Thinking I've made a mistake joing plusnet

[#1]

Quote from: lorddepravus

So here I am, having switched to what I thought was supposed to be a reputable company and have been left with no phone line and no broadband for a week and the possibility of paying £100 to get it fixed. Am I to expect a refund? Not the best start!

I am extremely sorry I have only just seen this thread as what happened to the OP in terms of being cut off from the internet for months seemed quite unbelievable.  I find it absolutely staggering that in this situation Plusnet and/or BT Openreach and BT Wholesale (the difference between the latter two is always very hard indeed for the customer to figure out never mind that BT Group in any case also owns Plusnet) cannot immediately by same day courier send the afflicted person a 3G USB dongle (and/or 3G wireless router and embedded SIM card to serve several laptops in one household) with the right to use the internet to the same monthly capacity limit as their contracted fixed line Plusnet service.  Obviously such a mobile connection will not be as fast as the fibre connection by a long way but at least providing it immediately up to the same capacity and until the fixed  line broadband connection is restored would have amounted to some reasonable attempt to put the OP back in nearly the position they should have been and to minimise their losses.  Even if Plusnet can't provide such a facility themselves then they should be prepared to pay the full cost of someone going out and buying a 3G or 4G dongle and the required amount of broadband service for the period during which they have no fixed line broadband service.
Coming back to the more recent poster experiencing the same problems as the OP I will only say that I believe the OP would have had this issue addressed far, far more quickly and also caused some serious backside to be kicked within BT Openreach/Wholesale (given that almost all of these mess ups are usually caused by temporary BT subcontractors taken on to try and meet the huge demand for fibre but without anything like the same experience or training as a proper BT engineer) if they had been aware of the website known as www.ceoemail.com and had they made use of the email addresses listed on that website for the CEO of Plusnet (Jamie Ford) and the CEO of BT Group (Ian Livingston) and the CEO of BT Openreach (Olivia Garfield).
My advice to the more recent poster is to avoid also being without a broadband service for two months or so like the OP by making use of the aforementioned email addresses on the www.ceoemail.com website at the earliest opportunity.  There is no reason any problem like this can't usually be sorted out in one to two days maximum but unfortunately due to the current backlog of fibre orders BT Openreach and Wholesale currently seems to have adopted what I can only call an old style British Rail type mentality to customer service where the customer is told they will just have to wait and grin and bear it no matter how unreasonably they may already have been treated and no matter how long that wait might be.
Reading of the two above horror stories it seems that I should count myself very fortunate that at my relative's house (where I was in charge of the project to upgrade from copper to fibre broadband) the inadequately trained temporary BT subcontractor only cut off ring tone to two of the four extensions during his visit to fit the filtered master faceplate for the new fibre connection rather than managing to leave my relative with no broadband service at all for weeks on.  It would of course also be nice if these temporary subcontractors could pursue normal business courtesies such as ringing up on the day of install to indicate roughly when they are likely to arrive and/or phoning the customer to warn them before they make changes in the cabinet that will cut off the old copper broadband service immediately prior to the visit to the customer's home.  It would also be nice if Plusnet did not actively and cynically mislead its customers by telling them that if any of their extension wiring connections in the master socket are damage during the filtered master face plate install that this is not the responsobility of Plusnet and its subcontractor (BT Openreach) to put right.

[#2]

Hi lorddepravus,
Sorry to hear of your story, I've taken a look over your account and connection. I'm unable to say what caused your phone line to stop working, but the fact that your phone line is still with your current provider we unfortunately cannot look further into that until it's with us.
I've taken a look at your broadband connection and notice that it's currently showing an active connection, has anything changed from your side?
Chris

[#3]

Thanks Chris,
The broadband is now up and running (and quick!). Still no phone line. I assume the engineer wired the line up to the toaster or something... I'm waiting on BT.
Cheers

[#4]

I'm glad to hear that your broadband is working, let me know how you go with your phone line. I would envisage that this is resolved prior to us taking over the phoneline. Keep me updated either way.

