Misleading full fibre promise

[#1]

@PhilipHeyes If you upgrade your service to FTTP - WITH Plusnet, you do not lose your email service.

[#2]

It’s never occurred to me before but I DO think that PlusNet’s advert IS unintentionally misleading. It doesn’t define which fibre supplier PN is willing to work with. In the past no one ever asked whether you had a BT telephone line or some other and it is something new to ask whether it’s BT’s (Openreach’s) fibre being supplied in your area before signing up to a contract. IMHO since they don’t define what they refer to as fibre, and it’s reasonable to assume that they therefore mean ANY fibre, they should carry any of the OP’s costs as he’s been misled. Worth escalating IMHO.

Just as a matter of interest, are there any instances (Virgin aside) of several fibre providers serving the same area?

[#3]

Just as a matter of interest, are there any instances (Virgin aside) of several fibre providers serving the same area?

Yes - I have at least one more.

[#4]

The OP was not aware there was more than one fibre infrastructure provider. Plusnet have a duty to check that it is BTOpenreach that are supplying the fibre before taking the order. This is what the Plusnet operative did when I made an order to upgrade to fibre yesterday. It seems the operative she dealt with forgot to do this.

If Plusnet were a decent company they'd admit their mistake and refund the customer.

Things were so much simpler before privatisation when we had a single state-owned telecommunications company run for the benefit of the country.

[#5]

Had a call from Plusnet yesterday saying they are going to let me off the exit fee after I complained for a second time. He couldn’t confirm whether or not they will be reviewing the wording or adding an asterisk to their full fibre promise.

[#6]

Great. That is what Plusnet should have done straight away, with no quibbles.

It's an agent training issue. All Plusnet agents should check that the fibre being installed to your property is one they are capable of running services over before taking the order. The agent that took my order did this as a standard check. Yours forgot.

[#7]

@ModelCitizen2  I don't think you can expect Plusnet agents to check if other fibre networks are being installed, they would have no way of doing that. The OP was not ordering an upgrade to Full Fibre as it was not yet available.

I cannot believe your comment in your earlier post ,,,,,,, "Things were so much simpler before privatisation when we had a single state-owned telecommunications company run for the benefit of the country."

You must be joking.😀  If you are referring to Post Office Telecommunications who became British Telecom they were an absolutely useless monopoly who did nothing to benefit the country.

[#8]

@RealAleMadrid AND GPO Telephones before them - I unfortunately have had dealings  with this entity in all its various guises.

[#9]

@olih1 

Thanks fog letting us know.

@ModelCitizen2 

As stated, it’s totally unreasonable to expect Plusnet know where the myriad of Altnet’s are installing next and is totally irrelevant to the issue in hand. The argument relates to when fibre arrives, not what is currently being installed. 
The fundamental problem is that the full fibre promise is not caveated with ‘provided by Openreach’.

[#10]

Of course Plusnet can and should check that the OPs line was going to be capable of taking their service. If they didn't they could easily be accused of miss-selling. As I say, when I ordered an upgrade to full fibre yesterday they first thing the agent did was to check that BTO were definitely upgrading my service to fibre. The issue for the OP is that their agent forgot.

Privatisation of UK telecoms service.
That will have been a failure of government not BT (as was). We always had a reliable telephone and never had to think about telecoms. It was just there. Now the government have been promising us rural peasants full fibre for nearly two decades but have seemed incapable of delivering it fast and efficiently through the privatised companies driven by profit.

[#11]

---

@Baldrick1 wrote:

The fundamental problem is that the full fibre promise is not caveated with ‘provided by Openreach’.

---

That caveat really should be there. Although there is the added complication that OR have no plans (probably ever) to provide FTTP to some areas (I live in one such area), so Plusnet's Full Fibre Promise is utterly worthless unless OR have published plans for your area.

Plusnet state "Full Fibre is rolling out across the UK. If you can’t get it just yet, don’t worry" but that doesn't suggest that you may NEVER be able to get it. Of course a lot of advertising is misleading, so as always caveat emptor. 

[#12]

@ModelCitizen2 

The promise is ‘when  full fibre becomes available’. So, there’s no reason why one shouldn’t sign up with an Altnet using OTS and consequently never speaking to Plusnet.

[#13]

@Baldrick1
"The fundamental problem is that the full fibre promise is not caveated with ‘provided by Openreach’."

I'm sorry but it's not. The fundamental problem is that Plusnet did not check whether they could provide services over the fibre. They have a duty to do this. They forgot and as a result missold the OP a product they could not provide.

[#14]

---

@ModelCitizen2 wrote:
Privatisation of UK telecoms service.
That will have been a failure of government not BT (as was). We always had a reliable telephone and never had to think about telecoms. It was just there. Now the government have been promising us rural peasants full fibre for nearly two decades but have seemed incapable of delivering it fast and efficiently through the privatised companies driven by profit.

---

I'd just like to take the opportunity to agree with some of your comments on this matter. The idea That the GPO never did anything to help Britain is simple ignorance ("Don't mention the war!").

One example known to me: We could have had full fibre DECADES ago (BT was getting ready to convert in the 1980s) but certain politicians thought it far more important we have a blue button on our phones (Remember Mercury? - my original, old and redundant, Geemarc telephone receiver still has its blue Mercury button)

Bye the bye - know where the concept of the passive local optical communications network came from, in 1987?