Well that was a good start - NOT !!

[#1]

It is Thursday 15 April and my new BB with PN is going in on next Monday 19th. I am away from home at the moment and when I went to collect my emails from my old provider, Tesconet, the pop accounts were not there. I contacted Tesconet who told me that the MAC had been "used" by Plusnet and when it is used, a signal is sent to the "old" provider telling them that the account had been taken over and Tesconet had cancelled my account.
As it was not yet the 20th, I phoned Plusnet and they said that the account was due to open on 19th and that they had not used the MAC therefore Tesco were at fault for cancelling. (Interestingly, I had never told Tesco that I was going to Plusnet so how did Tesco know - ?)  Plusnet said that they could not do anything about this until the 19th so I will be without a service (and not had the opportunity to inform all my contacts yet) which is more than a bit of a pain. Plusnet lady said that Tesco shouldn't have cancelled until the 19th and that it is their fault, Tesco say that they got a signal from Plusnet saying that Plusnet had taken over the BB.
I went back to Tesconet and they said that as the MAC had been used by Plusnet, they had to cancel their BB account with me. The Tesco man did say that if I was moving my phone as well as BB, BT might have used the MAC to move the phone over although I understood that the phone would not be done until after the BB was set up. Is this a possibility (although Tesco did say "Plusnet" and not BT ??)
What happened to the seamless migration and what do I do now? I was preparing to inform all my contacts on or about the changeover time but I am now stuck betwixt and between.
Not a very auspicious start and I am most unimpressed, particularly being away from home until the 20th.

[#2]

I can fully appreciate your difficulty and I totally symapthise. However, it would seem that the Tesconet advisor has been somewhat inaccurate in his comments.
Firstly the migration works as follows. You place the order with us and give us the MAC. We place the migration request with our suppliers BTW. The migration is scheduled to complete , in your case, on 19th. Once the migration completes, BTW (BT Wholesale) notify the losing service provider that the migration has completed and it is then normal for the losing provider to cancel the existing service. Some providers unfortunately cancel the service early and it seems this is what has happened in your case.
We have no control of how and when the losing service provider operates. They should not cancel the service until the migration completes but should and actual actions can sometimes be a million miles apart.
I'm sorry this has happend, but based on what you've said here this one is a case for Tesco to answer and not us.
I'm sorry that this has turned out badly for you but from what you've said this one isnt down to us.
I'm at home right now with no access to our ticket system. One thing I'd like you to confirm is that there is a ticket on the system stating that your migration is due to complete on 19th and that this hasnt happened early. Can you confirm that?
Mark

[#3]

Thanks for the prompt reply Mark - obviously Tesconet say that you (PN) told them that the account had been setup and PN says that they didn't tell Tesco it was set up. Somebody is wrong however, I have checked my PN account and have a page up which says
"Your order is currently being processed
Thank you for your order. We are now preparing your account. We will send you an email confirmation once your account is ready to use
Your broadband router
Your broadband router will be sent out in time for you to use your broadband connection.
Keeping you updated
We'll email you at (my contact email address)  to tell you about the progress of your order and when your service should be ready. We'll also include some useful help to get you up and running."
I have not received an email and being away from home, do not know whether the router has been sent out.
My contact email is a hotmail account (lucky that I foresaw problems arising but didn't expect this number of days without BB_)

[#4]

I've just checked your order status and it's not yet showing as complete, I've attached a screenshot to this post with the dates showing.
Your router was ordered earlier today, should dispatch tomorrow and arrive early next week just before the activation on the 19th.

[#5]

Thanks for that information Chris.
All I need now is for PN to contact Tesconet and sort this out for me so that I have a "seamless" changeover.
Tesconet were obviously contacted in some way or another by PN because they quoted PN as taking over the account.
I have read the Ofnet migration website and I shall be referring this as there is obviously a problem with the system somewhere.
Thanks for your prompt responses.

[#6]

I'm wondering if this is a BTw cock-up rather than PN or Tesco.
Tesco provide the MAC to you.  You provide it to PN.  PN then contact BTw who in turn contact Tesco.
I don't know the ins and outs of the system, but would expect it to be likely that when the migration is complete, BTw advise where the connection has gone to.

