Openreach have still not fixed line fault (again) – can anyone at Plusnet help?

[#1]

I really don't understand this response at all, Adam - you seem to be telling me that the fault is a figment of my imagination? Surely your remote line tests must show the fault as there have been so many disconnections over the last few days. The support ticket clearly shows a sub-standard service on 19th July - the PN stats on the ticket show this. And when the attempted fault fix was rejected by Plusnet on 27th July the Plusnet operator confirmed that the line quality was very poor.
As I've explained before, I cannot take time off work at the moment and this will be the case for another couple of weeks at least - so do I have to put up with a poor level of service because Openreach and Plusnet can't be bothered to help? I've done all I can to prove that the fault lies outside my home, and an Openreach engineer confirmed on 28th May that my home wiring was fine, so looking at it from a reasonable angle (which is very hard at the moment, I can tell you...) isn't it about time that Openreach started delivering a bit of good old-fashioned customer service instead of hiding behind their ridiculous and customer-unfriendly processes?
Re. Saturday appointents - these used to be available as a matter of course - why has this stopped?
Last, regarding support ticket updates - in my experience that's the worst thing that I could do as the ticket seems to be sent to the back of the queue and I have to wait another 3 days for a status update...

[#2]

Just found this interesting item on the Openreach website: http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/serviceproducts/serviceharmonisation/serviceharmonisat...
So it seems that Openreach do provide appointments on Saturdays (via their Flexible Appointments service). So, the question is now whether it's Plusnet who don't offer Saturday appointments (presumably due to extra charges?) or is it because there was no appointment free this Saturday? How about the following Saturday instead?
But looking into this a bit more (read the Fact Sheet near the bottom of the page), it becomes apparent that there are 4 maintenance levels that a CP/ISP can subscribe to - and the lowest (L1) offers fixes Mon-Fri only, on an end of the 2nd working day after reporting basis. However, the document does say (in the diagram on page 2) that service level 1 is just for basic analogue lines. Service level 2 is for WLR/LLU and does offer Saturday appointments with a next working day fix time. As I have calls and broadband with Plusnet then I assume that's covered by WLR and maintenance level 2, so I should be able to request a Saturday engineer visit. I'm assuming that WLR means Wholesale Line Rental, as described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wholesale_Line_Rental
Does that make sense to anyone, or have I missed the point by a country mile?

[#3]

Hi there,
From our point of view, we get a list of dates that are available for appointments whenever one is requested by our suppliers. Sometimes they show Saturdays available, sometimes they don't - far as we're aware it's down to availability in the area and given an MBORC has now been declared I'm not surprised that Saturday appointments aren't available in your area at the moment I'm afraid.
We can cancel an appointment and rebook but we've no way of knowing when appointments will be available until we get the list at the time of booking. Realise it's not ideal and am happy to feed back on it, but unfortunately that's how things stand at present.

[#4]

Thanks, Matt - I don't know about the MBORC in my area, but I can see that engineers might have been diverted to areas that have lots of issues.
But I do have some good news at last - an Openreach manager phoned me at 9:10 this morning to clarify what the fault was as he said the fault reason that had been logged was a bit confusing. I confirmed it was a noisy line and he said he'd arrange for the right type of engineer to check the line outside my house. He was true to his word and I received a call from an engineer just after noon - he was asking for permission to enter my garden and check the line where it entered my house. My neighbour saw him check the line at the house and also the nearest telegraph pole, as well as further down the road. And when I got home this evening I found that the line was perfect - no noise at all. Broadband speed is still down in the dumps, but that's to be expected for this type of fault, so I'm not bothered by that i.e. it will recover in time.
I think I'll wait another day before breaking out the champagne, but the Openreach service today cannot be faulted. That's how it should be, of course, but at least they showed that they can do a good job - credit where credit's due. And I feel vindicated by the outcome as well - I knew the fault had to lie outside my house and it was so irritating to have the fault closed twice when the noise on the line would have been obvious to anyone who had bothered to check.
I'll leave it to the PN guys to do a post-mortem on the progress of the fault ticket, though, as it really shouldn't have been allowed to drag on this long.

[#5]

That's great news, thanks very much for letting us know - really glad the engineer knew his stuff and was able to get things sorted for you. I can see there's a ticket with our complaints team open, they'll make sure that everything is dealt with to your satisfaction I've no doubt.

[#6]

Hi, apologies I've been unable to reply any sooner to this personally. Really glad to see that this has now been resolved and Matt's addressed any questions you've had in the meantime.