Another Newbie customer having a hard time

[#1]

Ref. Open Tickets  #60437359  &  #60778416
Like Hero (see topic 04/10) I am a new customer trying desperately to get now any sort of internet up & running quickly. Slightly different scenario to others is that we are returning Expats with no internet at all, currently.
On 29th September we submitted an order to Plusnet for Value fibre + landline connection. Plusnet's timescale for this was 2/3 weeks according to sales before we placed the order. We wanted to have the connection from 18th, 19th October to ensure that we had reasonable downloads speeds (rural area - standard broadband 1mb only). Land line activated 01/10. No problems with that, except that since we are not yet back in the UK. we cannot use the phone & probably wouldn't bother with a phone at all if we didn't need it for old technology ADSL broadband.
After one week there had been no response or action whatsoever towards booking an appointment to get the internet up & running. Finally on 5th October we received an appointment for 23/10, some 5 days later than our requested date.
I was cross, actually livid, since we had allowed 3 weeks from date of order. I reluctantly agreed to 23/10 & then starting reading the forum posts & the experiences of others with BT openreach.
Yesterday I decided that I'd sooner have snail pace internet download than no internet at all & requested cancellation of the fibre option & instead a basic service. It was originally suggested that this would be available within 5 working days. By the time I had telephoned Plusnet again to confirm, later yesterday, UK time early afternoon, this was amended to 5/7 working days. As of now there has been no cancellation or re-order recorded on my account.
So I am, in desperation, posting on the forum in the vain hope that this will escalate the order from static to something moving before our return to the UK on 17th October. As I said to Plusnet if they have award winning customer service (Which Survey) I'd hate to be dealing with their competitors.
I currently live in a third world country & have done for more than 10 years. We now have excellent wireless internet (in the sticks) with 4mb download & upload which can be installed in less than 1 week. For little more cost than with Plusnet, maximum 20mb download & upload is available.

[#2]

Well hello scruff and welcome to the forum. Yes, I'm afraid it seems to be a sad tale at the moment, Openretch certainly seem to be making a bigger mess of timescales for Fibre Installs than they usually do on other tasks. It obviously hasn't been helped by some of the appalling weather the UK has suffered in recent months and BT have had MBORC's running for months, well is seems like that if it actually isn't.
However it also appears that Plusnet's own sales seem to have a finger in this mucky pie.
It's not clear to me why you can't have the ADSL installed asap with the Fibre to replace it on the date you were eventuallly told (if that's what you want). It would also seem to me that means your deferred Installation cost for Fibre as an existing customer would be £25 rather than £50 (that means if you stay for 12 months or more you don't pay anything, although if you don't stay for 18 months of Fibre there are some other charges).
Well I would hope in view of timescales, and experienced member of the Digital Care Team (DCT) will pick this up in the morning, and sort to your satisfaction.

[#3]

Firstly let me apologise for the issues you've been having. I've asked one of my team to pick this up, get in touch and do what we can to get this sorted for you.

[#4]

Hi Chris
Thanks for the response. Just in case it's not clear to yourself or others in your team. There's no contact with me available at present via the UK. mobile number provided with the original order.
Contact with me can only be made via email, help assistant or this forum.

[#5]

Hi there,
I'm really sorry about the issues you've encountered here, I do understand we're unable to contact you by phone at the moment so I'll take ownership of getting this sorted before updating you from here.
Just to address your concerns about the problems you had ordering fibre, the issue seems that when we came to book an appointment for you unfortunately none of the dates you requested were no longer available, hence we requested the soonest available one. We do realise that the expectation we set at the point of sign up would have led you to believe we could book one of those date and also that this is a poor start and not the first impression we want to give to a customer.
Concerning the order of an ADSL connection I've just done that myself now, bearing in mind the 5-7 working day lead time I would expect that to complete on the 17th. I will monitor this order for you between now and then for you but I don't foresee any issues with that.

[#6]

Well another day has now elapsed & unless I'm missing something, there has been no change to my original order status showing in the Member Centre under 'My Account' & 'Account Summary'.     
This still shows:- 
Plusnet Value Fibre with included 40GB bandwidth. Order Status. Completed.
Deferred Hardware - Technicolor TG582n Fibre Router. Order Status. Awaiting ordering.
Maybe there's a delay in updating the account summary, but as a new customer, this is the area where I'd expect to see the latest status of my order?

