Ruined my christmas

[#1]

My line went down on Friday and I'm told its a fault at exchange and could be 29th when it's back in. So I have no wY to watch TV as its all rub through Internet. I also have no home phone which also of my elderly relatives ring me on. I rang them and all they could say that it's gonna be back on 29th. Not one of my neighbours are without net which I find odd if the fault is the exchange. I think I'm being lied to and I wasn't even offered a mobile sim to use or any sort of compensation. At least now I get break my contract as they have not provided the service. Its ruined my plans for watching Christmas movies with the family.

[#2]

My internet failed on  Xmas Eve but the problem did get solved. It did however make me think how dependant people are nowadays on internet access and the expectation that it will always be there. On the assumption that there is mains electricity I tend to keep both an aerial and satellite dish connected to my ageing TV. If the phone line was down too I have an old mobile one in my desk drawer. 

As for watching movies with the family I gave that up years ago. My daughter suggested we watch Gladiator, a reasonable idea as I had not seen it.  The ending was the only time I have ever cried on Xmas day........😰

[#3]

@andyfzr 

That's too bad at any time let alone the holiday period. However, please don't break your contract, if the fault is indeed at the exchange then it's a problem for Openreach which owns and maintains all the equipment and wiring upstream from your master socket. Report it as a phone problem.

We old fogies long ago learned not to put all our eggs in one basket, the internet is great when it works (and my own connection hasn't been down in seven years) but we use that old-fashioned Freeview on-air service as well, no breaks, no buffering, no £40 bill for Sky etc.

My brother is near the transmitter so he can get a reasonable picture with a length of spare wire in the aerial socket, I need an outside aerial, my neighbour gets away with one in his roofspace, so depending on the broadcast signal in your area why not get a length of co-ax cable and an aerial to keep you going this week and provide a standby for future disasters? Readily available from Screwfix, Argos etc

[#4]

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@andyfzr wrote:
Not one of my neighbours are without net which I find odd if the fault is the exchange. I think I'm being lied to and I wasn't even offered a mobile sim to use or any sort of compensation. At least now I get break my contract as they have not provided the service.

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It's understandable that you're upset that this fault occurred at just the wrong time, what with bank holidays an' all, but I think you need to be realistic.

Unless it's a major fault, it's unlikely to affect anyone else. Even if it did affect other customers, they're unlikely to be your neighbours - exchange circuits are not arranged geographically.

As for the contract - no, it's not been broken just because you have a fault on your connection.

[#5]

Hiya @andyfzr, thank you for getting in touch. I am sorry for the delay in getting back to you and for the fault currently affecting your service. I'm really sorry for the disruption this is causing over the festive period, I can certainly understand your disappointment.

I have just had a check of the fault and can see that at present and engineer is scheduled still to work on this externally on the 29th.

Once your service is back working as expected, our faults team will look to issue a credit for the downtime for you and a gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience caused.

If you have any further queries in the meantime, please do just get back to us.

[#6]

Thanks for the replies guys, I'm running out of data on my phone now as I can't afford the bigger packaged. I just find almost a week unacceptable. They're happy to take our money all the time. I'm sorry if I'm angry but I only get around 10 channels on the aerial as for some reason we don't get all the free view in our area. Anyway sorry for the rant and I hope everyone had a nice Christmas and I'm sorry for having a go at plusnet as it seems to be a bit fault but gjis is a fairly regular thing where I live we have a lot of line faults here so I do get annoyed and it just sent me a bit over the edge when I was told I can't use my net for nearly a week. Anyway merry Christmas and hopefully I'll have net by the new year.

[#7]

It's certainly annoying and probably the worst time of year to happen, my internet went down for about 12 days because an Openreach engineer managed to damage my cable in the green cabinet while working on another issue. It took several visits and another engineer eventually, sort of admitted it might have been due to a slightly clumsy engineer not carefully fitting the cables in the cabinet properly. Very annoying but things happen and as already said on here, it does remind us we should not rely on a single point of failure for phone calls, internet etc.

Hopefully Openreach will sort you out soon!

[#8]

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@andyfzr wrote:
Thanks for the replies guys, I'm running out of data on my phone now as I can't afford the bigger packaged. 

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When my friend had problems with her EE broadband EE added 50 GB of data to her EE mobile phone account for free so she could tether her laptop 

Is your mobile with PN if it is can they give you some free GB's to tide you over until the repair is completed worth asking

Just hope the fault is repaired quickly

[#9]

No my phone is with giffgaff and I can't really afford to start topping that up now, I'm already in a dispute with my power company refusing to give me money back they have overcharged me. I'm only on min wage as I work in a care home and they pay us 4 weekly so it's just bad timing as I'm not due to be paid now till the 4th of Jan. Surley they could of sent me a dongle or something with it being the festive period. Anyway I'm gonna stop moaning about it now cos I have mire important issues to deal with. Thanks for all the advice anyway guys. I should be back on in 2 more days or so I'm told. And to top it off the water got cut off as I was trying to make christmas dinner, you cant make it up, I had to walk to a friends house to get water as they had the mains up on my road. I suppose you have to laugh its so absurd.

[#10]

They finally turned up today to fix the fault. Apparently one of my neighbours was off too. Happy days

[#11]

Really glad you are back up and running 

Hope nothing else goes off

Have a nice nice new year  😁😁

[#12]

Thanks for getting back to us @andyfzr

I'm glad to see you're up and running now.

Let us know if you have further issues or there's anything else you'd need help with. Have a good new year!

[#13]

I never received this gesture of goodwill I was promised. I was told when it happens be the help team on the phone that I wouldn't be charged this month's credit. I've still been charged and what's more I'm now getting charged more than I was a couple of months ago. Not even a voucher. Come on Plusnet surley you can spare one of them vouchers at least.

[#14]

Thanks for getting back to us @andyfzr

I'm really sorry to see we've not contacted you about a goodwill gesture yet. I can see this is because the fault ticket 220645384 we've logged on your account is still on hold for 30th December.

I suspect that the adviser may have placed it on hold until December 2022 rather than 2021, which can happen occasionally, due to the way our system works at the end of a year.

I've added a reply to the ticket you can view and respond to by going Here with an offer for compensation & I've also explained why your last couple of bills are different to the previous ones. 

Can you get back to us there if you're happy to accept? Feel free to post back here once you've responded and I'll make sure we pick this up for you again as soon as we can.