Broadband installation not that smooth

[#1]

Here's some feedback on the broadband that was installed at my daughter's home today.

She was told it would be installed AM. We had to dig around to find that AM meant 08:00-13:00. As she works (she is a teacher, so cannot respond to phone calls or texts) I agreed to go to her home to await the engineer. I got there for 08:00. So I was up really early to get there on time. Later in the morning (around 09:30) I noticed a 'broadband' van outside the house. The van later drove off, and no one had knocked at the door. So clearly that couldn't be for me.

At lunchtime my daughter was able to check her phone. She got a message saying everything was done.

WHAT ? ? ? ? ?

So I had got up stupidly early to drive to her house only to find the engineer couldn't even be bothered to knock on the door and say he had done whatever he did. That is very poor.

I then connected the BT box (it says plusnet, but it has exactly the same software as my BT router). Weird. I could connect to plus.net, but not to anything else. I contacted support. They were unhelpful; I couldn't get help because I was not the person who had ordered the broadband. Yet I was the person at the address where the phone line was.

I got the password from my daughter and then contacted support again, pretending to be my daughter in the chat. They then sent her the instructions to 'fix' the router. And the fix? To put her broadband name and password in the device!! It would be nice to see that in the instructions, rather than silly little comments and that damned annoying guy in the checked shirt who gets everywhere.

My daughter would not have known how to fix that. The engineer would have, and he could have knocked at the door and come in and set it up in 2 minutes. I could then got more of my day back.

Very poor service. Luckily I understand how this stuff works.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

Hi,

For clarification, was your daughter advised that she needed to be at home for the "install"?

These days (I suspect its BT Openreach cost cutting) for service provision on an existing line, there is no need for an engineer visit for ADSL or FTTC 'installation'.  Even if they did, it is not part of the BTOR's engineer's job to configure the ISP's router ... even if they did, it would still not have worked.  I rather expect that the engineer that was seen outside would be checking the signal to the last junction point (pole?).

The sequence of a new service commissioning goes like this...

• BT Openreach engineer does the work required in the cabinet / exchange
• BT Openreach tell BT Wholesale that the engineering work is complete
• BT Wholesale do what they need to do and advise the ISP that the service provision is complete
• The ISP activates the customer's account ... and instructs them that its OK to connect the router
• The router then SELF CONFIGURES the user's account details

If the user attempts to install the router BEFORE the instruction to connect the router is received, the auto-configuration process fails ... requiring the account details to be entered manually as guided by the support agent and as detailed in the user guide provided with the Plusnet router.

[#3]

Hi there.

I'm sorry to hear of the experience you've had.

If you can PM me your daughter's username I can look into this.

[#4]

The sequence of a new service commissioning goes like this...

• BT Openreach engineer does the work required in the cabinet / exchange
• BT Openreach tell BT Wholesale that the engineering work is complete
• BT Wholesale do what the need to do and advise the ISP at the service provision is complete
• The ISP activates the customer's account ... and instructs them that its OK to connect the router
• The router then SELF CONFIGURES the user's account details

Thanks for this. This is what I would have expected, and am a bit surprised I had to go onsite. But she said she had to choose an AM or PM visit. She chose PM. They then told her it would be AM. Which in itself begs the question why ask?

She never said no one needed to be onsite. Perhaps it does say that in the info she got and it was my/our error in assuming that. Thanks for pointing that out. I will try to check with her documentation (she has just moved house so it may not be easy to find. 😕 ).

Finally, it did say in the booklet that you should not plug it in until told. So I didn't. It said to wait 5 mins. I think I waited 10.

Anyway, in the scheme of things this is not that big, but it was annoying. Once it did work it was lightning fast. (She has bought fibre broadband.) I'm jealous. Maybe I should upgrade to that too!

[#5]

Good to know that helped.

User communication is a mater the Superusers have under discussion, particularly anything which is not sufficiently clear and gives consequential reason for contact with support ... simply for clarification.

I am in the middle of a number of service migrations myself, one of which was a new line provide.  That was the only one which involved an actual visit from the BT engineer.  For the other the first that I knew of anything happening was when the old service stopped working.  I have four more to go over the next few days.  At the moment, the detail of what a customer receives and then UNDERSTANDS and their consequential action is of great personal interest.

Like it or not this is complex technology and process space: much of the time it happens with minimal hiccups ... sometimes it does not!

[#6]

Complex technology indeed. And if this was 1995 we would all have our jaws firmly on the floor.

It would be nice to have the option of identifying a trusted surrogate who can stand in for the customer so they can act on their behalf. Being told support will not talk to me, and then connecting back later and pretending to be the customer and getting it sorted is annoying.

But then again, we are now living in the age of data -- which is why Google and Facebook are so damned nosey!

Hey ho. Thanks again for the responses.

[#7]

It is possible to have a nominated contact (surrogate) on an account.  It needs to be set up ... and I confess I'm not clear on Plusnet's process for this.  The perversity is that over chat one can be anyone one so pleases ... there's not even the gotcah "Your voice sounds more like a man than a woman...".

@Gandalf - can you please advise of the proper process for advising Plusnet that a user wishes to nominate someone as being authorised on the account?

NB: Authorisation does not extend to sanctioning chargeable / contractual activity on the account.

[#8]

Thanks for your private message. Apologies for the delayed response.

I'm sorry that the engineer didn't visit their property. I can see we confirmed the appointment date but later on when we received notification that no appointment was required, we didn't relay this info over to her

If you're wanting to speak to us about her account, I'd recommend asking her to contact us to add you as an authorised user. As Townman has pointed out, you won't be able to action anything on the account which may alter the billing.

I'm sorry again for the inconvenience caused by the lack of communication.

[#9]

Thanks Gandalf for your PM. I appreciate your response.

Fingers crossed my feedback has helped. 🙂

[#10]

No problems at all