Complaints

[#1]

@Townman 

A very helpful summary in post #12, however it points the blame wholly with BTOR/Kelly, and fails to mention anything that Plusnet could have done to mitigate the impact of the situation on @Tomdickinson86 .

Provisioning probably goes to plan for the majority of customers, and mostly we don't get to hear of such situations. Their success is due to processes in place by both Plusnet, BTOR and their contractors (Kelly in this instance). But the same processes that are devised to ensure success if followed don't appear to have adequate contingency to cope with situations as described in this thread. Its very easy for the provisioning team to go through the motions and sit back and wait for everything to take place that's is supposed to, but in this and other examples on this forum there appears to have been a failure of Plusnet to monitor progress and follow through or respond to problems that have arisen. If I understand correctly this lack of monitoring has contributed to the delays that ultimately resulted in the customer losing the opportunity to have access to a fibre connection. 

[#2]

Hi @Tomdickinson86 Just got in the office now and I can see the order committed to an appointment date at around 7am this morning. I've got in touch with our suppliers and they've expedited this for Monday morning between 8am to 1pm. 

I hope this helps.

[#3]

Indeed the 'failure to progress' has been a constant irritation.  From the conversations over the years there appears to be a mixture of Plusnet having not reacted to a non-progress notice and the absence of progress notices being received over by BTOR / BTw.

however it points the blame wholly with BTOR/Kelly

To be fair, that is what started things getting muddy - the engineer might have turned up at the appointment time but sought to claim that the customer did not answer the door.  That then leads to the protracted process of arranging with the customer a new installation appointment … assuming the appropriate hand offs were done in a timely fashion.

Stalled (failed to progress to a new state within N days to a new state) provide orders has been raised in the past … I'm told that there is proactive management of these … but there is always the human factor in such processes.

[#4]

Thanks Gandalf, I just spoke to one of your call centre team who advised me of this also. I’ll wait to see what they do on Monday (my third day off work for this), though given that openeeach have already installed a line in my house I’m not sure what they’ll be doing.

Hopefully by Monday that will be the end of this and I’ll have some form of internet.

Appointment which was taken by Kelly’s on 27/10/19 between 8-1pm (name: Alex). On the online job states he started the work around 12:30pm (I assumed on a cabinet/Phoneline). I was in all day and available. At 6pm I got an email saying my appointment was cancelled and I would be charged £65. Kelly’s engineer took a photo of my front door at 5:30pm (long after my appointment at 1pm), but I was in the house!!!! Very concerning behaviour.

[#5]

Thanks for getting back to us @Tomdickinson86 

I just spoke to one of your call centre team who advised me of this also.

Yup, I noticed while I was on chat with Openreach. It worked out well as the adviser was able to confirm with you that the appointment I was about to book was OK and you'd be available.

I’ll wait to see what they do on Monday (my third day off work for this), though given that openeeach have already installed a line in my house I’m not sure what they’ll be doing.

Is your phone line working, do you get a dial tone?

If you do then we'd be able to request Openreach to remove what's called the 'Customer Installation' activity from the order which means that any remaining work that's needed will be purely external or admin/system work.

[#6]

Unfortunately as I’ve never had a landline (apart from in my childhood!) I’ve never owned a phone handset, and don’t want to buy one just to see if it’s been set up. Your call handler this morning assured me that the line that has been set up (based on the old phone number that was assigned to me on my first order) isn’t an active number. So now I don’t know what the first line setup was for... hopefully it’ll become clear on Monday morning.

[#7]

Thanks for getting back to us @Tomdickinson86 

The line won't be showing as active on the systems because there's no completed order, however it is very possible that physically the line is active if all the necessary engineering work is completed.

Unfortunately the best way to determine if that's the case is to test for a dial tone.

Appreciate you don't have a phone handset though, if you know anyone you can borrow one from that may be good and it could save you having to wait in for an engineer. Otherwise we'll see what happens Monday morning

[#8]

You can pick up a cheap corded phone from Argos/Your local Supermarket - it is invaluable when trying to sort out Broadband faults, and like now save you days in diagnosis, and even call out charges in the future.

[#9]

Unfortunately the best way to determine if that's the case is to test for a dial tone.

It is not so much unfortunate, it is the only sensible way of checking these things out.  There is always the possibility that the circuit looks fine from the exchange / test head, but that is no assurance that the circuit terminates in the correct property.

The can be no substitute for a subscriber having a handset to verify that

1. there is a dial tone
2. the line can dial out
3. the line is the right number (dial 17070)
4. the line can receive calls on the number
5. there is no audible noise on the line

In the event of a suspected broadband issue, those are the first fundamental checks which need to be performed and cannot be done without a hand set.

Besides which is an absolute crisis - power cut and mobile phone dead, how are you going to call the emergency services?

[#10]

I am not interested in spending money in order to solve a problem that isn’t my fault. I will not be buying a handset.

I am now told that my internet will not be fixed today, and that they are only coming to install a Phoneline. I have an appointment with openreach today from 8am-1pm (time now 12:20). I will see if anyone turns up this time.

[#11]

Thanks for getting back to us @Tomdickinson86 

I'm afraid that as per my post Here I explained this could happen when expediting a telephone order that's got a broadband order linked to it. Please rest assured we are doing everything we can to get you up and running.

[#12]

@Tomdickinson86 Just to confirm and to follow up, your telephone order has completed so I've now emailed Openreach requesting the broadband order to be expedited. As soon as we've heard back, we'll be sure to let you know.

[#13]

“ I will not be buying a handset.“

In that case at sometime or another you could find yourself running into difficult and additional costs by not being able to perform basic end user telephone connectivity checks.

You can be guided and given sound advice which will enable you to help yourself, however as you demonstrate you can ignore it if you wish.

[#14]

The Kelly’s engineer who turned up today missed his appointed time with us and only came after a call to openreach. He had said he was working on the job at 12:30pm, but he was actually working on another job somewhere else. He turned up at 14:10 for the 8pm-1pm slot, explained that he was late as he had his morning overbooked. After a few minutes he told us we were already connected by the previous openreach engineer.

It would appear the left hand doesn’t talk to the right. I’m afraid I don’t understand this technology and would be completely perplexed by trying to sort it out myself. My partner missed a day of work, making three days of work we have lost between us.

We still do not have internet.

[#15]

Thanks for getting back to us @Tomdickinson86 I suspected the line may have been physically working already although I didn’t want to request the order completed cancelling the engineer visit as this would’ve delayed things if I was wrong. 

For your broadband, we’ll hopefully tomorrow have a sooner completion date than the 24th.