OR0000014784426

[#1]

Dear Sir / Madam,

I am writing to you to raise an issue about: Home Phone & Broadband Order OR0000014784426

The issue that is being experienced is that the Order was placed on or about 29th April 2022. Phone line has not yet become operational as of 26th May 2022. No confirmed date of commencement of service for both phone line and broadband exists.

Your customer is an elderly vulnerable female, with limited verbal and cognitive skills.Because no phone or broadband exists. enhanced regular welfare checking on the lady has become necessary.

Conflicting and contradictory responses have been made by Plusnet, which is not to be construed as any criticism of any Plusnet employee regarding the commencement date of the service.

However, it is now critical that someone with sufficient authority  in Plusnet, takes ownership of this so that the service is provided asap.

I look forward to your prompt response on this matter..

[#2]

Hello @MP1 

A warm welcome to the forums.  Are you related to the vulnerable person or (as might be implied by your username) her Member of Parliament?

Hopefully a staff member will be able to access the account via the provided BT order number.  If not, do you have the account reference to hand if you are requested to provide it?

Would you know anything of the premises - for example is it a "new build" in which case, it might be a matter of BT Openreach having failed to deliver (or maintain) the requisite local infrastructure required by any and all ISPs to deliver telephone and broadband services.  If you are her MP, you might care to ask BT Openreach direct why is there a delay in providing timely deliver of new installations?  We see too many such examples in these forums, causing difficulty for users and embarrassment to the ISP alike ... whilst all that BT Openreach does is say "Wait for the next update...".

[#3]

Hiya @MP1 thank you for getting in touch on our forums. 

I'm so sorry to hear of the issues that have been encountered with this order and for the impact this is having. It certainly sounds like the account holder isn't having the experience we would expect and I can understand the frustration caused and importance of them needing a working service. 

I can see that a complaint has been raised and now passed over to our Higher Level Escalations Team, this will be passed to a case handler who will take this on going forward and work to get the service up and running as soon as we can. 

[#4]

I am not you customer's Member of Parliament and the property was built in the 1960's. There is a telephone overhead line to the property and a BT socket. A telephone number ending in 237 has been allocated to the line. My understanding is that your contractor - OpenReach, is tasked with carrying out works at the DP and/or the local exchange. Those works seem to have been re scheduled on a number of occasions, and are now unlikely to complete before 14th June, but that seems to be a provisional date and there is there is still no certainty about the date when the service will actually start. This, I am sure you will agree, is a quite unacceptable state of affairs, particularly as the order was placed with Plusnet on 29th April 22. and where this is a care case, where your customer is an elderly female, with cognitive and linguistic impairment, living alone at the property.

It seems to me, that what is needed is intervention at senior level in Plusnet, to engage at senior level with OpenReach, aimed at getting a committed early date for the service to commence.

Can I have an assurance that that intervention will occur.

[#5]

Thank you for getting back to me, the delays faced so far are definitely not what we want and the case handler will liaise with the suppliers and ensure that they do all they can to get some progression. 

[#6]

Open Letter to Marc Allera

Dear Mr. Allera,

Shortly put, your customer, a 71 year old lady, with cognitive and linguistic impairment, living alone, placed an order with Plusnet for telephone and broadband services to be provided in her home. It would seem that despite a number of dates for the start of service having been given, that service has not been provided and, as yet there is no certainty about when that service will commence.

It would seem that the root of this has to do with a failure by OpenReach to perform it’s obligations to you.

During my most recent telephone conversation with your customer services staff it came out that they are unable to contact OpenReach directly, by telephone or email and must depend on OpenReach keeping your staff informed.

That, if true, is an extraordinary state of affairs and seems to me to be an abuse of OpenReach’s dominant position as the owner of the majority of the landline communication infrastructure in the United Kingdom.

Be that as it may, the purpose of my correspondence is to request that you personally contact your opposite number in OpenReach, in efforts to obtain certainty about when your customer shall have her telephone and broadband service working.

Yours faithfully,

Patrick Mooney L LM   

[#7]

Is this case yet with the DSO? It would seem that there are good grounds for it being so - social care and reputational damage?

[#8]

What is " DSO" in this context?

[#9]

Internal to Openreach escalations. Not an easy space to reach - Openreach have stringent rules over what, how and when ISPs can escalate service provision failure cases. I’ve known the door of the DSO open for an ISP where the user writes direct to the CEO of BT Openreach … but even then if there are significant infrastructure issues the time to resolve might not be improved.

If there is no serviceable line, then there’s no serviceable line. My case took 3+ months of wading through BTOR treacle and outright lies. I’ve heard of cases taking over a year where major road digs were required.

Such might or might not be relevant here, as the thread does not mention anything about the detail of the delay. I have seen cases where there is a perfectly functioning line, but the records for it are in a total mess meaning that services for it cannot be changed / ordered. Such can cause inordinate delays to an ISP seeking to provide service. Rectifying such needs to be done one bite at a time, each bite potentially having a minimum turnaround time of 72 hours … which is BTOR’s standard minimum time for everything.

[#10]

@Townman 

Many thanks for your clarification - I do hope this customer will not have to put up with what happened to you. Once again, many thanks!