Failed installation, new customer without internet for 1 - 3 weeks, very unhappy

[#1]

Well the title sums it up, the engineer that came around on Wednesday the 23rd couldn't install fiber as he didn't have the key to the fiber cabinet, he said another engineer should be with us by that Friday but didn't make any appointments. We thought that sucks but we can manage 2 days without internet, we would just be bored for a while.
Made a call to Plusnet and let them know and asked if they could supply normal internet to us while we waited, they said they would send it and to just alter the router to take adsl - we did straight away and didn't receive any internet for the night, then the next day still nothing so I rang again and got someone different who said they cannot supply any internet to us at all because that would take just as long to set up as the fiber would take to fix and the person I talked to last shouldn't have said what he did.
We asked when this would be fixed - he didn't give us a date of any kind he just said he would take care of everything and personally track this problem and expect a call from him soon with dates - no call for 24 hours, after several more calls getting no where and days of utter boredom, depression and frustration (I rely on the internet for 90% or my entertainment - and I currently have all of my time to myself) I get them to say my request is 'stuck in the system' and is up for 'review' on the 5th of October, this is where I lose it - I cannot be out of internet for this long, to my mind as soon as the engineer realized he didn't have the right key and couldn't complete the installation he should have called another BT engineer straight away to fix this error - instead I am suffering greatly with no connection whatsoever - I would do anything to get 56k dial up at this point.
This is unacceptable, for normal people this would be extremely annoying but we need the internet for everything, its as if the electric has been turned off all I have left is an PlayStation 2 with 3 short dull games and a pack of playing cards. Plusnet have said we would get some free internet as compensation but the internet only costs £5 a month for the first 6 months, and the amount of money I think this depression and anger is worth is in the hundreds - I had to travel over a mile to my parents just to type this into the forums and wont be able to see any replies until tomorrow.
The fact that I see BT engineers at my exchange at least once a day with their feet up on the steering wheel waiting for their next job makes this so much worse, I have spoken to them and they said they would love to fix it for me but haven't gotten the order and have tied hands. I haven't gotten a date for this engineer that's suppose to be 'getting me online as fast as possible'. I just want internet of any speed, its been 6 days right now for a fault I didn't cause I don't want a tiny amount of compensation unless its in the form of working internet. Plusnet and BT should be doing nothing else but fixing this problem and others like it if anyone else is suffering from it.
Very angry. Very sad. Very disappointed, needed to vent - I hate when its not up to me to fix my problems, I get a move on when its up to me.

[#2]

Hi @Siramikvarse.
I just want to start by apologising for the disappointing start to proceedings.
We definitely find it unacceptable that an engineer would not have the necessary equipment of any sort needed to complete an order for us.
I can tell we've let you down too by not giving clear advice or support on setting up an ADSL connection. It is definitely correct that the lead times involved in this would mean there's little or no point compared to how soon we should be able to get the fibre order completed. I will be passing feedback on this.
I'm also unhappy that there's a further delay until we can arrange for the service to become active, there is a reason for this which I'll do my best to explain.
Due to the way the order has progressed and how our suppliers systems work we need to wait for the current order to cancel first, following this the systems need to clear down before we can raise a new one which will take a day or two. This is why we've advised that we should be able to raise a new order within the next few days, namely by the 3rd at the latest.
Following this we're going to expedite the order which essentially means to put a rush on it to get an appointment within just a few days.
Going forward I will be keeping an eye on your order to make sure we get everything progressed as quickly as possible. I'll also be making sure we arrange a favourable good will gesture in light of these issues.

[#3]

So this guy has had a similar experience to myself, yet he gets a response from you, and has his engineer visit expedited!
I have no responses for anyone, and can only get an engineer out in 2 weeks, AFTER I did all the chasing and calling.
What the actual [Censored]?!

Siramikvarse, I'm glad you're getting help with this and I hope your problem is fixed ASAP. Having no internet is awful these days, and I feel your pain.  
[Moderator's note by Dick(Strat) Avoidance of swear filter edited as per forum rule.

