On the verge of upgrading to fibre but....

[#1]

Nearing the end of contract with PN I called them and was offered a good price for an upgrade to fibre.  I have been with PN for well over 10 years, and hadn't had a problem with my ADSL for ages. When I did, support was excellent - swift and technically very competent.

I would normally just renew my ADSL contract without too much research but this time (with the fibre offer on the table for a 2 year contract) I had a better look round than usual.

I was appalled to see the bad reviews re getting hold of support, poor quality of support and nasty billing issues. I've no idea what has happened since I last looked, but am pretty much gobsmacked.

To be fair, my ADSL has been fine for yonks but am now very wary of going for a fibre upgrade in case things go wrong - it sounds like a nightmare to get things sorted....

So being aware that the internet will default to having more bad news than good, I wanted to ask for general feedback - many smooth trouble free installs?  - or even better (sort of!) - many good results after problematic upgrades?

If it all looks too hit and miss, will give fibre with PN a miss.

Thanks

[#2]

Hi there. I am sorry to hear you are having second thoughts about staying with us.

We've recently heavily recruited lots of new staff. We're starting to see the benefits of this right now as the current wait time is 0 seconds across all departments.

Whilst I appreciate we don't get everything right, delays and faults can occur, and we're committed to doing our best to resolve them as soon as possible.

Please feel free to let me know should you have any further questions.

[#3]

@Dhansak

I guess you will never be able to get accurate figures on success/problems regarding fibre upgrade.

If things go to plan very few people will give feedback but if things go wrong you can be certain there will be feedback of the negative sort.

Like you I was offered a good price for upgrading to fibre so went for it and everything went ok.

If the PN modem has not arrived within 5 days of the installation date phone PN to confirm it's in the post.

The guy who arrived to fix it up was sub contracting for BT, phoned me the night before to confirm I was in, arrived on time, did the job in 15 minutes, checked everything was working and then gave me a card with his number on and said phone me if you have any problems in the next 24 hours.... so everything went fine for me.

I might be wrong but there may be a greater chance of problems where business premises are being connected for the first time, house moves and such like.

Equally does every other isp company get it right every time ? I guess they all get complaints, some of which may be beyond their ability to deal with, if for example the problem is with openreach.

Whatever you do I would recommend fibre, glad I got it.

[#4]

Thank you for your replies Gandalf and gleneagles. I have decided to give it a go - will request a PN renewal and upgrade to fibre shortly.

I shall document everything here, good, bad and neutral , as things progress. Of course a sample of size of 1 won't represent the whole, but at least other people will see what my experience turns out to be.

For reference - I can confirm that for me, customer support (technical problems option) answered within 10 seconds of the phone ringing there (I did apologise for wasting a few seconds of their time, but I thought I should find out what the wait was like!). Spot on with the zero wait time info Gandalf - thanks!

Will keep you all posted.

[#5]

No problems, happy to hear you've decided to give us another shot. Would appreciate any feedback you could provide us, as this really does help us continue to improve our service.

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Spot on with the zero wait time info Gandalf - thanks!

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We've been working hard to get the queue down, the trick is now to keep it down.

Let us know how it goes.

[#6]

Right - step one taken!

3/5/17 1530-1600:

1)Talked to PN and ordered the fibre upgrade. Received 3 emails whilst still on the phone, confirming router order, line rental advance payment and fibre upgrade order. All quick and easy. For simplicity's sake, [CSA Removed] (I think - sorry if wrong!) kept the call plan on the order although I no longer require it. No problem at all as he made sure the first month was free so I will have plenty of time to cancel the plan when everything is in place. I was given a service eta of 10 working days max.

Also I had a quick minor technical query, so he tried to transfer me to the tech query line. The line went dead on transfer - oh well, not a big problem I thought. To my surprise, he called me back about 30 seconds later and apologised for having pressed the wrong button. Good job - didn't expect that! This time, the transfer went through ok and I waited about 20 seconds in the queue. I talked with[CSA Removed] who was also very helpful, and also took the time to add value with extra advice in addition to answering the query I had.

All very good so far - thanks to all concerned

Will update this as things progress.

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): CSA names removed as per Forum rules.

[#7]

Thanks for getting back to us, I'm happy to hear of your positive experience.

Let us know how the upgrade goes.

[#8]

I wouldn't worry about fibre upgrade orders.

They are one of the newer parts of the system and are generally fine. The worst you may get is a router not being ordered.

[#9]

Step 2  5/5/17

Received email advising router had been dispatched 4/5/17 -  eta 3 to 5 working days

ScottStorey - I seem to have avoided the router not ordered bump in the road!

[#10]

Step 3:   5/5/17

Router arrived! Even packed so it fitted through the letterbox - didn't expect that! Also found I had received a text from PN yesterday advising the router had been dispatched.

Gandalf quick question about the router setup. I have my current TP Link router setup with very limited DHCP range for wireless stuff restricted by MAC address. My wired devices have static IPs. Do I have this level of access and control on the PN hub?

Thanks

[#11]

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@Dhansak wrote:

Gandalf quick question about the router setup. I have my current TP Link router setup with very limited DHCP range for wireless stuff restricted by MAC address. My wired devices have static IPs. Do I have this level of access and control on the PN hub?

Thanks

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Honestly I'm not sure, it's possibly worth posting asking the community members about that.

[#12]

@Dhansak,

I have my current TP Link router setup

which TP link model do you have ?, quite a few of the more recent TP link ones are FTTC capable. It may be you can use your existing router and just keep the PN Hub one as a spare 

[#13]

Gandalf - fair enough, will investigate further.

MisterW - thanks for helping! The model is TD-W8970 - I am in luck?

[#14]

According to this thread it will, see post 4

https://community.plus.net/t5/Broadband/Switching-to-fibre-TP-Link-TD-W8970/td-p/1105841

[#15]

MisterW - thanks for helping! The model is TD-W8970 - I am in luck?

I'm afraid not, that model doesn't have an fttc capable modem.

We'll need someone who uses the Hub one to confirm whether it's capable of being configured to do what you need. If no-one responds soon them I'll break out my hub one a have a look...