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7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

finalstraw
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎25-01-2016

7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

Lisa take note - My ongoing attempt to upgrade from Plusnet normal unlimited broadband to Plusnet 78Mb Fibre has so far taken just under 8 weeks and looks set to take longer still.
I currently have no broadband at all and been told today I won't have till the order is completed.
I have already been charged for the upgrade although a refund is in process after I complained i still didn't have it.
I placed the order on 1 Dec 2015 - I have been given yet another completion date of 1 Feb 2016, possibly sooner but not holding out much hope.
I have waited in from 8am - 1pm for engineers visits on two occasions, the first was apparently not needed but nobody told me it was cancelled.
I have spent literally days on the phone to your customer service teams. Without phoning to notify of ongoing issues and delays they would often have been unaware the issues were still not resolved.
For any of you considering upgrading please beware that it doesn't always go smoothly and if you sometimes have to work from home like my partner, then upgrading may cause problems. For us, the upgrade process has so far resulted in days of constant dropped connections, speed drops to less then 1Mb/s (sometimes close to dial-up speeds) and as of 3am this morning, no broadband at all!

I have been polite but firm throughout but it's got to the stage today where I start drafting official complaints. This has to have been my worst customer service experience ever.
dick:csa


8 REPLIES 8
stalkstalk
Grafter
Posts: 39
Registered: ‎29-12-2015

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

That's completely unacceptable, you should be looking elsewhere mate, that level of service just isn't normal, it's time to face the facts, they simply don't care about you or me as customers.
Anotherone
Champion
Posts: 19,107
Thanks: 457
Fixes: 21
Registered: ‎31-08-2007

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

Hi finalstraw, welcome to the forum albeit under extremely poor circumstances.
There appears to be a bug in Plusnet's provisioning system which occasionally causes significant issues like this when for some reason Openreach's systems reject/change or cancel an order, and this isn't discovered by Plusnet staff until the customer complains.
Whilst the situation clearly isn't acceptable, I hope one of Plusnet's provisioning experts looks into this for you and resolves the problems asap.
Darkfire
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 699
Fixes: 30
Registered: ‎17-10-2015

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

Hi Finalstraw,
I believe you spoke to one of my colleagues earlier today about this(He gave you Lisa's name),  from what I heard he's going to be sorting this out for you and he's definitely a good person to have spoken to.
That being said I will take a look tomorrow and see what's happened for you,  I'll pop you an email over with some detail into what's happened and what's going to happen  from here,  if anything more can be done I'll let you know.
finalstraw
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎25-01-2016

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

Thank you Paul, I look forward to your email although a phone call to my landline would be helpful to alert me to any progress as my Mbl reception at home is dire and I'm currently having  to connect at another location to get online with my laptop which is grossly inconvenient to say the least.
I did mention this to one of your staff yesterday and was rather annoyed to discover the bad news was delivered online instead. It was at that point I lost patience and decided it was time to start escalating things.
Darkfire
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Plusnet Alumni (retired)
Posts: 699
Fixes: 30
Registered: ‎17-10-2015

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

No problem, you should have an email from me know giving you a quick breakdown of events up to this point, I'll give you a call later on so we can discuss in more detail once I've had a response to getting your order expedited
finalstraw
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎25-01-2016

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

Thanks Paul,
I've just read your email and look forward to your call. My partner is scheduled to work from home on Thursday and Friday so that's a date I'm hoping for as it costs us a packet in rail fares and parking if she needs to travel to London instead. Four hours on a train each day is another issue altogether.
I need to head out later to find a better mobile signal to to upload some editorial copy so if you don't get me on my home phone please try my Mbl number instead.
finalstraw
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎25-01-2016

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

A quick update, it's now 8 weeks and 2 days since placing my order on 1st December and if the next scheduled attempt works it will be one day short of nine weeks since placing the order.
Things finally stepped up a gear after my initial post on Monday and Paul and various others have been very helpful with regards getting things escalated and attempting to finally get me connected to fibre.
Early this week I was given a date of Monday 1st for the fibre to be connected but with a promise that this would be expedited to an earlier date. True to their word someone did something or other to the line and late on Tuesday night I spotted the blue light on the router instead of the hated orange and flashing red ones. So yesterday morning I got a call to say all was well and we should now have fibre speeds. The good news was we had broadband once again but still no fibre.
After a few phone calls and a bit of investigation I was informed that we now need another engineers visit (a fault engineer this time - which I read as one who actually knows what he's doing) and the earliest this can be arranged is for Monday 1st Feb - and I will need to wait in again for his visit.
What amazes me is that when I had the last engineer home visit (Mon 18th Jan) he appeared to do a very thorough job and had worked out exactly what was wrong and how to fix it, sadly this couldn't  be done there and then and needed to be scheduled for a later date. When it eventually was done the suggested fix either didn't work or wasn't done correctly and we lost the normal broadband as well for a spell. The next step was pushed through quite quickly and was supposed to finally correctly connect the fibre but unfortunately just gave us normal broadband again. So now we've got a five day wait for a fault engineer.
I know next to nothing about how the telephone systems work but I am very good at finding and fixing faults with vehicle electronics, engines, PC's, laptops and circuitry in general. The key thing I've learnt about finding and fixing faults is that you remove all distractions and work logically from one end to the other without a break until you discover the fault - or faults. If you have to take a break you make detailed notes and get back to it ASAP while it's still fresh in your mind. As soon as you've established the faults you then need to fix it and test it straight away. Having a system where multiple people attempt to repair a fault one step at a time with long breaks between each step is asking for trouble, is certain to cost more, and goes again plain old fashioned common sense.
Not sure how much of the process delays I’ve experienced are down to Plusnet or Openreach but one bit of feedback I'd give Plusnet is that you desperately need a process that automatically flags up how long an order has been in the system without being completed. If an order is taking longer than normal then there's obviously an issue which needs to be tackled. Assigning some quality resources to the problem sooner rather than later will clear issues quicker and more economically in the long run and do wonders for your reputation.
In summary, I’m still waiting for fibre, your frontline staff are great, but your processes have some serious flaws which are ruining your customer service reputation.
finalstraw
Newbie
Posts: 6
Registered: ‎25-01-2016

Re: 7 weeks 6 days and counting to upgrade to fibre, currently no broadband at all

The saga continues - 9 weeks tomorrow. The Openreach fault engineer came this morning, checked everything and basically said we're still connected to the wrong cabinet. I'm no expert but it sounded very similar to what the last engineer said 2 weeks ago on the 18th Jan. The good news is we do have broadband. I don't know whether we're now connected to fibre (via the wrong cabinet) or still to ADSL but it's the same speed we had previously which is nothing like the 78Mbs fibre we should have.
If Paul or Frank are still monitoring this could you let me know a rough timescale for making the changes the engineer suggests and if there will be any service breaks during the process so we can plan around it. Cheers.