Phone line lost

[#1]

Having been with Plusnet for almost 10 years we recently agreed to upgrade our package to Fibre Broadband with Phone. We have received our Hub One and received notification that the fibre broadband had been activated on Friday. Unfortunately on the same day (hslf an hour before the notification) we lost all use of our phone line (which is being transferred from BT). We have no dial tone and callers to us get immediately diverted to the 1571 message (no ringing tone beforehand). The online chat were no help at all - "call BT". This is obviously related to the switchover but Plusnet appear to be washing their hands of all responsibility. We have been without a working phone line for two days now and are receiving no help or advice as to what may be the problem.

[#2]

I would have bluntly told the idiot you were chatting with that it's obviously a provisioning issue and to get onto the provisioning team immediately

[#3]

You say you upgraded to Fibre with Phone from Plusnet, as the provider of both services they have no excuse for 'passing the buck'.

If your phone line had been with another provider then they may have some excuse due to the way Openreach work (a phone line fault however caused can usually only be reported via your telephone provider).

I'd recommend telephoning them (remember all 0800 numbers are free to call from UK mobile services).

[#4]

Hi @DrWhen looking at your account, your phone line isn't due to migrate over to us until 29/04/16.

As much as I'd like to help with this, we aren't currently your phone provider, so this is unfortunately not something we would be able to chase up for you at this time.

I do appreciate this matter is frustrating, however it is correct that you would need to discuss this with the current provider of the line.

@Anotherone The phone order was placed at 19:50 on 15/04/16 and the provisioning department wouldn't be able to help with a fault that appeared on the line earlier in the day prior to us even placing the phone transfer order.

@w23 Although it has been arranged for us to become the phone provider, we aren't currently providing the phone line. Until the line migrates to us on 29/04/16, there wouldn't be anything we could do to resolve the phone fault unfortunately.

[#5]

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@HarryB wrote:

@w23 Although it has been arranged for us to become the phone provider, we aren't currently providing the phone line. Until the line migrates to us on 29/04/16, there wouldn't be anything we could do to resolve the phone fault unfortunately.

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OK, that does change things, due to Openreach 'demarcation', a phone line fault, even if caused by an engineer working on your broadband, must be reported to your telephone provider.  The broadband and telephone engineers all work for Openreach anyway (or their sub-contractors).

[#6]

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@HarryB wrote:
@Anotherone The phone order was placed at 19:50 on 15/04/16 and the provisioning department wouldn't be able to help with a fault that appeared on the line earlier in the day prior to us even placing the phone transfer order.

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Thanks for the update @HarryB, but surely the agent on Chat was most unhelpful - if he/she'd pointed out the phone order wasn't due to complete until the 29/4/16 then the appropriate action would have been obvious

[#7]

they may well have done, we only have a shortened version of that conversation from the OP.

i'm sure that idiot will welcome your apology

[#8]

Had the 'idiot' given an appropriate response explaining things as @HarryB has done, then I would not have expected the OP to post what they have, or are you suggesting the OP is making things up?

[#9]

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@Anotherone wrote:
but surely the agent on Chat was most unhelpful - if he/she'd pointed out the phone order wasn't due to complete until the 29/4/16 then the appropriate action would have been obvious

The agent advised the phone order had not been placed yet. Although they didn't explain that it wouldn't have been possible to have both the phone and fibre modify order in place at the same time.

They explained that they would place the order right then, and also gave an estimated completion date of 03/05/16 (Which I would have too, as orders placed after 4pm generally go through as the following working day)

They explained that we can't cease a telephone line that we aren't providing and advised to speak to the current provider of the line to investigate the fault and went on to advise to report the fault to us if the line is still not working once the line has transferred to us, at which point we'd be able to investigate.

The transcript of the chat seems fine to me.

[#10]

Thanks for the detail @HarryB. I'm afraid my remark about 'idiot' was based on the way the OP phrased their post, and my and others posted experiences of Chat in the past. So in this instance I will apologise @dvorak  It's just a shame that in general, Chat is still not living upto the "promise" of the great thing it was going to be, plus of course the removal of the ability to raise tickets when Chat or Phone was not convenient.