No dialing tone for two and a half days and no way to contact Plusnet

[#1]

Hi

I'm a new customer and have currently got no dialing tone and a download speed of 0.54Mbps. I kind of expected erratic download speeds in the first week, you go through the same ridiculous process every time you change ISPs, but I've never had no dialing tone before. Anyway I plugged in the router and got a stable connection with decent speed (for my line, I usually get about 5Mbps) and a working phone for a day and a half then it all went haywire. The phone and broadband stopped working and I got a flashing orange light. Then I got a static orange light, still no dialing tone, but bizarrely the broadband started working again. I've now got a stable blue light with working but slow broadband but still no dialing tone.

I've done the phone fault finding procedure, tried another plug-in phone with the same result and rebooted the router. There's nothing more I can do at this end. I would have contacted Plusnet's award winning customer care but it's impossible. You can't send a message from within your account, there is no email address and no live chat facility?! The only way to contact them is by text so if you don't have a mobile you're screwed... I'm screwed. Don't you just hate it when companies just assume everybody has a mobile phone. It infuriate me when companies make a mobile contact number a required field in an online form but that's another story. Can anyone advise me what to do please?

[#2]

Today's weather may well be an issue especially if you have lines via a telephone pole.

[#3]

@Gel Thanks for your reply. My problems did coincide with the onset of bad weather but maybe that's just a coincidence. I do get my broadband through a copper wire so severe weather can affect it but I've always had a rock solid phone connection in the past. I've been checking Plusnet's service status page, when possible, and it's always shown everything as hunky-dory. I also checked Down Detector but they were showing no spike in issues although other people were reporting similar problems to me from various parts of the country but I guess you'd expect that for a company the size of Plusnet. I'm no expert but the fact that my phone/broadband worked faultlessly for a day and a half and then broke suggest the problem might be at the exchange not my end.

[#4]

Service status does not report issues on individual lines.

Bad weather can bring about a lot of faults. The symptoms you describe suggest a one leg disconnect issue (one wire of the line pair is broken). In such situations broadband will limp along but there will be no dial tone. Have you raised a phone fault report? See the link below.

It is most likely that the fault is between your house and the green cabinet - that is nowhere near the exchange.

[#5]

@Townman Thanks for the advice. Tried the link you provided for phone faults (twice) and ended up with a "Oops, something seems to have gone wrong" message in the browser, and a help number to call... which is obviously of no use to me. Anyway hopefully Plusnet are now aware of the problem.

[#6]

There are fault conditions which do give rise to that message … but still raise a fault report. Use the PN Tickets link to see if a fault report was actually raised.

[#7]

@Townman no it's saying "You currently have no open questions"

[#8]

Hi @Ortero

I'm really sorry to see your phone's not working, your broadband's slow and you've found it hard to get in touch with us. 

I've tested your line today and the tests are showing what's known as a "Loop In Network" which is generally caused by wet or dampness so I'll (figuratively speaking) put my money on that the problem's due to the bad weather.

I've reported this across to our suppliers now and we've been given an estimated response time of by 23/02/22 23:59:59 for an engineer to investigate further and we'll update you when we know more via the ticket I've raised Here.

For future problems or queries you may have if you need to get in touch with us, do you have Facebook or Twitter? We're happy to help if you can drop us a message over there. A few of us from the Social Media team do though keep an eye on posts here via our Community Forums and we regularly pick things up & help out. 

[#9]

Hi @Gandalf 

Thanks for your help. The phone line is still dead and the broadband stopped working completely on Sunday. Your estimated response time from your supplier has now passed.

I'm afraid I don't use social media at all; I tend to think of it as a scourge - built from the ground up to be addictive - and don't like their business models.

Some kind of update would be appreciated when you get the chance.

[#10]

Hi there, I'm really sorry that the line fault hasn't been fixed yet, I've just looked into this and added an update to your account which you can see here: https://www.plus.net/wizard/?p=view_question&id=222152410

Please get back to us here when you've responded and we'll continue to follow things up with you.

[#11]

Hi @adamwalker 

I've responded to your request/ticket/question

Thanks

[#12 · Accepted solution]

Hi @Ortero

I've booked the engineer for you and updated the ticket 222152410 with the appointment details.

Let me know how it goes.

[#13]

Thanks for your help @Gandalf (and the other support staff) the engineer replaced the master socket and that seems to have resolved the issue. I must say Plusnet staff are very good, when you eventually get hold of them, it's just the process of reporting a fault that's a bit of a faff. It's great to have UK based support though.

[#14]

Thanks for getting back to me @Ortero

I'm glad to see the engineer got your phone sorted.

No problem, feel free to get back to me if you ever have further issues or there's anything else you'd need help with.