is it me or what?

[#1]

Is it just me or do plusnet take a long time to sort anything out?
I've just migrated from o2 having been with them for 3 years and I'm not used to this waiting caper.
If I ever phoned them, which wasn't very often, things got sorted on the phone there and then, no messing, but this lot ..........hard work!
It seems to me tickets are ignored and when I phone up I don't get any sense out of anybody, I just get the impression everyone is too busy chasing their own tails to actually do anything about sorting a problem out.
Now as a new customer this is not really what I was looking for. I'd read great things but my expectations have gone sadly lacking.
I read on here that a lot of people are complaining about the speed they were promised on the "estimate" is just not happening. I asked how an estimate can be an estimate yet it has a tolerance of +/- 1 meg, but I don't think anyone can understand what I'm getting at.
I seriously think that no one from plusnet reads these posts because the only replies that I can see are posted are from the community.
Maybe I've got it all wrong. I just worried that I'm now locked into an 18 month contract with a company that promised me the earth, +/- 1 meg, and have so far failed to deliver.
Chris

[#2]

Chris,
Some details of your problem would help to deliver assistance to you.  There is a great deal of experience amongst the community members.
PN do make a very significant contribution to these forums, the existence of which is not so with many other ISPs.
As for speed estimates, these are based on the documented specification of BT circuit components which deliver your telephone line.  Note these are BT owned and it is their documented specification.  Actual ability is impacted by the state (deterioration) or documentation error of the line.  For example (though you appear to be referring to fibre) my ADSL E-Side trunk cable is documented to be 36dB so should deliver 11,168kps.  It turns out that all of the available pairs are more like 47dB delivering (on a good day) 6,400kps - which s a marked difference.  Similar issues exist with the D-Side cables (the wire from your home to the cabinet).
In some places short of ripping out the BT infrastructure and starting again (for example as Virgin cable has done) there is very little that ANY ISP can do to improve matters very much.  In some cases improvement can be made by remaking joints or finding the best pair out of a bad bunch.
All of this is well out of PNs hands to do, but my personal experience with business and residential lines from PN is that they can and do make every possible effort to get as good a fix as can be obtained from BT.  Unfortunately BTOR tend to do the least necessary (budget controls) so in difficult cases it can take several BTOR visits to deliver marked improvement, in my case around a dozen over 6 months, more or less to the day!
So returning to your problem, can you please supply some specifics?
Regards,
Kevin

[#3]

Thanks for the reply.
When I originally signed up the "estimate" was to be 50 meg download 13.2 meg upload +/- 1meg, as as far as I'm concerned that was my inducement to sign up for 18 months.
The OR engineer fitted the kit and yes sure enough it's 50 meg 8 meg .
This was fine for 3 days then we got a drop to 35/6 and by day 5 it's down to 25/6. PN set some engineer out who basically did nothing but laugh. I rebooted the kit and got it back up to 42/7 and that is basically where we are at now.
Now I'm being told that the estimate isn't an estimate at all but basically a "guess" it's all to do with algorithms and poles and graphs and charts and Pythagoras and root mean square and whatever.
In a nutshell the estimate means nothing as does their explanation, so my questions were:
1. why bother with an estimate?
2. if it means nothing then why is it +/- 1 meg?
You only have 48 hrs to cancel the contract which you can't because there is a 10 day training period for the service to settle so you are stuck with it for 18 months.
3. If it ran at 50 meg for 3 days then why can't it run at that now?
I'm told that it may return to that speed but the line profile is set to 45 so I don't get how that's supposed to work.
4. Why is the upload speed only half of what the "guesstimate" said?  Is that a mistake too?
I personally feel this is a contention issue as I have fallen foul of this with another provider before, nick a bit of tom, nick a bit of dick, then we can squeeze harry on as well.....no one will notice....they never check the speeds anyway.
As for opening tickets, that's a joke I opened one 8 days ago and still no reply.
This is not what I expected when I signed up, not by a long chalk.
I notice the forum is full of requests to "tweak my profile up a bit" with a reply of "Will do" so let's have some "will do" over here please.

Chris

[#4]

Hi Chris,
Sounds like you need input from the PN Digital Care Team (DCT) here.  Please post your ticket number here so that they might pick it up, possibly on Monday when they are back on-line.
10 day training period is I believe incorrect in respect of fibre - it is certainly true of ADSL - looking at posts elsewhere, it has been suggested that CSC staff have confused this difference on some occasions.  There have been numerous reports of FTTC speeds significantly falling off from where they started at installation after a short period - days to a month.  As yet I have not seen any clear explanations as to the cause / causes.  Reading through some threads there are a number of instances from reportedly poor BTOR installation undertaken by contractors, which after investigation by BTOR have restored services back to something closer to the estimate.
Your fault ticket needs to be pushed - hopefully one of the DCT will pick it up soon and do so.
As for your profile, that only influences the speed at which data can be transferred over the availably synch rate.  The first thing to do is to confirm that your line is working to specification.
It is unfortunate that you are in the situation that you are in, however it needs to be noted that this would likely as not be no different with any other ISP offering FTTC services, given that they all use the same 'last leg' BTOR infrastructure.  Your "robbing Peter to pay Paul" analogy could be quite true in respect of BTOR's fibres from the cabinet to the Exchange which are shared by many ISPs.
Good luck,
Kevin

[#5]

Kevin, see my response below, and unfortunately the last analogy doesn't apply as there doesn't seem to be a peak time slow down.
@chrisgould23
Well I think it must be you! I'm not sure why you think starting another thread which has no continuity with what you've already posted is going to help.