[#5]

Quote from: chrispurvey

I would envisage that this is resolved prior to us taking over the phoneline.

Chris,
Why do you envisage that exactly?  The date of transfer of phone line from BT to Plusnet will already have been set at the time of customer order and cannot now be changed.  Also the change of responsibility for the phone line is purely a billing matter just like with changing gas or electricity supplier. Actual physical supply of the phone will continue to remain the responsibility of BT Openreach both beforehand and afterwards.  It is just that the customer channel for accessing repair or maintenance work by BT Openreach will switch from BT Retail to Plusnet.
Frequently where the original install engineer has made a hash of the install and that installer is a temporary subcontractor BT Openreach then tries to make sure the repair job is done by one of their own permanent engineers as they know they are far more likely to get things right.  However as BT Openreach has many fewer permanent employees than it has temporary subcontractors handling the current peak in FTTC installs the wait for a BT engineer can often be 10 days or more and this can often takes things beyond the transfer date of the phone line to Plusnet.
The good news however is that where BT Retail has arranged for an engineer to come out and fix a phone line fault created during the engineer home visit to install the filtered master faceplate that this appointment is then honoured by Openreach even if the phone line has transferred from BT Retail to Plusnet in the interim.  This is exactly what happened on my relative's phone line where BT Retail said they could not send an engineer to fix the disconnected ring tone to two extensions from the master socket for 11 days and I then realised (after a day or two) that this was the day after the phone line moved from BT to Plusnet.  I therefore had little faith that BT Openreach would honour the appointment fearing that all records would be lost when the phone line rental moved from BT Retail to Plusnet but sure enough BT Openreach did turn up on the original agreed date and put right all the extension wiring problems.  The engineer said he was aware that phone operators such as Plusnet were wrongly telling customers that BT was not ever responsible for the extension wiring but where extensions connected inside the BT area of the master socket originally were cut off in the filtered faceplate install this was still BT's responsibility to fix. 
Also it is a fact that even though BT are not technically legally responsible for wired extensions after the one year guarantee period  following their installation that because of the nature of the filtered faceplate work Openreach engineers are also ending up going to extension sockets in the customer home to test line and bell tone there and where there is a fault often opening the extension sockets to do further electrical connectivity tests.  This means that in reality that Openreach becomes responsible for anything that was working on a customer's wired home phone extension that was working before their visit but that no longer works after it.  Unfortunately Plusnet staff do not seem to be being correctly trained that this is the case and are therefore potentially leaving the customer with a broken phone line system caused by the BT Opereach engineer.

[#6]

Quote

Why do you envisage that exactly?  The date of transfer of phone line from BT to Plusnet will already have been set at the time of customer order and cannot now be changed.  Also the change of responsibility for the phone line is purely a billing matter just like with changing gas or electricity supplier. Actual physical supply of the phone will continue to remain the responsibility of BT Openreach both beforehand and afterwards.  It is just that the customer channel for accessing repair or maintenance work by BT Openreach will switch from BT Retail to Plusnet.

I'm basing it on an average time taken to resolve a phone fault, although granted each fault can be different. Yes, once the line is with us it's still our suppliers responsibility to maintain and repair, it would just be a case of us being able to arrange this once you realised there was an issue and us not having to direct you to your current supplier.

Quote

Unfortunately Plusnet staff do not seem to be being correctly trained that this is the case and are therefore potentially leaving the customer with a broken phone line system caused by the BT Opereach engineer.

If the engineer is to be disconnecting any extensions, they should be advising of this prior to doing so. We have seen this happen and would advise anyone in that scenario to raise this with BT Openreach via https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/contactus/tellussomething/tellussomethingaboutourpeople/tellab...

[#7]

The users contract with you, the engineer is carrying out work on your behalf, it is your responsibility to arrange for repair of damage he has caused!

[#8]

Quote from: chrispurvey

If the engineer is to be disconnecting any extensions, they should be advising of this prior to doing so. We have seen this happen and would advise anyone in that scenario to raise this with BT Openreach via https://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/contactus/tellussomething/tellussomethingaboutourpeople/tellab...

