Truly terrible service

[#1]

I almost don't know where to start.  We were moving house and phoned Plusnet for their phone and broadband deal in June.  They took 3 days to resolve a 'market area' problem as the end user site was different from the sales/order perspective so the operator took 3 days to put an order through.  Fine - this was in the last week of June and we stressed that we wanted broadband guaranteed for 15th July.  No problems - absolutely guaranteed we'd have service.  Direct Debit went out in June - fine, didn't mind paying so long as the service was live for arrival on 15th July.  Got a text a week later to say broadband was live.  Wow - fantastic.  Moved in on 15th July, plugged in their router and hey NOTHING!  On/off, plugged back in, blah blah blah...Phone technical and they said there was a tag error on the line by local suppliers and they would pass the error on to the right team.  Ok I said but (as I work from home) I really need this resolved by Monday 18th and btw we've been paying since June for all this.  Saturday we chase them - no worries the supplier will resolve the error by Monday. Monday came and went, promises for Tuesday - still nothing.  Get a supervisor who hopes to resolve the local supplier issue in 48 hours.  Nope - didn't happen.  Told they'd have to cancel order and re-do it and would now take another 48-72 hours.  Pulling my hair out, losing work, time and deadlines.  Ok the ads say a UK call centre but the problem is BT is their parent company so the local problems get sent to India to sort out and Plusnet don't have a telephone number for India as it's a closed unit.  Apparently it's all BT OPenReach's fault.  Sent Jamie the MD an email and he passed straight to head of customer service who said 'no promises but we'll see what we can do' Bit lax I thought.  Anyway, long story cut short I've got a complaint in with Cisas as the last thing I was told was that it would take another 2 weeks or so to fix the problem.  But then again I kept being told by other operators that it would be all resolved in all sorts of 'just wait another 48 hours'.  The staff are friendly but I feel unskilled and not trained to a high level.  th company style is all 'well never mind, have a cup of tea and wait a few weeks - there there'  INFURIATING.  The last questions I asked the MD and head of customer services have gone unanswered.  I find that rather ignorant and not customer focused.  Personally we have not found plusnet 'Good or honest' which is a great shame - I qualify that by saying we didn't get what we paid for, we were told a series of mis-truths and senior management wash their hands and blame BT..  I would advise a change of MD and a whole new company attitude to survive in this competitive market place.  Come on Plusnet please do something good and honest for telecoms in this country and don't be so slopey shouldered.

[#2]

In the middle of a very similar rubbish experience. I'd go further and say that the Plusnet staff have no interest in delivering a customer service quality which is even remotely acceptable. They are, in the main defensive rather than honest (perhaps not surprising in view of the prehistoric service limitations), often rude and completely untrained and uninformed. This is a very bad choice for anyone looking for a home phone and broadband service. My own broadband, not that I trust a thing that I have been told by the pond life that work for this company, is due to go live on Wednesday. I shall be on the phone the same day to get a MAC code to get myself out of this vile and hopeless arrangement.

[#3]

OpenReach is part of the BT Group, but is required by the regulator to act at "arm's length" from the retail and commercial side of BT. Even though PlusNet is part of the BT group it has to place orders the same way as other distributors such as Demon Internet. OpenReach is the company which maintains the main telecoms infrastructure, but it does not as a rule speak directly to the public.
Virgin has, in many places, its own private cable network and in those cases does not have to use OpenReach to provision the service.
I've been involved, as a client, with international & local telecoms for computing and voice since the 1990's. You expect that sometimes an installation will go wrong regardless of how much you are paying and despite the best intentions of the sales guys. My experience of the PN customer support has been pretty good apart from one idiot who was dealt with promptly.

[#4]

@3dognight
I've responded to your issue here: http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,97869.msg827646.html#msg827646
For clarity it might be worth adding any furtheer comments regarding your account in this thread.