Complaints

[#1]

Hello,

I have had the same experience as the above user who had to email the CEO aim order to have their order escalated. I have not been able to speak to a supervisor or manager and have been met with a barrage of corporate none sense and repetition of key phrases.

Each time I call I am told something different by your staff.

I put in an order on 17/9/19 for fibre. I had an appointment on 27/9/19 to have this installed. A Kelly’s engineer decided my job was too difficult but instead of being open and honest decided to make up evidence that I was not available on the day. I had an appointment between 8am-1pm, heard nothing, then got an email at 6pm saying my appointment was cancelled and that I would be charged.

A very good openreach engineer came out over a week later and set up my line in to my house, but stated that work needs to be done externally (just some connection blocks). I have called almost daily since then, my order timed out so it was cancelled and they have had to put in another order which will now take three more days, then apparently I’ll be given an appointment.

I do not understand why this is so complicated. I do not understand why this has not been escalated. I do not understand why I’m waiting so long.

How do I get this escalated to be resolved without resorting to emailing the CEO or writing to offcom? (Username [Removed])

I look forward to your reply.

Moderators Note: Personal information removed

[#2]

Moderators Note

This topic has been split from https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/Complaints/m-p/1680249 for better visibility and to assist staff.

[#3]

Hello @Tomdickinson86,

I am sincerely sorry to hear of your experience with us and for the inconvenience this will be causing you. This is not the level of service we aim to provide and nor is it in keeping with our values.

My team would be happy to look into this for you and take any action we can to progress your order for you. I will look into this now and respond via ticket on the account with a plan forward.

Once again I would like to express my apologies for your experience thus far with us.

[#4]

I’ve just spent another hour on the phone to your call centre. I’m now under the impression that fibre isn’t available in my area yet, and it may take months for it to be installed at the cabinet. Why on earth has it taken a month to find this out?

I’ve been advised that we can wait for fibre to come to my area, or I can be downgraded to broadband. I have elected to go to broadband, having to pay setup fees again for the privilege. I am told I’ll get a refund for the old account, but haven’t been given a timeframe for this, and I’m told I have been allocated £50 ‘cashback’; which appears to be a very complicated way of signing up to be sent a voucher to take to the bank to get a £50 cheque.

In the delay I have totalled around £60 having to pay for extra data on my phone.

I am told as I have now signed up to broadband as if it were new, I need to start again and have an engineer come to my house to set up a line.

I have already had an engineer come to my house to set up a line, so do not know why this needs to happen again, I’ll have to take a third day off work for this. This has become a very expensive endeavour for me, with no clear end point. I seem to be put back on the start of the conveyer belt every time I’m knocked off it. I’ve done nothing wrong here and it feels like I’m being punished.

Why do I need to have another engineer come to set up a line at my house? Why do I have to wait until next week for this to be set up? Why am I not being given a refund immediately? When will I have internet? Do I have to contact the CEO and offcom as detailed above in order to get closer to a resolution?

[#5]

Hello @Tomdickinson86, 

I have just returned into the office and reviewed the notes we have received back from our supplier. Unfortunately there isn't any way to speed up the work needed to make fibre available in the area.

There were several actions taken that needed to be resolved before they could complete the order and it appears during that time they have found that further work is needed, but do not have an exact timescale.

I am sorry this was not realised quicker and for the undue stress it has caused. The actions I would like to take I have updated the ticket with due to it containing account sensitive information. 

I am sorry for the experience and if you have any further concerns after reviewing my ticket, please add a reply to the ticket or feel free to PM so that I can look into them for you.

[#6]

Apologies don’t mean anything without action. Let’s forget the fibre for a moment, it’s clearly not available to me in my area, and I’m having to have broadband instead. Regarding the broadband; of course you can speed it up, there just needs to be a conversation with someone in management at Openreach to assign someone now to sort it out, but no one seems willing to do this and it’s me that’s suffering from this inaction.

I still don’t know why I even need an engineer to come to my house again, as a line has already been installed? What exactly am I waiting for?

[#7]

That is something I can certainly look into for you @Tomdickinson86, but can not guarantee the order can be expedited. So that we can keep all the information in one place I will update the ticket on your old account here and new account for you. 

[#8]

It seems very straightforward to be able to have a sensible conversation with Openreach to get me set up, as there doesn’t seem to be any more work that needs to be done. And how about the refund for my fibre package, I’m sure you can expedite this being refunded, as you aren’t dealing with a third party?

[#9]

Hi @Tomdickinson86 

It seems very straightforward to be able to have a sensible conversation with Openreach to get me set up, as there doesn’t seem to be any more work that needs to be done. 

I'm afraid that any orders we place have to progress through the automated system. We're just waiting for your order to commit to a completion date which we'd expect to happen within the next 24 hours. 

