As a counterbalance to my urge to strangle Openreach, thought I'd say a couple of words of praise for Plusnet (bit ironic given OR = BT = Plusnet....)
In a block of flats and got a persistent but intermittent issue with DSL drops (FTTC) between the exchange and the flat.
BT sent a first engineer (good, female as it happens), then three lazy guys who did all the usual patter "hmm... could be your router... oh, you've got a new one standing by?.... er, maybe not the router after all..." but who never bothered to read the previous engineer notes and who all presumably had some physical incapacity which meant that going into the street to check connections was not an option, but standing with hands in pockets watching their test equipment and playing pocket billiards was.
Escalated to Plusnet CAT team, who started to ask OR to only send Seniors. Got a good old-timer Senior (35 years in BT/OR and visibly looking forward to exiting the 'transformed' organisation) who tidied up cabling between the basement junction box and the road cabinet. Then a nice enough Senior who had trained the first engineer - he spotted a dubious connection in a street cabinet, and fixed that. Didn't really take on board my point that the connection was always wonderful anyway... until it totally dropped at random but frequent times of day and night (thank you Plusnet for making log viewing so easy on the router). Didn't really listen to my point that we were now beginning to see a possible pattern of drops happening a day after a downpour (the first engineer had a gut feeling that the issue was due to a 'wet joint).
Last week was the 7th engineer (any more and I'll have the makings of a Christmas song...) - though thanks to a dopey/lazy Openreach Patch Lead, not only did they fail to send a Senior (just another clueless and rather lazy Junior) but they even gave him the wrong contact phone number (someone who wasn't even having problems with Openreach).
So... 7 days I have had to take off work in order to be failed by Openreach on each of the days - been going on for 7 weeks now.
The reason for posting is that though all this time Plusnet support have been great, especially the CAT team who have patiently explained the various technical issues they were seeing at their end and the possible causes and options going forward. As I said to them, my building is already (grossly) FTTP cabled by Community Fibre, Virgin and Hyperoptic who keep offering cheaper and cheaper deals - the only reason I have not jumped ship is because of the quality of tech support/forums offered by Plusnet. In 20 years with Plus, I have only had one bad experience with an unpleasant agent, which I think is a record, commercially speaking.
When you deal with other companies you are generally condemned to endure the ghastly experience of Shouting into the Void - which both myself and the CAT team are experiencing with megacorp Openreach.
(Amusingly, OR engineer #7 said 'I was with BT and they were [-Censored-], so now I am with Hyperoptic. Have you thought of changing?')
I thought I'd post this on a lazy Sunday, as it is often worth noting good service on the few times you actually receive it in this generally failing country of ours. Our politicians will no doubt rabbit on about the 'importance of training' whilst happily doing nothing to actually make sure effective training happens (as it clearly hasn't for the younger intake of OR engineers).
One interesting techy point - every time an 'engineer' cheerfully marked the job as 'resolved' I would contact Plusnet support who would run a line test and point out that their test was still showing 'impairment in copper joint'.
On the last visit (by Mr #7) I cornered him in the hallway and got Plusnet on the phone then and there. Asked him how come a guy in Sheffield could run an OR test and confirm that there was a copper fault, but he (standing next to the wiring, and able to walk to the exchange) could not? He had no idea and looked genuinely bewildered.
So the question is - why does OR test equipment given to their Engineers on the ground - apparently - not show/run this simple test?? Leaving them to mark jobs as 'resolved' simply because the up/down figures etc. look ok.
I look forward to #8 arriving - yes, have already written to the Openreach CEO, FWIW.