[#7]

Hi NorthRiding
We didn't contact Tesco and there's no way we would have, nor indeed would they even talk to us about your account, and rightly so. What they may have seen is details of the order progressing on BT's back end systems.
My belief is that Tesco have seen the order progressing and prematurely disconected your service.
Much as we'd love to, there is no way we could contact Tesco about this on your behalf. They simply wouldn't have that conversation with us, for a host of reasons.
Whilst I appreciate your difficulty, the only people who can get your service back up until the migration completes is Tesco.
As for BT contatcing Tesco, thats unlikely. the process (automated) is that BTW only notify the losing Service provider on completion of the migration, not prior to it.
Mark

[#8]

Thanks for that Mark.
Tesco said that they could re-instate my Tesconet account  (after all, I understand that I had the option of cancelling my PN providing it was before the migration date) but it would take about 10 days. They said they had no choice but that they "had" to cancel the account when they were informed that the MAC code had been used and the migration was assumed to have taken place as I could not have 2 BB accounts on the same line. Someone has jumped the gun and at this stage it looks like I will have to live with it. I will just wait and hope that all goes well on the 19th. It is particularly annoying seeing that I had organised the changeover and notifications of email address changes which I was planning to do just prior to and on the migration date whilst I still had my Tesconet account open.
Thanks for your prompt and helpful responses.

[#9]

Good Morning NorthRiding,
Thanks very much, I'll certainly pass your appreciative comments on to Mark, its good to hear that this is starting to move in a more positive direction for you.
I can understand that you may not be interested in hearing this as you may still feel caught between us and Tesconet at the moment but it really does sound like either a mistake was made individually on how they handled your outbound migration based on an assumption, or that they need to take a look at their processes as no cancellation should have happened until after the migration went through and not during.
We are glad to hear however that Tesco may be able to restore some service for you in the meantime. I have just checked your migration order and can confirm that everything is in place for completion on Monday so we are confident that everything should go to plan. You should be notified by e-mail when this completes this should be your prompt to change over your login details, however I can see that a Thomson router is on its way for you so if you decide to use that rather than any existing broadband equipment you may currently have just follow the instructions included and don't hesitate to let us know if you have any issues.

[#10]

Hello Adam,
Thanks for checking that all appears to be in order for a Monday 19th migration.
Not sure what you meant by "We are glad to hear however that Tesco may be able to restore some service for you in the meantime."
If you are referring to my post, what I actually said was:-
Tesco said that they could re-instate my Tesconet account  (after all, I understand that I had the option of cancelling my PN providing it was before the migration date) but it would take about 10 days.. They were referring to me coming back to them should I be unhappy with the Plusnet (or whoever it was??) jumping the gun (I guess??).
If you are not referring to my post but something else when you say ""We are glad to hear however that Tesco etc etc", I would like to know to what you are referring?
I have just checked my email accounts on Tesconet and they are still not there (I didn't ask them to put them back, they just said that they could but it would take about 10 days - presumeably I would get a MAC from PN and go through the whole process in reverse - much too much hassle and not what I want to happen?
As I said before, I will now have to live with the error, whosoever's error it is/was and fully intend at this late stage to carry on with my Plusnet migration as all seems to be in place.
We will see I guess?
Thanks again for the response

[#11]

Just had another quick thought (well not so quick actually - it came to me whilst I was walking the dog) - as I said before I am away from home and am picking up/ or rather was, picking up my emails from the house where I am staying and it would certainly make things much easier for me to sort out if it is possible?

Is it possible for you to "activate" my pop server addresses so that I can sort out my Outlook express accounts and contacts.
I know I have webmail working ok but it would be very helpful if my pop email mailbox addresses then I can go through my contacts and emails in OE and sort them all out prior to the migration. I don't need the broadband, just the pop accounts activated.
Is this possible pretty please? he begged...........................

[#12]

Quote

I know I have webmail working ok

If your PlusNet webmail is working then it sounds like your accounts are setup and the pop3 server should work, its just the BB bit that is waiting for BTw to redirect to PlusNet.
Does your portal login work ? https://portal.plus.net/index_portal.html?home=login , if your account is active you should then be able to create email accounts from the 'email settings' and 'manage my mail'.

[#13]

POP3 receive should work using your account name and password to login.
You won't be able to send via the Plusnet relay servers from an external connection unless you use authenticated SMTP which Outlook Express can be set up to do. That will also need your account username and password, Note that it is authenticated but not SSL which Outlook sometimes turns on by default when authentication is selected.

[#14]

My webmail has been working for all my mailboxes since I first set them up but can't get anything on my Outlook Express Pop accounts.
Get the following message:-
There was a problem logging onto your mail server. Your Password was rejected. Account: (my default email address), Server: 'mail.plus.net', Protocol: POP3, Server Response: '-ERR Login failed.', Port: 110, Secure(SSL): No, Server Error: 0x800CCC90, Error Number: 0x800CCC92
Don't want to send anything so don't want to set up SMTP thanks (looks too complicated to me) but really would like to not have to use Squirrel webmail which is working ok.
Thanks for all your assistance.

[#15]

ALL WORKING OK NOW THANKS.
It was my error, I had put myusername.plus.com in OE settings instead of just my username.
Thanks for everyone's help. Great forum.
jim:quote