They don't ever do this on purpose but only accidentally because many of the engineers doing the fitting of the filtered master socket faceplate and change of wiring in your nearest cabinet on to the fibre circuit to the main exchange are temporary subcontractors taken on by Openreach to handle the current one off demand for converting many lines from copper DSL connections to FTTC VDSL connections (this will not need doing again when customers migrate to another FTTC ISP and BT will only need to visit the home again if and when an exchange ever starts offering FTTP connections or if an FTTC customer downgrades to copper - the faceplate will be left in situ in the home but the wires will have to be shifted in the cabinet again).  Therefore the engineer is not going to say "I am disconnecting some of your extensions".  Its just you the customer will suddenly find it has happened once the engineer has left.
The more BT installed extensions points (which are the ones that connect directly in to the BT only area of the master socket and not to a plug that goes in to the socket on the front of the master socket) you have to your master socket the more chance there is of an extension either being left disconnected altogether or to have its ring tone circuit disabled during the fitting of the filtered master faceplace.  On my mother's phone line set up where this happened there were four remote wired extensions to the master socket.
The Openreach subcontractor realised he had physically cut off some extensions in fitting the filtered Faceplate and went to test them until he got them connected again.  Unfortunately due to his lack of complete training he only tested for dial tone and did not do a 17070 ring tone test.  Had he done so he would have realised the two extensions he had reconnected also did not have bell tone and fixed that problem too before he left.  I am sure a BT permanent staff engineer would have done the ring tone test in this situation and so not have left without rectifying all problems.
I am deliberately labouring this issue because in this situation your front line Plusnet technical support staff are wrongly currently being  trained to say - "extensions are nothing to do with us and are your own responsibility as a customer".  Whilst this would be true ordinarily where there is still dial tone at the master socket it is not true in a situation where your wired extensions have been disconnected directly as the result of the actions of an Openreach engineer.
At the end of the day the key issue is that Plusnet refused to help put this matter right on my mother's phone line even though the FTTC broadband was now live with them. I therefore went back to BT where the front line adviser (in India) said it was Plusnet's issue to resolve with Openreach but after I asked to speak to a much longer serving supervisor (also in India) who was not a script follower but who engaged brain and used his initiative he could see that the cost to Openreach was precisely the same regardless of whether or not the instruction to go back to the house came from BT Retail or from Plusnet (clearly Openreach was not going to get paid by BT Retail or Plusnet for the return visit as it was their mess up on the first visit).  So he kindly arranged for the Openreach engineer to come back even though this was actually Plusnet's responsibility and even though the engineer could not visit until after the phone line transferred to Plusnet.
Plusnet clearly needs to retrain its technical advisers and/or customer service advisers to better understand the potential for Openreach engineers to disconnect extensions when they are carrying out a new FTTC connection related filtered master faceplate install.

[#9]

Hi Capvermell,
Sorry to hear that this issue was not resolved by us. This is something that we should/would escalate and arrange to get this rectified.
I've spoken with with the relevant departments to pass this feedback on and they have advised that any issues like this would be raised with our suppliers and resolved.
I'd be happy to take a look at the account in question so I can point towards that if you like to PM me with the details.

[#10]

FYI all engineers are required to test extension sockets before they start and make sure that working extension sockets are working after completion of the FTTC install.
The only justification that Openreach engineer or one of it's subcontractors would have for leaving any extensions disconnected would be if there was a fault that was caused by damage (whether it be accidental or by pets etc) whenever they were installed, or if the fault was on extensions that were self installed after an NTE5a was fitted or if they had been installed for more than a year if BT installed. However if it was only a minor fault that could be easily remedied, a decent Openreach engineer would probably resolve it when installing FTTC.
Assuming no faults initially, all engineers should test that the extension sockets are working correctly before they leave.

[#11]

Quote from: Anotherone

or if they had been installed for more than a year if BT installed.

