I have mentioned the fault on my broadband line a number of times on these forums. It seemed to start when I was converted to 21CN but that could be a coincidence and mostly involves intermittent but frequent REIN interference that is large enough to disable my broadband when it is happening.
Since I last posted some weeks ago, Plusnet's BOT have been working to try to solve the problem. I do not want to go too overboard but they seem to understand what I have to say, have been polite, done sensible things and answered my questions to the best of their ability. Although the problem is still ongoing, they are pursuing it and trying to resolve it. I can have a conversation with these guys and there is communication.
I cannot say the same about the guy on the Faults Update phone line who simply seems employed to do a jobsworth. "BT are working on it, nothing we can do until 72 hours is up, push off stop bothering me" was not quite word for word but was the sense of the conversation. "When is 72 hours up? " Well the answer moved right faster than the clock does. And whats worse is that I was right - BT had screwed up somewhere along the line. He could have got me back on line much sooner if he had listened and used his head.
Some lessons for Plusnet.
1. Following my useless conversation with Fault Updates, I tried to use a dial up connection to read my ticket. It took 5 minutes to load Plusnet's front page, 5 minutes to load my user page and it timed out every time I tried to read my ticket. If you are going to provide 54k dial up as a backup then can we have some pages that are basic text and can be sensibly read over dialup.
2. Your engineers need to understand what BT are going to do and set my expectations more clearly. I was told that you had agreed with BT to move my connection to a different port at the exchange - there would be some downtime involved. My expectation was that my line would go down for maybe 1 hour while the wires were moved and an update performed on the software configuration so the exchange knew I had moved port. I did not expect 2 hours of disconnections and reconnections, then a total disconnection overnight, then a reconnection followed 6 hours later by another disconnection that lasted 48 hours. I do not believe most of that should have happened given what I was told and when it did happen the faults updates guy should have been able to say "Yes that is because..." or "No, that's absurd, I will find out what is going on." And then find out - and then phone me back and tell me what is going on and why and what's going to be done to put it right.
3. When BT change a port across - surely they can tell if it has re-synched. There must be a little light or computer display that says "Yes, there is a router there and I am talking to it happily" or not. So why when they plugged my line back in and it did not sync did they do nothing until 24 hours later when they mentioned it to your engineer. And then it looks as if they took another 24 hours to do something about it. I admit, the cause of this problem is a bit of a mystery, but surely BT should be pro-active when something that should happen does not.
4. I received an SMS from Plusnet that said (paraphrased) "Too much to tell you in an SMS - please read your ticket". But I had no broadband - so I phoned my favourite person on the fault update line to be told - "Oh - nothing much has happened" and "We send you SMS telling you to read your ticket because most people can access the internet in several different ways." Well I am sorry for being old fashioned and relying on Plusnet to supply my broadband. Maybe the lesson there is for me - but do Plusnet really want me to learn that I need to spend a second fortune on a backup broadband because they are not to be relied on?
Incidentally, the BT Openreach engineer who visited was competent, worked hard, did everything he could and was polite and communicative. I approved of him. I am less enthusiastic about the guy who did the port swap.
