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Moving House Shambles

bla_bla_bla
Newbie
Posts: 3
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎10-05-2016

Moving House Shambles

I’m hoping someone from plus net can help check that finally things are on track for us to get reconnected to broadband please. Unfortunately having been very impressed with plus net service previously, I’m sorry to say customer service has been pretty poor this time around so apologies for the rant…

My family & I moved house 10 days ago. I called plus net several weeks beforehand to go over the options then called on 24.04.16 and formally requested a move of our fibre service to our new house round the corner. I was told it couldn’t happen on the date of our move (29.04.16) but it would happen on 04.05.16, fair enough. Had to call again as the new router needed didn’t get ordered. After this it arrived as planned.

Come the 4th nothing. Old line stopped (we still had the old rental property for a week or two overlap so could check). No phone or broadband on new line. Called up - was told the order had been cancelled. Apparently this happened because the phone line was stopped in the property scheduled for the new broadband and this automatically cancels any orders on the line. (but it’s a house move!! I spoke to the 'house moving' team who surely would be used to the people moving out of a house stopping their phone contract! No notification, just order failed. They didn’t have the line disconnected, just closed their account as everyone does when they move house). The person promised to phone me back in person after calling BT Openreach for an update. Then I got a text but no call to say as told, it didn’t go through but new order placed. I called back to be told the person who promised to call me back had gone off shift now (it was only about 10-15 minutes before that we had been talking) - not impressed at all that he ducked the conversation he promised!

The next person was very apologetic but said the new order would go through for the phone then a broadband order would be placed.

We heard nothing so called again on 5th and was told the order placed the day before also hadn’t gone through - again. It was reordered again, likely 5 working days but could be up to 2 weeks more. Asked if we could have non-fibre broadband while waiting - apparently not (even though we are paying for a continuing broadband package). Helpful person promised to check on the process every 2 h to make sure it moved ahead asap and update me and would ensure the broadband order was placed the next day. He would update us personally by our preferred method at each stage. I asked if the order could be prioritised given the errors and that we both rely on internet access for our jobs and have used all our mobile data now - but although this might be possible, was told it couldn’t be done until a provisional order date had been set with open reach which could take up to 48h.

You’ve probably guessed it, but we didn’t hear from the helpful person again. The phone line did get connected at least, although as there had been an unintentional break in phone line service our request to keep our phone number couldn’t be kept - so we have a different number now too (although we weren't told this, just queried it). This can I gather be rectified but not until the broadband is sorted out, or it would reset the whole broadband process again.

My wife called the next day to be told… that nobody had placed the broadband order but it would be placed now. And then it failed because of a ‘technical problem’ but after more phone calls this finally seemed to get solved.

We now have a provisional connection date by text of this Friday 13th May (hopefully nothing symbolic in that date) but haven’t had that date confirmed (shouldn’t there be a confirmation or does it just stay provisional?)

Although it’s not a huge amount of time without access, it has made work difficult and orders have repeatedly (three times) failed without anyone seeming to realise or tell us and has taken a lot of chasing from us to get anything happening. I’m hoping this is not the usual experience…

So could you please:
1) Confirm that it will definitely happen on that date (we have been told it’s just cabinet work and we don’t need to be in for a visit to the house)
2) Confirm if it’s really true that we couldn’t be allowed to have ADSL while waiting for the fibre to be connected and if so why it’s not possible?
3) Confirm that you will at least provide a refund for broadband and phone charges while we have had no service because of the errors
4) Confirm that if the order fails again that you will waive our contract without penalties as we will, I’m afraid, wish to go elsewhere…

Apologies again for the rant. I would say that most of the people we have spoken to have tried to help and have been apologetic - but I’m afraid important though this is, it only goes so far when things don’t happen after putting the handset down…

 

Thanks for any help or advice.

