Poor Broadband

[#1]

After months of experiencing poor or non-existing broadband and enough visiting Openreach engineers to form a rugby union team with several reserves, my patience was finally exhausted so I took a walk along the road near my house to see if there was anything obvious that might be affecting my service.

The attached photograph shows the state of the telephone cable that connects to my house, at the very first pole I checked in the road just outside my property.  After so many months and endless engineer visits, am I right to feel somewhat disappointed that this has not previously been noticed?

[#2]

Which of the cables in that blurred picture connects to your property? Apart from the state of the pole itself - which looks unsafe to climb - I can't see any major issues.

[#3]

Difficult taking photos vertically up a 30ft pole while standing on a sloping, very soggy grass verge.

There is only one cable on the pole, so I know it carries the phone & broadband services to my house.

The cable in question is currently well and truly trapped between a heavy, forked tree branch and the pole itself.  In windy weather the tree (and presumably the pole) have a tendency to move, applying both tensile and abrasive forces to the cable.  This may go some way to explaining why both telephone and/or broadband services fail each time there is a passing storm - of which there have been plenty of late.  This situation has been ongoing for years which is why I decided to investigate, and it does seem strange that after dozens of engineer visits this has not been noticed before.  If anyone would like to take a look for themselves (and perhaps try to take a better photo) the pole is located at grid reference SJ 06441 51493.

I tried to upload this image to the open question on my Plusnet member portal but it keeps getting rejected on grounds of virus containment.  This is clearly nonsense and presumably just another deliberately devious means of preventing consumers from communicating their issues in a proper and timely fashion.  A simple e-mail address would suffice as an alternative, but I have yet to find one which is suitable... again, anything to avoid receiving input from customers.

Very dissatisfied Plusnet customer - can hardly wait for my contract to end.

[#4]

You need to sort your focus out, and before posting use an app to reduce the size!

[#5]

Anyone on here got anything positive to say?

Or is it just a sad reality that this forum is as useless as Plusnet themselves?

Perhaps we should all resign ourselves to the incompetence demonstrated by broadband service providers and the ineffectiveness of the inept, uncompetitive monopoly known as BT Openreach.

[#6]

@rolosatinlace What do you want people to say? This is the first time you have posted on here, most of the responses will be from fellow customers, and although many of us have been here for a long time - some having worked for BT, some in IT, we can only go on what we are told - we don't have access to any internal Plusnet systems.

[#7]

So my previous post was removed, presumably due to my stated criticisms of Plusnet.

Did any of the moderators previously work for the post office by any chance?

Smacks of another Horizon scandal...

[#8]

Which 'previous post' - from your post count, it appears there may be one stuck in the 'spam filter', as the one at the start of this topic is the first I have seen and from experience (12 years of it) I doubt a post is removed unless it is abusive - I have made very many highly critical posts on here, and they are still available

[#9]

@rolosatinlace 

Unless someone from plusnet engages with this thread then I fear you'll not get any further here.

Have you considered raising a complaint? See https://www.plus.net/help/legal/complaints-code-of-practice/ 

I have looked at the picture I see, post steps, branches and one cable trapped between a branch and post

Cable trapped between post and tree branch

Dan

[#10]

@rolosatinlace all that ISP's can do is to raise a fault to Openreach. If your broadband is still faulty, then raise another fault with Plusnet. When the Openreach engineer attends then point out the cable problem on the pole.  Whilst you could point out the cable issue to PN and they can add it to the fault, its likely that the information doesnt get passed to the OR engineers.

Alternatively you could try reporting the cable damage directly to Openreach https://www.openreach.com/help-and-support/damage-health-and-safety

[#11]

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@rolosatinlace wrote:

So my previous post was removed, presumably due to my stated criticisms of Plusnet.

Did any of the moderators previously work for the post office by any chance?

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Your post was caught in the automatic spam filter, I have now released it for you. The only posts that are removed from this forum are those that contravene the Forum rules.

[#12]

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@rolosatinlace wrote:

Difficult taking photos vertically up a 30ft pole while standing on a sloping, very soggy grass verge.

There is only one cable on the pole, so I know it carries the phone & broadband services to my house.

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You need to get Plusnet to arrange for Openreach to remove the branch - I am surprised that you have not mentioned this to visiting engineers, or that they have not seen it - I can't believe all of them are incapable of spotting the issue.

[#13]

The fault is with the CAT team so they will be keeping an eye on it but if you can add the photo on to the ticket for us that would be grand. 
https://www.plus.net/wizard/?p=view_question&id=238618573
 

[#14]

"I tried to upload this image to the open question on my Plusnet member portal but it keeps getting rejected on grounds of virus containment. This is clearly nonsense and presumably just another deliberately devious means of preventing consumers from communicating their issues in a proper and timely fashion. A simple e-mail address would suffice as an alternative, but I have yet to find one which is suitable... again, anything to avoid receiving input from customers."

Surprised that Plusnet has not fixed that fault on the ticket app. Three weeks ago I was asked to attach a copy of the BT Performance Test results and the app's virus scanner kept rejecting it, claiming it had a virus.