Price increase on the way?

[#1]

I have the same anecdotal evidence round here.
Every time I hear of someone who has been off their phone due to a normal fault for an inordinate amount of time - like a week: or lines which are repeated faulted - I just know it will be a non BT-retail line.
It's difficult to pin down but there just is that vague feeling that its not a totally level playing field.
Part of the reason its difficult to be certain is that you never know how good/speedy are the other phone players are at activating the BTOR fault fixing system - the delay might be their own inability/incompetence compared to BT Retail rather than BTOR favoring anyone.
Which is why I also keep my phone with BT retail

[#2]

Quote from: Townman

BTOR is favouring BT Retail customers to the detriment of other CP's customers.

Any problems I've ever had with my BT line and a quick free phone call and BT (or whoever) are round to fix it at the drop of a hat.

[#3]

Quote from: x47c

Part of the reason its difficult to be certain is that you never know how good/speedy are the other phone players are at activating the BTOR fault fixing system - the delay might be their own inability/incompetence compared to BT Retail rather than BTOR favoring anyone.

Last time I rang BT Retail for a phone fault they booked the engineer while I was on the phone. With Plusnet it appears the initial agent will just log the fault and then it could be up to 72 hours before the faults department raise the fault with BTw.

[#4]

Last time I (mobile) phoned BT to report my landline phone was dead, it was late one afternoon - the call centre staff answered the call within seconds.  First thing the next morning, the BT engineer arrived, tested the line and replaced the cable between my master socket and the pole across the road.  I was VERY impressed !.
Do you think if I transferred my phone to Plusnet, that their call centre would answer the phone within seconds ? - NO !
Do I think Plusnet would get an engineer on site within a few 'working hours' ? - NO !

[#5]

BT retail (previously GPO) have been answering and fixing phones since the dawn of time.

[#6]

I'm with BT for my telephone.  Last time my land-line went wrong I don't remember how long it took me to report the call but it was early on Wednesday 3rd July 2013. 
Openreach arrived on the afternoon of Friday 5th July, discovered that the fault was between a junction in the street directly in front of my house and my house.  They thought they located it and called in contractors to dig the necessary hole in the pavement.
There was a delay of a few days whilst the contractors gained permission to dig in the street and they arrived and dug the hole on Wednesday 10th July.
Openreach came back on 11th July but the hole was not in the right place so rather than go prospecting we agreed that they should lay a new duct.
Contractors came back on 12th July and filled their hole in.
After a long and unexplained delay the duct was laid on Wednesday 7th August and made-good on 8th August.
Openreach arrived on 9th August and reconnected me after 5 weeks and 2 days without a working land line telephone. 
During that time my broadband managed to limp along at about a fifth of the normal rate despite the fact that I had no dial tone.
The whole experience was made much worse by the poor customer service given by BT's Call Centre agents.  They could not tell me why things were taking so long, what had gone wrong and why the long delay did not spur any sense of urgency.  Nor could they answer any specific questions.
I have always found that with Plusnet's broadband agents you can hold a sensible conversation and I hope the same would be true for their land-line support.  I plan to move away from BT as soon as practicable, either to Plusnet or to a LUU supplier as these are currently much cheaper on my 'Market 1' exchange. 
 

[#7]

Quote from: purleigh

Do you think if I transferred my phone to Plusnet, that their call centre would answer the phone within seconds ? - NO ! Yes Do I think Plusnet would get an engineer on site within a few 'working hours' ? - NO ! Yes

I once reported a phone fault to Plusnet one Friday night.  The phone was answered pretty much straight away.  The engineer knocked on the door on the Saturday morning to say he'd fixed a dodgy joint in the cabinet, and could he just quickly check everything was now ok.

[#8]

There will always be exceptions to the rule but it's the service that the majority receive that counts.
Having a "buffer" between services can't do anything except slow things down.

[#9]

The "majority" do not post on here, so we have no informed view of what the "majority" experience.
For the record, I too have received exactly the same experience reported by pjmarsh, so it is not as exceptional as you seek to suggest.

[#10]

I should also add that I have also received some great support from BT, along with a lot of very poor support.  For me Plusnet support (including engineers completing a fix) has mostly been pretty good (and fast) for me.  There have been a few times when it could have been better, but that has by far been the minority.

[#11]

Quote from: Townman

as you seek to suggest.

I'm not suggesting anything.
Just look for yourself at what the majority post on the forum.
It may not be the full view but it's the only available view of services received.
Anything else is mere speculation and suggestions.

[#12]

Sounds in ReedRichard's case the prime problem was the regulations on digging holes in public carriageways
In times past the company would just have got on with it - probably that day or next.
Now they have to get permission from the council and state exactly what they are going to do and how and whether it affects "street users" and do they need traffic lights and how long it will take, and is anyone else affected and so and and so on endlessly.

[#13]

Quote from: x47c

Sounds in ReedRichard's case the prime problem was the regulations on digging holes in public carriageways

Absolutely not!  That did account for a few days delay on each of two occasions but not for the bulk of the lost time.
Whoever provides your telephone service acts as a "buffer" between you and Openreach and their contractors.  It would be far more efficient if you can deal with them directly but you cannot.  My impression of BT's call centre staff is that they are not trained to deal with anything out of the routine and cannot cope in such circumstances.  They don't seem be able to communicate at all with Openreach except by giving them standard form requests.  Whoever is your telephone provider, you need their call centre staff to be able to liaise directly with Openreach on those rare occasions when this is required.  BT's staff cannot do this. 

[#14]

Quote from: AndyH

Quote from: chrcoluk Sadly regulators are to be blunt often niave, reducing wholesale cost doesnt mean retail follows suit. Similarly, wholesale costs going up doesn't mean the retail side put their prices up. I think what will happen is that full LLU providers will be given cheaper access to the exchanges and in turn, will be able to pass on this cost saving in lower line rental charges to end users. This will bring more competition and competitive pricing on the WLR side for non-LLU CPs.

sky wont pass this on, they following BT's business model.
talktalk maybe just enough to slightly undercut.

[#15]

As for outages and plusnet I had one a while back, phone off, no internet. called plusnet on a mobile and not much luck.
went for a walk down the road and BT openreach were busy digging up and installing a green cabinet, and repairing one held together with plastic sacks, complete with vegetation growing out of it  after a quick word with them the open reach people said something about a cable being where it shouldnt be and everything should be OK sin about 10 minutes.
Picture Below: BT openreach repair job