Like talking to a brick wall

[#1]

Quote from: Minivanman

PN doe not provide my Voice service.

Ok here's some sound advice.
The absence of a dial tone means that there is a fault on the copper pathway (as BT Openreach call it) between your home and the exchange.
Voice (phone) service is the PRIMARY telephony service and (under BTOR rules) management of the copper pathway falls to the retail provider of your voice service.  If the copper pathway is damaged, broadband is never going to work overly well.  It is a surprise to many to learn that ADSL can limp along with only one side of the copper pathway pair still connected - but the phone will never work in this situation.
In simple terms, the BT 'Voice' (POTS) engineer told you unbridled lies - if there is no dial tone, that is not a broadband fault, it does not need a broadband engineer, indeed a broadband engineer might well walk away from such a job, and require a lines man to attend.  If you instead think that he was a long way from home and did not want to go cross fields up and down poles tracing your line looking for a bad joint, you might understand better why he ducked the issue.  You need to have stern words with your phone supplier; grumbling here cannot fix that issue for you.
If you have separate suppliers for voice and broadband NEVER tell one that you have a problem with the other service - they will try to play ping pong with you.  However in this case, the PlusNet guys are being honest.  No dial tone = line fault = talk to your phone line provider, or move your phone to PlusNet or your broadband to the phone provider.  That way it will be one organisation's problem.
An observation on AlaricAdair's suggestion about moving to Zen: if BTOR have no engineers in your neck of the woods, then no ISP can fix that resource (and in deed skill) issue.

[#2]

Cheers Townman and others, lots to think about and feel better at putting my case to those engineer/s. Perhaps it's time to demand that both the phone and internet guys attend at the same time!

[#3]

Hi,
That is never going to happen, especially given that your phone and broadband services come from different RETAILERS.
Yes it is shear madness that all of the infrastructure is owned by BT Openreach and they cannot arrange to fix whichever service is broken without direction from a reseller of capacity.  Situations such as yours really do illustrate just how broken BT Openreach and BT Wholesale as a purveyor of a telecommunications infrastructure.
The fundamental flaw is that BT Openreach treat these as being separate services separately provided.  They might be sold separately, but the are delivered over a single delivery channel.  There is no reason why (especially in the case of ADSL) that ANY engineer cannot resolve your problem.  Joining wires to a good enough standard to deliver ADSL does not need a specialist trained engineer.  All copper pathways ought to be of a quality capable of supporting ADSL.  If they are not, a specialist engineer cannot magic up better circuits if there are none!
Hope your phone provider gets this sorted for you soon.
@CRT - given that PlusNet will be loosing ADSL revenue here until this service is repaired, is there anyway that Plusnet can push BTOR for a copper pathway fix?  Whilst resolution of this issue is allowed to remain outside of Plusnet's control, Plusnet has no means of mitigating their losses.

[#4]

I think Openreach are introducing a "Harmonised Repair" service, where an engineer visit will fix whatever the problem is, voice or broadband related, and do the typical master socket optimisation, obviously this whole service costs extra.
http://www.fcs.org.uk/image_upload/files/Harmonised%20Repair%20FSC%2019012016.pdf

[#5]

Quote from: Townman

given that your phone and broadband services come from different RETAILERS.

Not sure why this is being mentioned? I don't think anyone has said they are not both provided by Plusnet.
@Minivanman
Don't mention broadband to the engineer. Get them to fix the phone line so it works correctly when you pick up a handset and dial out. Once that's resolved it's likely to fix the broadband issue anyway, if it doesn't we can investigate further.

[#6]

Quote from: Chris

Not sure why this is being mentioned? I don't think anyone has said they are not both provided by Plusnet.

Minivanman did
http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,149366.msg1312578.html#msg1312578

[#7]

@Chris,
In post #15 I quoted the OP from post #9.
If both BB and phone are with PlusNet, then one hopes that will help resolve the problem given that there is only one retailer involved.  Strange that the OP should suggest that PN does not provide the voice service if in fact they do.
The sceptre of another party providing the voice service would have been mitigation for Plusnet not being able to resolve the broadband issue at present, however if PN is responsible for both services...?

[#8]

Quote from: Minivanman

Well using the same provider for both phone and internet is not helping. Both are provided by plusnet yet they are still pointing the finger at each other because British Telecom is they tell me nothing to do with Open Reach. Seems you cannot win either way.

They said one thing, then later the other.

[#9]

Might be better to ask "who do you pay line rental to? ", as  a customer may think that there as BT own the wires that they are a customer of BT!  I have met this situation many times .

[#10]

Hello there. Just to clarify that even though Plusnet provide both phone and broadband to Minivanman, in times of faults we work with our suppliers, Openreach, as they are the engineers who maintain the BT network.
If the original poster contacted BT, then it may have been BT retail, who are just an ISP like ourselves and would not be able to raise or track a fault via Openreach as Plusnet currently rent the line.
In regards to the fault at hand, this does need looking at by a line engineer, because the phone line would likely be the underlying issue behind the broadband fault.
Hope this helps

[#11]

Quote from: Townman

The sceptre of another party providing the voice service would have been mitigation for Plusnet not being able to resolve the broadband issue at present, however if PN is responsible for both services...?

We can still only raise a fault on the phone or broadband, not both at once unfortunately. That's why we usually go down the phone r0oute as this tends to resolve broadband issues too.
Fingers crossed the engineer tomorrow identifies and resolves the issue.