cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

FIXED
shermans
Pro
Posts: 1,303
Thanks: 101
Fixes: 3
Registered: ‎07-09-2007

Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

I have had to endure intermittent broadband service for nearly two months despite raising a ticket on 1st March !

The last time I had this sort of service from Plusnet, I took Plusnet and Openreach to Court and won. This was less than a year ago.  Plusnet and Openreach had to pay me £150 EACH plus costs ! The Judge's final comment when awarding me the £300 + was addressed to Plusnet's barrister :

"Plusnet clearly have appalling Customer Service and their management needs to address this".

I do not want to be forced to take legal action again. Plusnet is primarily responsible and must stop blaming Openreach as an excuse. Plusnet should be putting pressure on Openreach to deal with these problems.  If Plusnet is not getting the service from their subcontractor, they should do something about it, not just winge about it to their customers.

For the record, in case I am forced to take legal action again, my neighbour has had no internet for 10 days. Their ISP have told them it is because Openreach upgraded the village exchange at that time. I have been more fortunate as I still have sporadic internet access, but it is not acceptable and I insist that Plusnet's management put direct pressure on Openreach to resolve the problem quickly.

I am posting this to make sure that other customers are aware of their legal rights, and to draw Plusnet management's attention to continuing dissatisfaction among their customers at the lack of service.  It is just not acceptable, and we should not sit back and allow it to happen without doing something about it.

This is a Plusnet senior management issue, and I trust that Plusnet management will respond publicly to tell us what they are doing about their relationship with Openreach - who are of course all part of the BT family, even though Openreach has now been forced by OFCOM to become a separate company wholly owned by BT instead of simply an internal department of BT.  Nevertheless the relationship between Plusnet and Openreach is still far too cosy.

I hope someone out there is listening, and that bit will not be a Judge who has to listen again.

10 REPLIES 10
adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

Hi there, 

 

It's unlikely a manager would respond here directly but I will pass on your feedback about the previous issues and I'm sorry to see things came to that. 

 

I can see that we reported the current fault with our suppliers on the 22nd and we're just awaiting their initial response on the current matter. I'll make sure we updated you and follow things up as soon as that's available to us. 

 

 

 

 

If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
shermans
Pro
Posts: 1,303
Thanks: 101
Fixes: 3
Registered: ‎07-09-2007

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

adamwalker

 

Thank you for your intervention.  It obviously did the trick because a whole gang of Openreach engineers suddenly descended on my house at lunchtime today plus a cherry-picker !  Someone had put pressure on them, and they were very pleasant.

Their own records confirmed the outages that I have been enduring - similar to those recorded in Plusnet's own data logged in the ticket - but they could not identify the cause. However they confirmed that other people in my road have also been experiencing problems. They checked my internal lines which were also fault free. They have concluded that it might be a fault emanating from the router, which is not very old and is the latest Plusnet One model, and they will recommend to Plusnet that a replacement router should be supplied to eliminate the router from the puzzle.

In the meantime, they have asked me to monitor the outages myself by keeping records to see if any pattern develops. As the outages only usually last for a few minutes, this will be difficult to do but of course I will endeavour to do so.

I am pleased that my outburst has at last spurred someone into doing something about the problem, as nothing noticeable has happened since 1st March when I first reported the problem.  This is the first time that anyone knocked on my door.

 

Whilst I acknowledge that Plusnet is dependent on Openreach, they are sister companies and Plusnet should have more clout than their competitors, but it has become too easy to pass the buck.  The end user has no access to Openreach and therefore Plusnet has to take the flak.  Plusnet should be fighting its customers' corner and not simply allowing things to drift on for six weeks.  I do not enjoy having an argument with Plusnet, but I pay my bill regularly and there is no compensation when I do not get the service for six weeks for which I have paid.  Plusnet claims to offer the best customer service in the industry - I cannot judge other ISPs as I have been a loyal Plusnet customer since the days of dial-up, long before Home Highway even, but they need to demonstrate their claims have any foundation, and six weeks does not reflect that.

Browni
Aspiring Hero
Posts: 2,673
Thanks: 1,054
Fixes: 60
Registered: ‎02-03-2016

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

Ahem,

they are sister companies and Plusnet should have more clout than their competitors,

I don't think Ofcom would agree with that.
Mustrum
Community Veteran
Posts: 3,554
Thanks: 1,055
Fixes: 76
Registered: ‎13-08-2015

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

Indeed, Openreach have very strict rules imposed by Ofcom to ensure that all ISP's get equal treatment. No special treatment allowed.

adamwalker
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 16,871
Thanks: 882
Fixes: 221
Registered: ‎27-04-2007

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

Fix

Hi there, 

 

I didn't so much intervene as just highlight that we have to allow our suppliers until the "ERT" (estimated response time" of a fault before we're able to chase for updates or intervene in any way. The engineers working on the fault was just as a result of us reporting the issue for you a few days ago when it was highlighted to us.