Quote from: chrisgould23

I seriously think that no one from plusnet reads these posts because the only replies that I can see are posted are from the community.

Now that's not really true as Chris Purvey responded here. (And there are several Plusnet staff responding to other threads as well).

Quote from: chrisgould23

As for opening tickets, that's a joke I opened one 8 days ago and still no reply.

you did post this ticket response
townman has explained again about why you don't always get the estimated speeds because of cable problems, which you have already been made aware off, and as I believe I've already said it's not  likely to be contention unless you are seeing slower speeds at peak times compared to off-peak and you've not supplied an information to substantiate that.
Apart from cable degradation I also believe you been made aware of the fact that on initial connection, a lot of people get a faster speed until the DLM assesses the noise conditions on the line, and these will also increase as more subscribers are connected to a Cabinet, so the increased noise will result in a reduction of speed.
I thought you'd seen the comments about some of the estimates, which come from Openreach/BTw being inaccurate because they don't always take account of cable conditions so trying to give quotes +/- 1Mbps is a bit of a joke. I'm getting the impression that Openreach/BTw may be learning the folly of their ways of late and not giving such ambitious estimates, although a lot of users are getting close to estimated speeds.

Quote from: chrisgould23

I notice the forum is full of requests to "tweak my profile up a bit" with a reply of "Will do" so let's have some "will do" over here please.

This has nothing to do with your problem. The Current Line speed (Login required) is supposed to match the BT IP Profile for the connection to ensure you get optimum Traffic Management. Unfortunately updates are not happening in a timely manner in all cases and Plusnet are trying to resolve that issue (even if it's taking them some time!!).
But more to the point, you've left out the important information that you gave in your original post. Also trying to imply it was a Plusnet engineer when you know that the Openreach engineer that did attend clearly did not investigate as he should have and made unacceptable remarks but as you didn't respond to my last comment you didn't give that original thread renewed visibility, nor have you said whether you've put the all important information about the state of the cable and the unacceptable engineer's response on the current ticket.
So I suggest you do that if you haven't - Plusnet staff will undoubtedly pick this up on Monday, they can't answer all posts at once and inevitably some don't get an immediate response.

[#6]

OK so have a go, OK so I don't post things in the right place. OK I'm new here and don't know the procedures. OK so what do I have to do to get things done, camp outside the offices in Sheffield waving placards?
The fact is I have a problem that I want addressing, preferably soon and preferably explained in English, So far the total experience has not been good both from BTOR and PN and it's far far too complicated to get anyone to take responsibility for a problem with each blaming the other and me in the middle .Say what you like it's not what I'm used to and not what I expect.
This will be my last post on here as I have to bow to everyone's far superior knowledge, I'll just cancel the direct debit, that will no doubt focus someones attention just long enough to start taking me seriously.
Thank you and good night.
Chris

[#7]

What did I say, restate the relevant information about the cable and the engineer and what did you do - you are behaving like someone who has thrown their rattles out of the pram. Doing what you've suggested will do nothing but give you more grief and not focus attention on the facts as you presented them in your first post. That was a while ago now and as I've said already you need to re-iterate them both in your ticket and on here.
Your proposed action will only focus attention on an unpaid bill and cancellation charges.
Do what I suggested and I am quite sure that it will then get the correct and necessary attention - and at this point I shall give up trying to help you get the attention focused in the correct place because I feel I'm just talking to a brick wall.

[#8]

Hi Chris,
Sorry to hear of your frustration, I've taken a look over your account and can see that we have been trying to resolve this for you.
I can see that Rebecca has has personal ticket on your account and the reason she hasn't responded to you is that she's been on rota'd days off.
The line speeds estimate that we provide are an estimate and are normally very very accurate, they can at sometimes not be exact though as they are estimates.
I'll push your fault raised back with our faults team to see if there is anything else that we can try to resolve this for you.

[#9]

Just to add on to this, the estimates for Fibre shouldn't have been +/- 1Mb, there's no way we could be that accurate. We've updated that to a new format, I've attached an example screenshot to this post.

[#10]

Quote from: chrisgould23

Is it just me or do plusnet take a long time to sort anything out? I've just migrated from o2 having been with them for 3 years and I'm not used to this waiting caper. If I ever phoned them, which wasn't very often, things got sorted on the phone there and then, no messing, but this lot ..........hard work! It seems to me tickets are ignored and when I phone up I don't get any sense out of anybody, I just get the impression everyone is too busy chasing their own tails to actually do anything about sorting a problem out. Now as a new customer this is not really what I was looking for. I'd read great things but my expectations have gone sadly lacking. I read on here that a lot of people are complaining about the speed they were promised on the "estimate" is just not happening. I asked how an estimate can be an estimate yet it has a tolerance of +/- 1 meg, but I don't think anyone can understand what I'm getting at. I seriously think that no one from plusnet reads these posts because the only replies that I can see are posted are from the community. Maybe I've got it all wrong. I just worried that I'm now locked into an 18 month contract with a company that promised me the earth, +/- 1 meg, and have so far failed to deliver. Chris

They're just rubbish. I'v expressed my opinion on other forums plus told people I know not to join.

[#11]

Strange isn't it because I'm the opposite I have been with sky, O2 , aol, Tiscali, and a few others and plusnet are by far the best I have ever used