[#4]

Hi moarjin,
Sorry to hear this.
We're not singling anyone out here and are still working through lots of posts in the forum so yours will be picked up too and dealt with just as fairly.
I'll reply to ticket http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,144355.msg1272696.html#msg1272696 soon.

[#5]

Thing is moarjin, all you're going to get is someone that says sorry, that's how Plusnet customer service seems to work, sorry fixes everything.
Customer flags up a problem, someone from Plusnet says sorry from a script, nowt happens and things just trundle along.
The only difference between Plusnet, Sky or BT is that the Plusnet sorry comes from Sheffield, the Sky sorry from Livingstone and the BT one from Bangalore - the service level differs not one iota and the 'sorry', whilst sounding sincere, is ultimately worthless.

[#6]

Well its now the 5th and I rang up because they didn't ring me, to find out its still 'being processed' (stuck in the system) and was told they have now elevated things at BT to get an appointment tomorrow, why they didn't do this the moment the engineer messed things up and left us without anything right away is beyond me.
Tomorrow morning I'm suppose to get a date for an engineer 100% and its suppose to be very quick, within the week.
My parents went on holiday this week and because I am so desperate for entertainment I have moved into their house to use the internet, causing great stress and unrest to me and my partner who suffers from a very strong anxiety disorder - but I only have 1 week to do so before they return, can Plusnet actually manage to do what they promise and finally deliver 1kb of internet over 1 month since they took my money?
Stay tuned because I will be posting an update tomorrow, I am not holding my breath but I am shaking with anger - mostly at BT.

[#7]

Hey guess what? No call - rang them up again on hold for half an hour then told it will be the 8th now, with no real promise again while we suffer and suffer - we are now looking at getting a provider with half a brain that has nothing to do with BT, but there's no guarantee that will work either and we would have to fight Plusnet very hard to get our money back with no fee.
Its beyond a joke, it needs to stop - if I were to price the upset, inconvenience, stress, depression, anger and corporate lies I would say at least £1000.
Why is the there no engineer?
Why are BT and Plusnet doing this to us?
Why don't they have some order in place to correct their mistake without weeks of suffering to the customers?
Why do they keep lying to me saying we will give you an appointment in a few days then ignoring us?
I don't want a 'we are unable to help' I want my connection sorting out. No other supplier would leave us without any service for this long with engineers racing around town all day, get one of them to our door for 5 mins.
For gods sake just give us our internet back, I wish I never left Talk Talk!

[#8]

Now its the 9th we have been put on hold for.
WHEN WILL THIS END!?!?!?

[#9]

tbh if they don't come tomorrow I think you would be well within your rights to cancel the contract.  They haven't provided the agreed service and have failed at every level in communicating this to you.  I don't think they could stop you going back to Talk Talk.
This is shoddy, PlusNet.  Adam Walker wrote on 30th September that he would be keeping an eye on things, but there seems little evidence of it from your posts.

[#10]

We would go back to talk talk but it would take an extra 2 weeks for them to sort anything out and ultimately all we want is internet back, plusnet said that BT said they have escalated things yet again and now its in the hands of the back end team, who will get it working for the 9th - of course I hold out almost no hope whatsoever but I will be posting again tomorrow if they fail again - hardly anyone else on the whole internet seems to have suffered with my exact problem before so I haven't a clue when this really will be fixed, if you believe plusnet it will be fixed a week ago, I cant wait!
I have had several people at plusnet who I contacted saying they will personally pay close attention to my problem but very few actually messenger me once more and its always by email - if I didn't move home this week I wouldn't know they had any messages for me at all, for just in case they didn't pay attention - I don't have any internet.
I was very nice about this whole thing for the first week while they broke promises and delivered nothing but my patience and understanding have simply gone at this point, I want an engineer appointment.
Is the back end team actually the only ones in BT that get anything done? Or will I simply be back tomorrow saying 'now they said Monday'?

