Mad Moggies: Account type change a week early.

[#1]

Yes, I rang up PN to say what had happened and how I felt about it but, as you say, nothing can be done till Tuesday.  
Why BT decided to change the installation date without me having any inkling till that morning that it was scheduled for Friday 23 May instead of the previously booked Monday 2 June is a complete mystery to me. PN person I spoke to after the engineer's call seemed to think it was down for 23 May but I've looked through ALL the closed tickets on my account and can't find anything about the date change till it all started happening on my account in the early hours of Friday morning.
The other big question is why did PlusNet email me at 1.51am yesterday morning to say:
"Your product change is now complete, here are the details:
This is your account type.
Broadband Product Plusnet Essentials Fibre
This is an estimate of the line speed you'll get.
Estimated speed 40 Mbps"
when BT were not even planning to visit till between 13.00 and 18.00 that afternoon?

P.S. When going through all the closed tickets, I found this one which puzzles me as my exchange is down as not being on 21CN and "BT have not advised a planned date for WBC on 21CN" according to Plusnet Usertools; there's the same information on SamKnows too!
"Service Notification
2:26am, Thursday 8 May 2014
An update report has been received for this account.
The broadband service is now being transferred to the 21C Network.
The transfer will complete by midnight on 24/05/2014."

[#2]

Quote from: Mad

The other big question is why did PlusNet email me at 1.51am yesterday morning to say: "Your product change is now complete, here are the details: This is your account type. Broadband Product Plusnet Essentials Fibre ... when BT were not even planning to visit till between 13.00 and 18.00 that afternoon?

I think the answer to that one is a matter of interpretation. The message means that on Plusnet's systems the *administration* work to support a fibre service (Current line speed being the most noticeable one) has been done. That should mean when the engineering changes are done the service should perform properly. The message *does not* mean the engineering work is complete.

Quote from: Mad

P.S. When going through all the closed tickets, I found this one which puzzles me as my exchange is down as not being on 21CN and "BT have not advised a planned date for WBC on 21CN" according to Plusnet Usertools; there's the same information on SamKnows too! "Service Notification 2:26am, Thursday 8 May 2014 An update report has been received for this account. The broadband service is now being transferred to the 21C Network. The transfer will complete by midnight on 24/05/2014."

The last publicly available information on 21CN/WBC availability was published by BT on 27/01/2014 and the status reported by the exchange checker reflects that. I assume Plusnet have later information as will the BT Wholesale availability checker but I'm not aware of a public source for it covering all exchanges. Based on your Service Notification it looks like your exchange was enabled for 21CN between Feb and Apr 2014.
David

[#3]

Thank you very much for that information, David.
Maybe the wording on the email needs changing to make it clearer to the customer that it's the preparation that's complete and not the actual change.
Re update on exchange, do you think that BT might have got things muddled and it was the transfer to 21CN that was supposed to happen on Friday and not the transfer to fibre broadband? Or that they brought the fibre installation forward so the 21CN transfer wouldn't need doing today as per ticket?
Can't get stats from current router (old instructions for earlier model don't work) so can't check if it's on 21 CN now or not.

[#4]

The "transfer to 21C Network" message seems to be added to accounts even when the change is something different - eg interleaving being turned on. I tend to regard it as meaning *something* is happening rather than "what it says* is happening. This is just a guess but I wonder if it reflects the order being placed manually rather than by an automated service.
If your transfer to 21CN was done as a bulk regrade I don't think a record is made on individual accounts (because it's an ad-hoc operation). If you carry out a performance test at http://speedtest.btwholesale.com/ and it does an upload test almost certainly you are on 21CN.
(Ignore the preliminaries in red before doing the test, though obviously doing the test alongside other traffic would not give reliable results.)
David

[#5]

Yes, I suppose that could be the case but I wonder why it says 24th May when the original date requested was 27th May, which was confirmed on 8th May to the person placing the manual order.  BT then said on 16th May that was 27th unavailable and booked the engineer visit for 2nd June instead. I was told their ordering system has been having a lot of problems and that appeared to be the reason the date was then changed to 23rd May. Seems to me that BT's ordering system is not fit for purpose.
Tried the BTW test several times and while it did do an upload test, it hung at around 25%.
The further tests came up with this:
"1. Best Effort Test:
Download Speed : 7.05 Mbps
Your speed test has completed and the results are shown above, however during the test an error occurred while trying to retrieve additional details regarding your service. As a result we are unable to determine if the speed you received during the test is acceptable for your service. Please re-run the test if you require this additional information."

[#6]

Well it looks like BT's systems were expecting something to happen yesterday/today but what that might be can only be determined by the staff.
David

[#7]

I can see that we've got this re-booked for 30/05/2014 between 8AM and 1PM for you.
Sorry for any confusion regarding your account changing ahead of schedule. We'll ensure that you're only billed from the date that you actually had the fibre service. Sorry for any inconvenience caused by this.
Do let us know how it goes on the day of the install. Fingers crossed it all goes smoothly!

[#8]

Thanks Linn.
One of your colleagues sorted it out with BT this afternoon for 30th May and sent me an email to confirm the date. When I called earlier she could see BT had already rebooked it for 9th June without letting anyone know so I asked if it could be brought closer to the original date, which it was. 

[#9]

All connected up now, hurrah! 
Took a while to log in with PN via the browser - had to disconnect and connect again before it let me log in.

[#10]

Excellent news, glad you're up and running at last