Once we've been provided a committed appointment date, we can then submit an expedite request to bring forward the engineer appointment to the absolute soonest based upon engineer availability.

It's worth noting though that due to the way telephone + standard broadband orders are linked together and work their way through the various automated systems, when the completion date is brought forward on a telephone order, this doesn't always bring the completion date forward of the broadband order - that's a system issue and not something we can influence.

However, if that's the case then once the phone order has completed then we can request the broadband order is expedited separately, again based upon engineer availability.

And how about the refund for my fibre package, I’m sure you can expedite this being refunded, as you aren’t dealing with a third party?

I agree, this should be a lot easier. I can see the refund of the fibre package has been generated today by our system and you should receive this back in your bank account through your direct debit instruction within the standard processing time of a direct debit that is between 5 and 10 working days.

[#10]

Thank you for your transparency regarding the refund, it’s much appreciated and I’ll keep an eye out for the refund in 5-10 working days. I suppose it looks like I’ll have to wait for the automated systems and your expedition of the appointments. I have been victim to system problems here for sure. Of course, systems are man made, and as such we can influence them despite your assertions. I understand this isn’t an overnight thing, but experiences like I have had are unacceptable, and another pathway for dealing with them should be available to you. I’ve spent a lot of time dealing with this, I’ve made 16 phone calls, a couple of which have been over an hour long, and I’ve had two days off work so far, and spent £60 on extra data.

I’m far from satisfied.

But we’ll see what happens in the next few days. I hope I don’t have to spend too much more time or money on this, but I think I probably will.

[#11]

Thanks for getting back to us @Tomdickinson86 

I understand the frustration especially after a long road of trying to get fibre only to find out there's no capacity currently with a potentially even longer road ahead if you still want fibre.

Incidentally when I submitted a proforma to Openreach last night and they came back this morning with confirmation that there is capacity issue at the cabinet, while they've said they'll pass this to their capacity team to look at raising a project to increase the capacity, they've noted that it may take several months as it likely won't be a high priority because you can in fact get fibre straight to your property(FTTP) with a potential speed of up to 330mbps. 

We don't offer an FTTP package (We closed our trial for this in July 2018 ) but if this is something you'd be interested in, you'd need to place an order with a provider who does offer FTTP. I believe there's a few listed Here.

This absolutely isn't to say we don't want you as a customer, I just thought I'd bring this to your attention as personally if I was in your position I'd want to know FTTP is available if it was.

If you stay with us, once you're up and running we'll be happy to discuss a goodwill gesture which would likely be of monetary value you could use towards the costs you've incurred.

I hope this helps.

Moderators Note: URL fixed at staff request.

[#12]

@Gandalf 

Thank you for providing some insight to the challenging history of this case.  In summary I surmise this is what happened...

1. Customer ordered FTTC fibre
2. Plusnet accepted in good faith the FTTC order on the basis that at the time the local cabinet was reported by BTOR to have FTTC capacity
3. BTOR's subcontractors Kelly Engineering attended and (similar to their notorious reported behaviours) ducked the job
4. By the time a proper BTOR engineer attended to fix the situation either the spare FTTC capacity had been used up or the 'spare' ports were found to be faulty
5. Then due to BTOR delays in fixing THEIR issues, the order timed out and everything had to be started from scratch with the usual BTOR provisioning delays
6. Now BTOR are not willing / able to fix the FTTC capacity quickly
7. BTOR might address capacity issues (in the fullness of time!) by making FTTP available - a product which the BT group appears to have restricted to BT Retail

Leaving this customer with only ADSL broadband as the currently available product.

@Tomdickinson86 - is this a 'new build' property?

[#13]

That is a perfect summary

My house is a Victorian terrace in a large city centre

[#14]

@Tomdickinson86 

Sadly in that case, one somewhat concludes that given the monopoly supplier position which BTORs holds this journey would probably have been the same whichever ISP you chose, given the first touch was Kelly.  If ever I have a phone line issue, I dread the thought that it is a Kelly engineer who gets assigned to the job.  On the other hand JC Quinn are far superior in my experience.

Given the age and location of your property, it rather sounds as though BTOR is switching its infrastructure expansion from FTTC to FTTP.

That will bring its own set of problems to users, as Ofcom has yet to establish workable processes for migrating FTTP services between suppliers.  ADSL and FTTC are migrated between ISPs using the Gaining Supplier service migration processes.  Bizarrely these do not support FTTP service supplier changes, I guess that is due to the virtualisation of the circuit (there is no associated POTS phone line).

[#15]

Thanks Gandalf for your useful message. I’ll await my broadband setup date on 24/10/19 next week, I haven’t heard that anything is being expedited for this yet.