 

6 REPLIES 6
MattyC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 3,201
Fixes: 46
Registered: ‎10-04-2014

Re: Moving House Shambles

Hi there,
I'm just investigating now, and I'll update the thread shortly.

ex-Plusnet staffer. Any posts after 28/07/2017 aren't on behalf of Plusnet
MattyC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 3,201
Fixes: 46
Registered: ‎10-04-2014

Re: Moving House Shambles

Hi there,

This makes for poor reading so apologies for the poor experience.I'll be sure to feed back where necessary.

In answer to your questions:

1) Confirm that it will definitely happen on that date (we have been told it’s just cabinet work and we don’t need to be in for a visit to the house)

We're good to go for the 13th, all confirmed. The order is a self install so hopefully you should be switched straight on.

2) Confirm if it’s really true that we couldn’t be allowed to have ADSL while waiting for the fibre to be connected and if so why it’s not possible?

You could have had ADSL I suppose, though it's not really typical practice so I'm not surprised if the agent said no. There would have been a wait of four working days for ADSL to activate so I have to admit that it may have prolonged things a bit. There's no definitive guidelines for our agents here so it'll have been at a team leader's discretion.

3) Confirm that you will at least provide a refund for broadband and phone charges while we have had no service because of the errors

We always provide refund for house move downtime. Let me know when you're up and running and I'll make sure it's sorted for you. Be happy to look into a goodwill gesture for you too.

4) Confirm that if the order fails again that you will waive our contract without penalties as we will, I’m afraid, wish to go elsewhere…

Unfortunately I cannot confirm that, though I'm confident we should be good to go this Friday.

Hopefully this clarifies things a bit.

Matty

ex-Plusnet staffer. Any posts after 28/07/2017 aren't on behalf of Plusnet
bla_bla_bla
Newbie
Posts: 3
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎10-05-2016

Re: Moving House Shambles

Dear Matty, 

 

Thanks for the swift reply and for addressing each question. Apologies again for the rant but had lost all faith that the order would actually materialise fourth time around...  Fingers crossed all goes as planned now and quickly back to normal, good service. In that case the question over cancelling the agreement won't matter... but... if it fails again I'm afraid I would absolutely want to pursue this as I would not have agreed to the contract if it had been made clear we would wait more than 3 weeks for the transfer to happen, with much more of our time spent getting to know your customer services team than expected. 

 

Thanks also for the explanation re ADSL and your offer of a goodwill gesture. I will let you know once we're connected as requested. 

MattyC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 3,201
Fixes: 46
Registered: ‎10-04-2014

Re: Moving House Shambles

Thanks,

I'm not actually in on Friday, but I'll get a colleague to take a look.

Matty

ex-Plusnet staffer. Any posts after 28/07/2017 aren't on behalf of Plusnet
bla_bla_bla
Newbie
Posts: 3
Thanks: 1
Registered: ‎10-05-2016

Re: Moving House Shambles

Hi Matty,

Just to let you know as agreed that all connected now and waiting for speeds to increase but glad it went through - thanks for your help.

The engineer did need to gain access to the house apparently so he came back in the afternoon when my wife was in.

Just as a bit of info when trying to work out what went wrong I was told in the phone it was the stopping off the line that caused the problem. I said I thought the line was already stopped as the owners had moved out but was assured they could see that it wasn't. I happened to see the email order sent through on 24.04.16 and it states on there that the line was already disconnected as I had thought so that doesn't sound to me like the cause...

I was told an order had been placed for our phone number to revert to our previous one automatically after the broadband completed so hopefully that will happen now so everything is back to the original planned setup.

Thanks.

MattyC
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 3,201
Fixes: 46
Registered: ‎10-04-2014

Re: Moving House Shambles

Spot on,

Yeah, I didn't really want to object at the time, but the source of the delay was down to the previous tenants not ceasing the line within a reasonable timescale. I'm glad all is sorted for you now though.

Matty

ex-Plusnet staffer. Any posts after 28/07/2017 aren't on behalf of Plusnet