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Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

costas4bulbidi
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Registered: ‎10-10-2018

Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

Hi,

 

Approximately two weeks I signed up for Plusnet mobile and ported my phone number to it using the PAC code. Since then, I have been unable to receive calls and texts. The only exception is calls from my partner, who is also with Plusnet. Everyone else cannot call me or message me. 

 

 

After conducting a series of tests that were suggested to me by phone support, I was told about a week ago that there does seem to be a problem on Plusnet's behalf, and that a report had to be filed, and that I would hear back around the middle of last week.

 

I have not heard back anything, though and the problem still persists. This has gone on for far too long. Could I have an update and an estimate on when this will be fixed please? If I can't have that here, and assuming Plusnet is not able to contact me on the phone due to the issue with the line, can I provide an alternative number?

 

Thank you.

31 REPLIES 31
Mads
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
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Registered: ‎06-08-2018

Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

Hello @costas4bulbidi,

 

I am very sorry to hear of the issues you have experienced in the short time you have been with us. Please accept my sincerest apologies for the frustration caused to you. So we can investigate and help resolve further could you leave your account reference, full name, full address with postcode and mobile number via PM so we can pass security.

costas4bulbidi
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

Thank you for the quick response Maddy. I have sent you a PM with the details.

Mads
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
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Registered: ‎06-08-2018

Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

Great, just let us know once you have replied so we can get this progressed.

RobC
Pro
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

sounds like another example of mvne sim/customer profile incomplete/corrupt

 

Get ops to check it (and a few of the others we see here) could quickly  confirm the issue and if so, give them a clue as to a root cause to address .. if they dont already know and are stuffing their heads in the sand ...

... before you end up with yet another repeat of last Christmas' failures of service affecting rafts of new customers ...

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Mads
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
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Posts: 1,873
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Registered: ‎06-08-2018

Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

@costas4bulbidi, I have now replied to your PM. Please let us know here once you've replied sow e can get it picked up and sent off to ops.

RobC
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

@costas4bulbidi,

If by chance you still have your old sim, it might help if you can pop it in a suitable phone and check to see whether that is still receiving calls, despite not being able to send any.

The information might be useful to Plusnet ops

 

 

.

Show us ONE just ONE real, defined benefit for the British public from Brexit

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costas4bulbidi
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

Great suggestion, thank you. I tried the old sim. I was connected to the old network (O2), I had 4G signal and I was able to call my partner and my phone number appeared on his phone! When he called me back however, he got a message to leave a message on the Plusnet answering machine. 

RobC
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago


@costas4bulbidi wrote:

I tried the old sim. I was connected to the old network (O2), I had 4G signal and I was able to call my partner and my phone number appeared on his phone! When he called me back however, he got a message to leave a message on the Plusnet answering machine. 


 

Seems to clearly indicate a split port/split service with the error on Plusnets side

What is indicated:

O2 has not disconnected the number (they shouldn't it should be ported) and is correctly referring incoming calls to the number to plusnet  (properly ported from their end) - which goes straight to plusnets answerphone service as plusnet doesn't seem to know what/cant find who - to do with the external call referal.

O2 possibly not received the 'disconnect that sim' bit late in the transfer process from Plusnet, and have correctly (IMO) failed 'safe' if that is the case. (Not certain how each SP actually processes that)

 

The sim is perhaps set up 'Ok' within plusnets own 'local' on net systems, but the links to others is not set up right.

Something that seems to be VERY common.

 

Could easily be wrong, but the above seems to be likely.

 

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costas4bulbidi
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

That makes perfect sense and would explain all the symptoms e.g. the fact that my partner (who is with Plusnet mobile as well) is the only one who can contact me just fine. Thank you

MisterW
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

@costas4bulbidi @RobC 's conclusion of the port status is probably correct.

The UK mobile number porting process is archaic and requires considerable manual input, there's an excellent description of how it works here https://community.giffgaff.com/t5/Using-giffgaff/Porting-in-explained/ta-p/4221529 . Although that refers to porting in to Giffgaff, since PN is an MVNO on the EE network, the procedure will be very similar.

As you can see, there's lots of scope for it to go wrong and when it does there's a number of organisations involved to discover where the problem lies.

Hopefully the Ops team can sort it out quickly.

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.

costas4bulbidi
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

Thank you very much. I do hope it can be sorted quickly, as it's already been quite some time without being able to use my phone properly - being able to receive calls & texts is kinda essential... I understand that things sometimes go wrong, but trying to get technical support on this has been quite strenuous, involving doing several tests on my end before the technical team even gets notified (and filing a second report after the first attempt to fix this didn't resolve the issue). It shouldn't be up to me and you to do the work and investigation.

MisterW
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

but trying to get technical support on this has been quite strenuous, involving doing several tests on my end before the technical team even gets notified (and filing a second report after the first attempt to fix this didn't resolve the issue). It shouldn't be up to me and you to do the work and investigation.

I quite agree, it's not ideal and as @RobC has deduced it is possible to guess what the problem may be. I don't know exactly, but I would guess that with detailed tests and times, the Ops people can trace the call attempts in log files and therefore find the problem, then they just need to 'beat over the head' all the other organisations involved to correct the error. 

I think the main problem is that Ops are not customer facing, and there's no direct contact possible between them and you. There's always CS in between and therefore the process is cumbersome.

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.

RobC
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago


@MisterW wrote:

I think the main problem is that Ops are not customer facing, and there's no direct contact possible between them and you. There's always CS in between and therefore the process is cumbersome.


I think more than that, identified problems are patched, the underlying issue - and it seems plusnet have a big one setting up both porting and new numbers, are NOT resolved.

 

There seems to be a significant Plusnet systems/process issue here, These all fail MNE OSG performance requirements.

 

Also the fact that plusnet do not accurately report all the outages they have, perhaps even the majority of their outages, and even those they do put on the status page have false start and duration times

... and to address that they stop using it as one per the 'superusers' notice - kick/ban/sack all of them.

 

This is a shockingly unreliable service, which seems to deliberately hide its service failures, rather than notify its paying customers to enable them to at least attempt to manage it.

 

Now O2 has just had a service outage, and has properly announced it, identified the affected services, and worked to address it.

Learn from your betters Plusnet

Show us ONE just ONE real, defined benefit for the British public from Brexit

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costas4bulbidi
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Re: Cannot receive calls after porting 2 weeks ago

I wouldn't expect technical support to necessarily be customer-facing as standard. I know from my workplace that technically-minded professionals, on average, tend to prefer to focus on the tasks rather than spend their time communicating with clients.

 

What I don't like is the long process of contacting them: YOU need to do a series of tests first, and then customer person says "OK, we'll file a report and they will respond within 5 business days". I can imagine EXACTLY the conversation which lead to that system (it has to do with maximising the time of the technical staff by asking the customer-facing staff to collect as much info as possible prior to them getting involved). I can see the arguments, and they are ones which we've had at my workplace before. But, as a client experience, it is not good enough. Asking a few questions and then passing over the information to the technical stuff would have been fine. Requesting the client to conduct tests and then wait for 5 business days to hear back is just not good enough... Even more so when a client has not been able to receive calls and texts for nearly 3 weeks now! And at the very least, I would expect the client person to acknowledge that this is not ideal rather than say "do that...then wait 5 business days" and ignore the other comments.

 

On the other hand, my partner has had a positive experience with Plusnet, so I don't want to discredit them completely, but this particular aspect of it needs to be improved.