Unexplained delays

[#1]

I ordered my broadband package with Plusnet at the start of this month, one of the selling points for me was what I had heard about the good support. Coming close to two weeks ago was when I was supposed to be connected and ready to go. I called and messaged support numerous times, only to finally be given a new connection date of a week from now. I have been offered £5 (one month Internet) as an apology for the delays, which is minuscule compared to the £252.87 I had to pay Plusnet upfront, the £100s I have had to pay in mobile data charges on my phone due to not having home broadband, and all the inconveniences that go along with it. The worst part is I have not been given any explanation about what has caused these delays, and why I have to wait yet another week. There has been very little communication in general. All I have got is an email stating I may or may not have to be home next week to give an engineer access to my property, and if I am not I may be charged £65.

If I can't get a more satisfactory response then I would like to cancel my order and get a full refund so I can go with another provider. I feel like that would get me online sooner, and that's what I care about. Can you please provide me information about how to do this.

Thank you,

Ben

[#2]

Hello @zokusuji

Please accept my apologies for the delay in your services completing.

I have responded to your query via a ticket. You can view my response by Clicking Here

Should you require any further assistance, please do get back in touch with us.

Many thanks. 

[#3]

I got a good explanation, but I still have no Internet. Openreach set everything up in my home, and 24 hours later the router still doesn't work. It has an orange light with a red flashing "b" (see photo).

Can this please be looked at as a matter of priority.

[#4]

Hi Ben.

I can see your fibre order is stuck in the Openreach systems and our suppliers have raised a bridge case yesterday to the appropriate team to manually progress the order. A bridge case is like a task and the lead time is 5 working days however I can also see that our suppliers are escalating this and have advised to review back on 02/03/2019. 

Once the order is moving again through the systems it'll likely progress to the point where an engineer is allocated to complete the fibre work at the cabinet (the green box in the road) and when that's done your account will activate on our side.

Due to the weekend though we likely won't get an update until next week but we'll be sure to update you when we know more.

Apologies for the inconvenience caused.

[#5]

Hi Anoush,

Thank you for the response.

The Openreach engineers said everything was good to go, I guess they were wrong? If I have a working phone line could I be set up on something that is not fibre, and then switched to fibre when it's ready?

It may not be usual procedure but I have been waiting a month which is unacceptable, every day is costing me greatly.

Regards,

Ben

[#6]

Hi Ben.

No worries it may be that the engineer has completed all the required work but either way your order unfortunately isn't completed in the Openreach systems so we'd need to work with our suppliers to get that completed. I should hopefully have email response by tomorrow evening on the back of the escalation I've raised and was accepted.

[#7]

If the problem is that fibre work needs to be completed at the cabinet (why couldn't this have happened weeks ago?) then what's preventing giving me access to ADSL broadband for now and upgrading me when the cabinet work is complete?

Every day that goes by is a huge cost to me.

[#8]

If the problem is that fibre work needs to be completed at the cabinet (why couldn't this have happened weeks ago?)

Your fibre order isn't committed in the Openreach systems yet, it's still in the first phase. Once it's committed this will be when it's allocated to an engineer to complete the work at the cabinet.

Based on what you've said it's possible the engineer who installed the phone line may have completed the fibre work at the same time. A good test for you to check whether this is the case or not would be to connect your router into the master telephone socket then log in to your router settings at http://192.168.1.254 going to the Troubleshooting > Helpdesk tab and checking if there is a line speed showing which may show if there is physical sync to the cabinet.

However, this may not change things because ultimately your order is stuck in the Openreach systems and needs to be progressed to the 2nd phase(committed) which will likely automatically provide us with a date of a lead of around 5 working days but we'd then at that point request a sooner completion date due to the issues with the order.

then what's preventing giving me access to ADSL broadband for now and upgrading me when the cabinet work is complete?

Providing standard broadband on your line would mean we'd need to cancel the fibre order as there can generally only ever be 1 open order on the Openreach systems at any one time. While we could try cancelling the order and ordering standard broadband I fear that this may not actually speed things up as the cancellation of the order may just get stuck in the system if we try to process the cancellation at this stage while the order is stuck.

While I'd love things to be a lot easier than this I'm afraid that realistically all we can really do is make sure we're chasing and escalating with our suppliers at every opportunity/review date we're provided.

[edit]

Reading your thread again I can see you've mentioned that the light on your router is flashing. As this indicates your line isn't in sync to the cabinet it doesn't look like the fibre work has been completed (not that this really changes things anyway).

[#9]

Thank you for the information Anoush.

I should hopefully have email response by tomorrow evening on the back of the escalation I've raised and was accepted.

Just checking to see if you have any response or there are any updates?

[#10]

Hi Ben. I updated your ticket not long ago advising that I've received a reply back from our suppliers escalation team who have said that they've not received an update from Openreach yet on the back of the escalation they've raised, so they're chasing this up. Hopefully we move forward on the 04/03/2019.

[#11]

Thank you, I hadn't seen the notification on the ticket yet. Does "hopefully we move forward on the 04/03/2019" mean I may have a working Internet connection on Monday, or just that that's when there will be more information? It would be nice to have a time estimate for the best and worst case so I can plan accordingly.

[#12]

Looking at this pragmatically it's unlikely your order will complete on Monday, I'd say the best case scenario would be that we'd receive a planned completion date then which our suppliers have assured me will be expedited for the soonest available.

[#13]

Thank you, is there now a planned completion date?

[#14]

@zokusuji,

Thanks for getting back to us.

@Gandalf will be in the office shortly and will update you then. I have passed an email onto him just letting him know.

[#15]

Hi Ben, I thought I'd post back on here as well as update your support ticket again. Following numerous layers of escalation your fibre order was committed in the early hours of this morning with a planned completion date of today.

The notes on the order suggest that the engineering tasks have been completed, but the notification of order completion (the final stage) hasn't been sent yet. I'd expect this to happen before midnight, I've tried chasing it up now but the appropriate team are closed.

Fingers crossed your connection goes live overnight, I'll check back tomorrow afternoon.