I do not agree that BT Openreach do not have to fix any faults that they create on previously working BT installed extensions to the BT side of the master socket just because they have been installed for more than one year before the engineer arrived.
If the extension(s) was (were) working when the engineer arrived it (they) should still be working when the engineer leaves.  So a wise BT Openreach engineer or subcontractor would test for dial tone and ring tone from all extensions both before he starts work on fitting the master socket filtered faceplate and after he has completed it.  In that way there is almost no chance of a customer then suggesting that he broke a working extension socket while fitting the filtered master faceplate that was in fact never working all along.

[#12]

Quote from: Capvermell

Quote from: Anotherone or if they had been installed for more than a year if BT installed. I do not agree that BT Openreach do not have to fix any faults that they create on previously working BT installed extensions to the BT side of the master socket just because they have been installed for more than one year before the engineer arrived.

Do not misquote me - read what I said in the first sentence and the last sentence of my post and the first sentence is the key one

Quote from: Anotherone

FYI all engineers are required to test extension sockets before they start and make sure that working extension sockets are working after completion of the FTTC install......................Assuming no faults initially, all engineers should test that the extension sockets are working correctly before they leave.

And it's not ring "tone" BTW, that's what you hear when you ring someone, it's "Ringing Current" or just plain "Ringing".

[#13]

Just had an interesting experience which mirrors some of the problems on here.  To say Plusnet have sorted these problems is a bit of a misnomer.  Our fibre connection was fitted on Wednesday and the engineer left all of our extension sockets unusable.  A quick phone call to Support and I was told that I had to "arrange to get an electrician out to fix it and send us the bill as we're not going to do anything with it"!!  Um no.  You caused the problem so it is your responsibility to fix it.  Several phone calls later and we are now getting an engineer out to rectify the damage they caused.  In the meantime my wife was given the telephone number of BT's legal department and told to ring them.  They were a little perplexed as to why we were ringing - probably because our contract is with Plusnet and therefore it is their responsibility to sort out the problems caused by their subcontractors.  
During the course of trying to sort this out we got nowhere with the call centre so asked for it to be escalated to a manager.  Apparently there is only 1 manager for the Plusnet call centre and they are on holiday this week. At least that was what we were both told when we rang at different times and spoke to different people.  Now I'm no expert on call centres but I kind of guess that there might just be more than 1 manager allocated to a particular call centre surely??  Strangely after my wife today continued to hold the line for around 40 minutes, a manager "appeared" .  I know  technology is fab (if it works - so I'm  assuming Plusnet don't run their own systems) but to rouse a manager from their holiday hotel is surely going above and beyond the call of duty.  This is really shoddy customer service - especially as the message went from "My manager is on holiday " to "they're busy and will call you back within four hours".  Having moved my broadband to Plusnet on the basis of rave reviews about customer service, is this the best I can expect?

[#14]

Your experience is very unfortunate and I believe uncommon, however such things will occasionally occur. I'm sure one of the DCT (Digital Care Team) will pick this up on Monday and ensure "feedback" is provided to educate the agents involved. They can if need be listen to your calls. What will help I'm sure, if you log into the Member Centre and look at your Questions. You may find an open ticket relating to the Engineer visit, but also look at the closed ticket and find the ones related to your initial and subsequent calls.
If you post the Ticket numbers here (but not any names in them), that will enable the DCT to locate all the necessary information.
Obviously all Plusnet staff need to be made aware of the document Key_messages_for_GEA_FTTC_engineers where you will notice on the last but one & last pages these key statements -

Quote from: Key_messages_for_GEA_FTTC_engineers

Step 2 Check existing extensions are working .......... (make sure you reconnect all existing extensions and leave them working) ........ Remember to reconnect and test - Check that all extensions and telephones which were working before are still working now and show the end user that you have done so.

[#15]

Hi MishathePenguin,
Sorry to hear of your situation you're currently in regarding your extensions and getting this resolved.
I can see that we're in the process of getting this rectified. I'll make sure I feedback to the relevant team regarding this.
In regards to the 'manager being on holiday' it seems that who you spoke with, his manager was actually on holiday. It would make sense to pass your details to another manager and not explain it the way they did to you.
How did the engineer visit go on Saturday?