Line not connected with no end in sight

[#1]

I have seen the info that wholesale pass through to OR engineer on all occasions it never followed the info that PN and Wholesale had agreed.
PN repeatedly pass on lots info to Wholesale this info gets lost when Wholesale drop it into the OR engineers diary.
It is an appalling poorly designed system with three tiers of communication and is something that ofcom should address.
Every ISP is in the same boat and we are all stuck with it.

[#2]

If that's true podman, then I have absolutely no chance of ever getting this phone line connected.  I need to have confidence that Plusnet have sufficient clout with Openreach in order to effect a resolution that involves this getting resolved soon.  At this moment in time I just don't believe this will ever happen.  I'll wait and see what happens tomorrow, but if there is a poor answer then I'll start again with BT who at least should have something of a bearing on Openreach (although I suspect you'll be teling me even they don't, at which point I will lobby my hardest to get Virgin into my area!).

[#3]

From my five month experience, the whole process depends on what the person at wholesale passes to the engineer. I have no proof but I don't think they pass on a great deal indeed they may just use drop down option s on their screen to dump basic poor chosen instructions into the OR diary.
Really hope it's not the case and things get sorted.
As for moving to BT, they like pn are customers with the same clout as any other ISP.

[#4]

fuzzmo - it is hard to imagine why a sub-contractor would fail to record three hours work, and choose to falsely post a no-show.  It is also hard to understand why there has been no response on here from a Plusnet staffer to the latest episode in your troubles.
Call centre operatives can say anything they like, and I have never seen any evidence that the call centre management will bother to pick up on any obvious misinformation.
It is interesting, looking at the timings of your messages on here, that the engineer's report was available to the PlusNet call centre operative immediately after the end of the visit.
It is never safe to trust any statement which is made by a call centre operative.  My normal practice is to call several times with the same question, in the hope that a true picture will begin to emerge.  Unfortunately, with PlusNet, such a practice is not possible  - there are not enough hours in the day.

[#5]

Quote from: fuzzmo

I have lost two days of my diminished holiday allowance. I have spent over £100 on mifi plus 4G dongle. I have spent what is running into HOURS on your support line now probably passed my mobile allowance.

Have a read of http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/delivery-rights

[#6]

Thanks everyone for your comments and advice.
@jelv - thanks I think I will follow this on!
OK here is the latest.  After the debacle of Monday, an actual proper BT engineer turned up to the property Tuesday morning out of the blue - neither me, nor Plusnet had any idea this was happening.  He spent 5 hours rectifying the problem outside between the property and the cabinet but he did resolve it.
You'd think that would be the end of the story.  Wrong.  He couldn't get the line connected upstairs.  He thought it was odd as the previous two engineers said it was all fine.  He went into the flat and couldn't get a tone from any of the sockets.  He opened them up and lo and behold there was no cabling!  He was amazed but said he couldn't complete this part as an 'internal' engineer would have to perform the work.  I think I'm lost for words - how can two engineers say that a line is working and a third comes along and finds no cabling?
So now I am awaiting a 4th engineer to turn up and I have now gone to the back of the queue again.  Plusnet have booked in an appointment for 31st March of which I was not happy about.  After everything that has gone on, you would think that they would know that this is urgent and would bypass normal booking procedures and escalate this within Openreach.  But no, I've had to waste another three days telling them to escalate this and still don't have an answer.
It will most likely be two months from the start of the order to actually finally get a phone line connected let alone have some internet.  This is quite shocking in truth.  A month with the problems I've had I could understand.  However coming up to the 2 month mark and I have no confidence that this 4th visit will yield anything positive.  And Plusnet and BT know there is nowhere for me to go as I don't have Virgin in my area so they can sit on their hands and hide behind procedure and processes.  It seems like Plusnet feel that they have no culpability as they 'have to rely on Openreach' but knowing the issues on this order why didn't they escalate this to Openreach rather than book another standard appointment?  Irrespective of whether the 'fault' has been closed on the Openreach side they can clearly see the amount of issues this order has had and escalate it appropriately.
Common Sense is in short supply.  I'll update later today once I've had the response to my escalation request (well i hope I do, last time round Plusnet didn't bother phone me, although to be fair I did get a call yesterday to say 'no news').

[#7]

I'm really sorry to hear of this issue and for the length of time and amount of engineer it' taken to get to this point.
Looking at the ticket, as you say, I can see that we've raised an escalation and we're awaiting a response from our suppliers - I cant see any reason why we wouldn't give you a call once we have an update for you.

Quote

And Plusnet and BT know there is nowhere for me to go as I don't have Virgin in my area so they can sit on their hands and hide behind procedure and processes

From a Plusnet point of view, that's really not how we think or feel. We really do want to do our best for each of our customers and sometimes in order to do this, we have to go through and work with our suppliers.

[#8]

Thanks for your response Chris.  I know it's not malicious but what about common sense when it came to booking the 4th visit?  Someone from within Plusnet really should have taken the bull by the horns here and negotiated a better date given the circumstances.  I don't accept that you don't have a procedure to handle this kind of situation with your suppliers.  You should have an SLA and they clearly have been incompetent and have not carried out the jobs that they were tasked to do.  Any organisation will have an SLA with their suppliers and I would think that they would be in breach of theirs by now (and if they aren't, then who negotiated such loose terms?).
Each time I've had an issue, it's being booked in as a new order and I go to the back of the queue.  From the point of the initial failed visit, then this should have been escalated and prioritised.  I waited almost a month for the first visit (with no explanation given).  Perhaps you can explain what kind of relationship you have with your suppliers so I can get a better understanding of why this is taking an eternal amount of time to complete given it appears the first two visits the engineers failed to check the basics?

[#9]

Just had an answerphone message from BT saying that an engineer is coming Monday morning.  Thank you for sorting out this date.  Hopefully this is the last date.

[#10]

Not sure if it still applies but when we had a delayed install due to no calling in place in our estate we were refunded a months line rental for each day the install was delayed beyond the original install date.

[#11]

fuzzmo - not long ago, amidst all the debate surrounding the demise of Mrs Thatcher, I remember a politician's comment along the lines of "it is easy to forget how difficult it used to be to organise something as straightforward as getting a telephone line installed".  Mmmmm - I wonder...

[#12]

@podman - hmmm, that could take care of the duration of my contract 
@kk - ha! Yes, we've come full circle I guess... 

[#13]

So the engineer was meant to turn up between 08:00-13:00.  Right now it is 12:55 with nobody in sight.  My wife re-arranged everything today to be in this morning and it looks like a no show.  It can't be this tortuous in 21st Century Britain to get a phone line connected....  Hoping as before this email will have a Karmic effect and the engineer will turn up.  If not then I think I will just give up and try afresh somewhere else hoping that if nothing else my luck changes for the better...

[#14]

I'm just getting this looked at now for you.

[#15]

Thanks Chris.  To confirm that as of 13:55 no BT Engineer has been to my property.  My wife has been in all day (and moved so much around to ensure that she was) and she is as desperate as I am to get this resolved!