[#11]

Well today I got no call back from Plusnet (though they promised they would call in the morning) and when I got to my parents house to access the internet found an email saying it had been pushed back to the 10th, the last time they said 'oh Saturday' (last Saturday) they said they couldn't book an engineer if they wanted to because BT were closed, why make this mistake again?
Well as I do everyday right after this bad news I tried to contact Plusnet about it, normally I'm on hold for over half an hour but the past week while my parents are away I have been using online chat - so half an hour of being on hold online without the ridiculously bad music I got through to the right department and went through my story again, expecting another pointless fight and a 'wait until tomorrow' but this time when he contacted the supplier (BT) they actually managed to bring it forward and get me an appointment on the 13th (brain explodes), it will have been 3 full weeks without internet for us and it was really taking a heavy toll on our mental health, my partner had very strong chest pains due to her illness (very strong and uncontrollable anxiety) because of this stress.
We have been offered 3 months worth of free internet for this worth a whopping £15 (on our plan). Needless to say we are disgusted by this offering but I'm not sure I can bring myself to have more dealings with them to ask for more, 3 months is the limit for the person I was talking to... ''a favorable good will gesture'' this is not, if we were normal customers with smart phone internet to fall back on and hardly any time on the internet this would be fine, I wasn't kidding when I said the damage done was worth at least £1000 to us, of course I know that we wouldn't get anything like that but damn...
Anyway the problem is still ongoing as we have to wait until Tuesday to see if we will get everything working again but its the furthest I have gotten so far, I am re posting to my own forum because there was next to nothing on the internet about 'how long this takes' and 'what to do' for us to research and feel better about so hopefully this will help others - I will post again on Tuesday, hopefully from my own house.

[#12]

Try this email CEO Plusnet link:csa removed
adie:red removed email address at request.]

[#13]

Still no internet, on Tuesday a much better engineer came around and tried to set everything up the right way, couldn't believe what the last guy did and gave us a modem, he confirmed fiber was getting to our house master socket but we didn't have a dsl light, instead its flashing every 30 seconds then going blank - we assumed it was because plusnet wasn't sending it so we rang them while the engineer waited, plusnet told us they couldn't send it until the engineer said it was ok, which of course all seems insane to me at the time because how could he say everything was ok when we didn't have a connection to test it with, I still don't understand all these things (and I shouldn't have too).
Anyway the engineer left and said it would all be ok when plusnet sent the service so we waited, at around 7pm still with no internet we rang plusnet to ask when it would be connected, they said it all looks fine to them they did send it, but it sometimes takes until midnight so we went to sleep, when we woke up we still had nothing, same condition - so we rang again and they passed us to technical support, they did a line test and said they would send another engineer out today (15th October) to make sure we had a solid dsl light... he was suppose to come this morning and didn't, we waited in all morning with nothing to do (no internet) for no reason, when we ring plusnet and tell them all this we find out the person who made us the appointment did the wrong thing and these problems must go through a faults department at BT, which will take another 3 DAYS at the very least so they can examine and try to fix the problem remotely before they send another engineer (I don't hold out much hope that they will fix it). They canceled our appointment and didn't tell us, we had to chase them up again to get this information out of them.
I feel sicker every day, I don't know how much worse this will get... we will have been without internet for a full month soon.

[#14]

Well I have internet back now, huzzah!
Yesterday I sent an email to the CEO (thanks Dodger21) and things moved very quickly from there, I got an engineer that didn't get auto canceled for this morning and he was great, did quick tests and found that the modem I was given by the last engineer was faulty, brought in a new one and bang I'm online again.
I don't really have the energy to complain about things right now, I'm just happy to be online again.

[#15]

Glad it got you sorted.
I see the email has been deleted, I can understand why and I would never advise anyone to contact a CEO before using the fault centre and giving them a fair chance, but when (as in your situation) you have then it’s needed.
The numbers of companies that go on about customer service and then tie the hands of individual’s with impossible targets and money saving cuts is just a nonsense that will drive customers away in the long term.
It costs a company far more to attract new customers than it does to keep loyal ones but once you have been treated badly and lose confidence in a company you never forget and the chance of you recommending them to someone else disappears.