Engineer visit - didn't call

[#1]

I stayed home this morning for the openreach engineer appointment. At 9:10 I received a text from plusnet claiming that the appointment had been missed, as the engineer was unable to contact me on the phone number given. The mobile number you have for me is correct, and indeed plusnet have sent me several texts on it.

The thing is, I was sat next to my phone the entire time. Good signal, not on any other calls. No attempts to call me during this period were made, and I received no voicemails or texts until the one from plusnet saying it was cancelled.

I replied to that text immediately, letting you know i am in, and have been the entire time. I sent this text less than 1 minute after the message I got from you saying they had supposedly been unable to reach me. I also then called straight away by phone, but was met with very unhelpful advisors. If someone had actually contacted the engineer straight away when I texted or called, surely the engineer would even have still been there.

Now I'm being told I have to wait for another appointment on the 19th, and that I will be charged for this!

This is ridiculous. I do not accept being charged, and I am very annoyed that our start of service is being further delayed. 

The text from plusnet claims that they tried to call me and were unable to. I challenge you to provide a screenshot of a call log for this, because I simply do not believe such an attempt was made. 

What's more, when I signed up and paid back on 29/01/20, I was told that he would book in the engineer for the 11th, but that it would probably be possible to amend this to something even earlier, since there is already an openreach socket in our flat, and they probably only only need to connect us remotely or in the cabinet on the street!

Not a good start.

[#2]

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from Fibre to My Orders

[#3]

Thanks for your post @Daniel1 I'm sorry to see the problems you've had with your engineer appointment.

Looking through the notes on your account (what we've said and you've said) while we can't get a call log from the engineer, we do have a photo the engineer took when they were outside and it seems whenever we try to call your mobile number it's engaged, although it's odd that text messages are going through fine. 

With regards to moving the date forward sooner than the 11th, I'm afraid that it wouldn't have been possible, because the 11th was the provisional date that also became the confirmed date, and we'd always book the soonest available based on standard lead times around engineer availability.

While I appreciate that there may have been a line at your address previously, as this looked like to have been connected to non-BT equipment at the exchange, we'd need an engineer to connect the line up to the BT kit we'd use, and there wasn't a 'stopped' line at your address for us to be able to place an order to reactivate the line without a visit.

Having said that as you've said that you've already got an Openreach socket, I've been in touch with our suppliers and they've confirmed that the external engineering work completed on the 11th and the line tests OK.

As the engineer rebooking would more than likely be to simply close the job off in the system, they've cancelled the appointment we've booked for the 19th and they're triggering the order to complete... as I type this the phone order has already completed and the broadband order should follow suit within the next 24 hours.

Once that's happened, we'll email and text you with confirmation. Can you let us know how it goes?

Apologies for the inconvenience caused by the issues you've had.

[#4]

Thank you Anoush for looking into this.

That's great news that we could have broadband in the next 24 hours 🙂

I've also been digging into the issue with some calls apparently not being able to get through to me on my mobile. It's very strange, as I've been making and receiving calls on this number fine for some time, but am now beginning to suspect something went wrong when my number was ported from EE to Three mobile, so that calls only from certain other networks can't connect.

That's obviously nothing to do with Plusnet or Openreach though, and I think I may have wrongly directed some undeserved frustration towards your team, so I'm sorry for that.

Thanks again, I'll let you know when we're online.

[#5]

Hi Daniel, no problem that's cool. It's disappointing we didn't take the actions I've taken today sooner, as while we likely couldn't have got you up and running before the 11th, you could've been on the 11th without an engineer needing to visit.

Having said that, I hope your service works following the order completing and we won't end up needing to raise a fault and arrange an engineer visit. It's generally a good idea for an engineer to visit as part of an order so that they can test the service and ensure it's working before they complete the job, I made a judgement call here and I hope it pays off.

Worst case scenario though if we need to raise a fault, we should hopefully be able to book an engineer before or on the 19th as our suppliers generally prioritise faults over orders when it comes to engineer availability.

I've got back in touch with Openreach and they've confirmed the broadband order is completed on their back-end systems, they're triggering the order to complete on their front-end system, which will in turn complete the order in the BT systems, and then activate your account automatically on our side sending you an email and text. 

This all should happen before midnight. I'll check back on Monday as I'm about to leave the office now, but feel free to post back to let us know how it goes as I'm generally around here in my free time.

[#6]

Thanks, I'll post on here when I have an update.

Have a good weekend

[#7]

Cheers, we'll see about that as it's my turn to clean the house. 😬 Fingers crossed your broadband is on soon and you have a good weekend too. 

[#8]

Morning @Daniel1 Sorry to see your broadband didn't go live Friday night or over the weekend. I've checked the order and I can see it's completed in the Openreach systems, but not in the BT systems so I've chased this up and they're manually completing the order which should happen before the close of play today.

I'll check back towards the end of the afternoon on the progress.

[#9]

Thanks @Gandalf , much appreciated

[#10 · Accepted solution]

No problem, looks like the order has finally completed and we've activated your account.

Let me know how it goes once you've been able to setup your router and test.

[#11]

Yes - we are online 😁

I am posting this from our broadband connection.

Getting 17Mbps down / 9 up, but I understand this should improve over the next couple of weeks.

Thank you again!

[#12]

Excellent! It's good to see you're up and running now.

I've tested your line and I can see your router is getting the full 40mbps download and 10mbps up, were you testing on a device connecting over WiFi or hard-wired into the router using an ethernet cable?

P.S. Good luck with getting the issue with your mobile sorted out, I suspect the number port has gone wrong.