[#7]

Hi there,
Let me update you. As there's been some manual intervention from myself the tracking you see might not be up to date.
The broadband order I placed yesterday is due to complete on the 17th. Re the router, they dispatch automatically a couple of days prior to activation but Iv'e dispatched it manually now to be on the safe side.
Re the account type that will change over when you've been activated.
Hope that clears things up.
Adam

[#8]

Hi Adam
Sorry I misunderstood what would happen with your manual intervention & many thanks for what you have done. I have now received a confirmation email which reflects the product change.
Just one last thing. It's clear that the upgrade to fibre is not going well for some people (hopefully not all are experiencing problems). Can you indicate how long I should wait to upgrade & when Openreach will have got their act together. Are we talking weeks or months here?
Is this only an issue in some geographical locations or is this problem of missed appointments & in some cases, even slower internet after the Fibre upgrade in rural areas a widespread problem?
I have noted the problems that DelphGeek has been experiencing, following his fibre installation & would not wish to go out of the frying pan & into the fire as he has.  

[#9]

Hi there,
No problem, as I'm sure you've noticed there are a few current cases of missed engineer visits that have been reported on this forum of late, I'm aware of all of them and I'll looking at any details they may have in common.

Quote

Just one last thing. It's clear that the upgrade to fibre is not going well for some people (hopefully not all are experiencing problems). Can you indicate how long I should wait to upgrade & when Openreach will have got their act together. Are we talking weeks or months here?

I really couldn't say I'm afraid. Do bear in mind that these issues aren't impacting every fibre installation we're handing so I'm sure we can arrange a successful install and I am seeing some of the cases where there's previously been issues have services installed. I'd say it depends how you feel about proceeding at the moment to be honest, my personal advice would be to perhaps hang fire for a shortwhile and let the ADSL connection settle in first.

Quote

Is this only an issue in some geographical locations or is this problem of missed appointments & in some cases, even slower internet after the Fibre upgrade in rural areas a widespread problem?

AFAIK we're not seeing any geographical patters but do bear in mind we're still analysing the facts surrounding any such cases

[#10]

Surely geographical patterns must be affected by BT's declared MBORC's for such areas, and it's bound to have a lesser impact on the areas from which they pinch engineers to send to problematic areas? I'd think things have a better chance of becoming more "normal" once all the MBORC's cease.

[#11]

I wish to place on record my thanks to all the Plusnet support staff who got our Internet up & running in the end by 20.00 on 17th October. This was despite a supposedly missing 1st router which in the end wasn't missing.
Unfortunately by the time this was discovered, Jodi Morgan had already despatched a 2nd router which I shall be returning ASAP.
Adam Walker had monitored the order & the change from value fibre to broadband. I really appreciate the help.
Unfortunately when the router was connected there was a further issue with this, since although Plusnet had activated the broadband on morning of the 17th, we could not log in.  Omar Mrabet spent some time patiently talking us through what to do.
Finally, we were expecting a significantly lower download speed than we are actually currently getting. So that's a bonus. 
However, it's unfortunate that the maximum monthly download usage available on broadband only packages is either 10 GB or 60 GB. Only by upgrading to Extra Fibre can we get our preferred option of 250 GB per month. 

[#12]

We've got a 120Gb package available if you go to http://trials.plus.net.

[#13]

Thanks for your response on that. I now understand that I can upgrade the broadband to 120 Gb monthly download package, without going down the fibre route.
We were expecting download speeds of as little as 1 Gb or maybe up to 1.5 Gb. In the event, so far we are actually getting 2.5 Gb download & around .750 upload. Not brilliant & not as good as we would espect with fibre, but certainly better than we thought we'd get in a rural area.
I have noticed that using the 'extra usage' ticket area in Help Assistant may cause a delay of up to 14 days before the request is picked up by support staff. Is there another way to upgrade instead of using the trial area, should we decide to go ahead? BTW, we are in Market 3 area.

[#14]

Working through the Help Assistant puts the request on record and I think is the best way to get the ball rolling. Changing to the 120GB package is a manual process so the requests are picked up in batches every few days.
However the Digital Care Team should be around again on Monday and may be able to expedite the change.

[#15]

Thanks for your input Spraxyt.
I was referring specifically to the comment in the last sentence on the Plusnet Trials page, reached by the link provided by Kelly in his post.

'Welcome to the Plusnet Trials opt in/out page'
Here you can choose whether you would like to opt in or out of some of our service trials. Please follow the links below to raise an appropriate ticket with us.

Please note these ticket pools are not directly monitored by the Customer Support Centre and that it may take up to 7 to 14 days for your ticket to be acknowledged.