re-placed.

Advised by PN 13/11 that order still not cancelled in BTOR systems and therefore cannot be re-placed. Promised to escalate again and further update by 16/11.

Advised by PN 16/11 that order still remains stuck in BTOR system, advised order should now be cancelled by 17/11.

 

Given the order should have completed today, it's quite farcical that it hasn't even been successfully placed and progressed by this date! Fully appreciated the initial 1 day delay was seemingly caused by the previous supplier (although I am beginning to question this now, given events that have unfolded since) however it's now taken 12 days to fail to place/cancel/re-place this order, whether the fault lies with PN or with BTOR as I'm being advised. Definitely leaving me questioning whether I want to keep our existing 4 business premises supplied by PN never mind switch this one over, as whilst the service is great when it works this is the second time I've experienced major issues when things have gone wrong, and whilst it doesn't appear to be PN at fault on either occasion (communication failure aside) they are clearly being let down majorly by BTOR, and unfortunately my relationship and expectation of a reliable and efficient service is with PN.

 

Overall a throughly frustrating experience to date which has left a particularly bad taste, and has had profound implications for our business and resulted in considerable additional costs as a result. Sad 

 

 

 

RealAleMadrid
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

@kopiearlestown  It is quite revealing to see the sorry sequence of events you are suffering, sometime ago these forums were a lot more transparent and staff would give details of how things had gone wrong but lately because of the excuse of GDPR it is all hidden in tickets or you get no feedback at all. Your problems seem to be mainly related to the Openreach ordering systems and things getting stuck which seems ridiculously difficult to sort out by cancelling which seems to take days when it should be instant. BTOR systems seem to be totally inflexible and sluggish. All you can do is wait and hope it will get resolved.☹️

kopiearlestown
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

That's precisely why I thought I'd update the thread myself - there can't be a GDPR issue if I share the timeline and experience. Smiley

To his credit, @Gandalf has kept me in the loop as much as he's been able to since picking this up, as I knew he would do based on previous interaction on other accounts. Sadly, however, all he's been able to do it keep telling me that he'd further escalated things and there was basically no progress, which must be really frustrating!

As you rightly say it's very much down to the BTOR systems and processes, but I can't help feeling that if I was in business and reliant so heavily on one single supplier then I'd have stringent processes in place to hold them to account and ensure that my customers weren't unduly inconvenienced as a result of my suppler failings - in fact, I am in that position, and I do ensure that my supplier looks after my customers! 

 

An all round sorry state of affairs, and one which I fear is going to sour my relationship with PN to the point that we will move all of our business away. Sad We've had to deal with PN due to BTOR failings twice this year, and both have become massively drawn out and protracted affairs and have cost us money and damage to our reputation. Twice bitten? 

Gandalf
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Thanks for getting back to us @kopiearlestown 

I'm all for providing detail here as long as there's no account information. I've tended to keep things to the ticket as you'll still receive the updates and it keeps everything logged on the account without having to duplicate my reply. 

From what we can see the cancellation reason on the first order seems fairly definitive and not open to interpretation as the message we see states that the existing provider cancelled the order. I appreciate that's a relatively minor delay compared with the latest order that's stuck though.

If there's more information I could share either here or via your ticket I'd happily do so. Unfortunately the reason that there's a lack of detail on the ticket is because that's generally all the information we've received. 

On every contact I've been making into Openreach, the query's been dealt with at team manager/supervisor level who have been liasing with their application support group(ASG) team to get to the bottom of the issue. 

To try to provide a bit more insight, there are various supplier systems that interact with other supplier systems and the actions of one system can affect another. More specifically with this stuck order, from the information we've been provided I believe that they're encountering technical errors in the systems when trying to progress it to a cancelled state.

It's a bit complex and I don't claim to fully understand it, nor do we need to though as we contact our suppliers. I'll make sure I stay on top of this and chase this up at every stage until it's sorted and we can replace the order. Again I'm really sorry for the experience you've had and the hassle it causes.

From 31st October 2022, I no longer have a regular presence here as I’ve moved on to a new role.
Anoush Mortazavi
Plusnet
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier


@kopiearlestown wrote:

As you rightly say it's very much down to the BTOR systems and processes, but I can't help feeling that if I was in business and reliant so heavily on one single supplier then I'd have stringent processes in place to hold them to account and ensure that my customers weren't unduly inconvenienced as a result of my suppler failings - in fact, I am in that position, and I do ensure that my supplier looks after my customers! 


... and that is the fundamental issue with the structure of the UK telecom industry - wholesale supply and retail distribution is vested within the same organisation.  Plusnet is a retail division of BT.

In a proper (no hands barred) supplier relationship, the failure of the supplier would be dealt with in a very robust manner to ensure that the retailer's customer is not left in a disadvantaged position.  If necessary, the retailer might take the supplier to their industry watch-dog.

With the situation where supplier and retailer are both part of the same corporate group, there is zero chance of the retailer being willing to "hold them to account"!

Many people believe that by being part of the same commercial organisation it should make dealing with such matters easier ... in practice, it makes the very opposite more true.

Superusers are not staff, but they do have a direct line of communication into the business in order to raise issues, concerns and feedback from the community.

kopiearlestown
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Re: Transfer order being cancelled by current supplier

Thanks for the additional insight @Gandalf. As I said, I can't fault you at all - you're simply passing on the message, and I appreciate it must be equally frustrating for you as it is for us.

It is a frankly farcical situation, however, that in a business critical situation such as this there seems to be no way forward other than you simply sending another message and waiting another 24hr period to receive the same response that it's still "stuck", as that seems to be the loop we've been in now for a considerable period of time. I appreciate that you are escalating this, however it seems that the people you are escalating to are unable to rectify whatever the fault is either, as they keep coming back with the same reply too!

It never has been PN's fault, but every time we have had cause to contact you about an issue (where your supplier has been at fault) it's always turned into an absolute farce! Whilst a goodwill gesture is of course appreciated, it doesn't help now when we're left going around in circles, struggling with the impact to our business and to be honest simply do not have the time to keep chasing and dealing with what should have been a straightforward issue. It's embarrassing that something like this has to take this long, and still we have no end in sight. 

 

To provide a further update (such as it is) the update received from @Gandalf today was that there is still no further update, the order remains stuck and we have to wait a further 24hr period. Sad