 

As the other guys have touched on we're part of the BT group of companies just the same as Openreach but strict guidelines of equivalence are in place to make sure customers of all ISPs that use the same infrastructure are treated equally with no bias and that's in place to protect the customer experience in each case. 

 

Openreach have cleared the fault back to us today so we do need to keep an eye on the stability of your connection but don't worry about doing that yourself. I can provide a graph showing your connection logs and I propose we look at that after another 48 hours so we can make a clear judgement on if any further investigation is needed, if it is at that stage I'll make sure we intervene and push things forward as quickly as possible. 

 

 

If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Adam Walker
 Plusnet Help Team
ejs
Aspiring Hero
Posts: 5,442
Thanks: 631
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎10-06-2010

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

Why was there such a long time between @shermans first reporting the fault on 1 March and the fault being sent to Plusnet's suppliers on 22 April?

Mustrum
Community Veteran
Posts: 3,554
Thanks: 1,055
Fixes: 76
Registered: ‎13-08-2015

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.


@ejs wrote:

Why was there such a long time between @shermans first reporting the fault on 1 March and the fault being sent to Plusnet's suppliers on 22 April?


I think there may be a lot of info not reported/notified to the forum, but hey maybe I could be wrong!

EmilyD
Plusnet Help Team
Plusnet Help Team
Posts: 2,032
Thanks: 357
Fixes: 117
Registered: ‎26-03-2018

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

To answer this question I would need to share account specific information, so I'm unable to go into more detail on this I'm afraid.

If this post resolved your issue please click the 'This fixed my problem' button
 Emily D
 Plusnet Help Team
ejs
Aspiring Hero
Posts: 5,442
Thanks: 631
Fixes: 25
Registered: ‎10-06-2010

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

This was the last time, in case anyone is interested (unless there have been one or more court cases since then):

https://community.plus.net/t5/Broadband/No-broadband-due-to-negligence/m-p/1387779

shermans
Pro
Posts: 1,303
Thanks: 101
Fixes: 3
Registered: ‎07-09-2007

Re: Legal action - Broadband fault ticket #169521461 has not been resolved for nearly two months.

Correct.  It is well documented.  However, Plusnet appealed and there was a second court hearing at which Plusnet and BT again lost.  At both hearings both Plusnet and BT had a London barrister.  I was all on my own.  The judge found that Plusnet IS indeed primarily responsible for its sub-contractors and cannot hide behind BT, although both Plusnet and BT tried every trick in the book to get out of individual liability.  BT argued that they did not have a duty of care toward me and Plusnet argued that they were not liable for the actions of their sub-contractors.  The judge did not accept either argument and found them both liable to me.  The judge decided not to attempt to aportion blame between them because, to all intents and purposes, he considered Plusnet and BT to be one and the same, as BT owns Plusnet.  He therefore issued a joint order and left it to them to decide who paid.  In the event, Plusnet sent me a cheque for 50% and BT sent me a cheque for 50%.

 

Their legal costs must have been significant, as there were two hearings and London barristers do not come cheap !  At that time, Openreach was still just a department of BT, which is why BT themselves were held liable.  Since then of course, Ofcom has ordered BT to separate Openreach's activities into a separate distinct company, which is 100% owned by BT, just like Plusnet.  They are therefore now both sister companies of BT.

 

Immediately following the case, to demonstrate there was no hard feeling, I upgraded my account with Plusnet to full fibre broadband rather than change ISP, which I could have done, and I think I may have signed up for two years (but don't quote me on that) whereas prior to that I was on a monthly contract.  So I have shown goodwill.

I should add that following my last posting, which I added to my ticket as well, Plusnet did take notice and as I reported, the very next morning a whole team descended on my house to make a thorough inspection.  They did not find anything obvious, but since that time, my broadband has only dropped out once to my knowledge.  Plusnet's own data monitoring confirmed that prior to that it was dropping out regularly, and Openreach showed me their own records which said the same thing.  It can be no coincidence that things are suddenly so much better, so they obviously did something while they were up the pole.  So why it has taken since 1st March to resolve, I do not know.

At some point I said that my neighbour, who is with BT, has been without internet for two weeks due to a new system in the local exchange, which I also attributed to my problems.  However, Openreach advised during their visit to me that I am not affected by the exchange as my fibre comes from the green cabinet in the road.  My neighbour is on copper broadband which does come from the exchange.  Interestingly, he still has not internet !