Update: Plusnet penalise my mother for non provide of service...

Well as "Bob" from Plus.net went all shy once provided with a username for
my mothers old Plus.net account I thought I would post an update on how the
Talk take over went..

As you all know my mother lost her Broadband connection around 14th January,
after Plus.net blaming the line etc etc etc I got "forced" to pay a £70
fee...
I signed my mother up to Talk Talk and low and behold her Telephone and her
broadband works fine!!!!

4mb she receives so she is very happy unlinke myself which more or less
concludes it was a fault with Plus.net



So "Bob", after trying to show yourself as being "most" helpful, talk your
way out of that???

"MeGgAhUrTz" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:foog1t$d2a$(E-Mail Removed)...
> Well as "Bob" from Plus.net went all shy once provided with a username for
> my mothers old Plus.net account I thought I would post an update on how
> the Talk take over went..
>
> As you all know my mother lost her Broadband connection around 14th
> January, after Plus.net blaming the line etc etc etc I got "forced" to pay
> a £70 fee...
> I signed my mother up to Talk Talk and low and behold her Telephone and
> her broadband works fine!!!!
>
> 4mb she receives so she is very happy unlinke myself which more or less
> concludes it was a fault with Plus.net


Yes I read your earlier posts and similar posts from others about problems
with their ISPs and often wonder who's really at fault.
I'm the local sucker that gets involved in sorting computer/broadband
problems for neighbours, friends, friends of friends etc.
I find generally that the more a company advertises the worse the service is
especially when support's required, talktalk being amongst the worst.
If I get the opportunity I steer people towards plusnet as overall if
problems do occur there's much less hassle for me getting them sorted. In my
experience broadband problems are near enough 50/50 split between ISP and
BT.
I do get a 25p per month referral fee from plusnet, (far from enough to sell
your soul for), but none of my many referrals have shown the slightest
inclination to leave plusnet.
Fred

MeGgAhUrTz wrote:
> Well as "Bob" from Plus.net went all shy once provided with a username for
> my mothers old Plus.net account I thought I would post an update on how the
> Talk take over went..

Apologies, I've been on leave for the past four days. I'll take a look
later today.

> As you all know my mother lost her Broadband connection around 14th January,
> after Plus.net blaming the line etc etc etc I got "forced" to pay a £70
> fee...

You weren't forced to pay this. It was your choice to leave and the
charge was under the terms you agreed to.

> I signed my mother up to Talk Talk and low and behold her Telephone and her
> broadband works fine!!!!
>
> 4mb she receives so she is very happy unlinke myself which more or less
> concludes it was a fault with Plus.net

I tried explaining this earlier. It's very probable that your mother has
been moved to LLU as part of the migration. This will have involved the
physical rejumpering of the line at the exchange. If a line fault had
existed here then it's perfectly plausible for the migration to have
fixed it.

There's *no way* anything our side of the exchange can stop your line
from synchronising. Given the evidence I think it's fair to assume at
this stage that it was a Wholesale fault at the exchange that was the
cause of your problems.

I'll pop back into this thread once I've had chance to look at your account.

Rgds,

--
|Bob Pullen Broadband Solutions for
|Support Home & Business @
|PlusNet plc. www.plus.net
+------ PlusNet - The smarter way to broadband ------

PlusNet Support Team wrote:
> MeGgAhUrTz wrote:
>> Well as "Bob" from Plus.net went all shy once provided with a
>> username for my mothers old Plus.net account I thought I would post
>> an update on how the Talk take over went..
>
> Apologies, I've been on leave for the past four days. I'll take a look
> later today.
>
>> As you all know my mother lost her Broadband connection around 14th
>> January, after Plus.net blaming the line etc etc etc I got "forced"
>> to pay a £70 fee...
>
> You weren't forced to pay this. It was your choice to leave and the
> charge was under the terms you agreed to.
>
>> I signed my mother up to Talk Talk and low and behold her Telephone
>> and her broadband works fine!!!!
>>
>> 4mb she receives so she is very happy unlinke myself which more or
>> less concludes it was a fault with Plus.net
>
> I tried explaining this earlier. It's very probable that your mother
> has been moved to LLU as part of the migration. This will have
> involved the physical rejumpering of the line at the exchange. If a
> line fault had existed here then it's perfectly plausible for the
> migration to have fixed it.
>
> There's *no way* anything our side of the exchange can stop your line
> from synchronising. Given the evidence I think it's fair to assume at
> this stage that it was a Wholesale fault at the exchange that was the
> cause of your problems.
>
> I'll pop back into this thread once I've had chance to look at your
> account.
> Rgds,


sounds reasonable, a bt fault (at the exchange) could quite possibly be
resolved by physically moving the wires. the fact that it all works on tt
does not infer that plusnet were at fault (and the migration removes any
opportunity to prove), i'm not sure the OP is helping his case by asserting
that pn must have been at fault, although the time taken to not sort the
problem isn't what you'd expect from a company with pn's reputation. i'd
make a reference to frying pans and fire here, but pn aren't a frying pan,
and fire has far too many uses to relate it to tt.

On 11-Feb-2008, "The Simpsons"
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> Yes I read your earlier posts and similar posts from others about problems
>
> with their ISPs and often wonder who's really at fault.
> I'm the local sucker that gets involved in sorting computer/broadband
> problems for neighbours, friends, friends of friends etc.

I sympathise.
I've long held that the basic failing of broadband is lack of either
a BERT (Bit Error Rate) test that the subscriber can use, or,
SNMP, or similar monitoring, whereby the ISP's support
desk can get information from the subscribers router.
Surely the ISP knows the subscribers dotted quad IP address,
and should be able to ping it. Provided that their customer
hasn't turned off responding to echo requests.
If this were provided then all the customer would need to
do would be to plug his router into the master socket, power
it up, no PC needing to be connected.
Then the exchange would report carrier, and the ISP
could ping the router.
Or choose to swap out a potentially faulty router.

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:31:36 GMT, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

>I've long held that the basic failing of broadband is lack of either
>a BERT (Bit Error Rate)

Not for everyone. My router (a Voyager 240) has got a BER test that I
often use to check the state of the line. Currently ...

"ADSL BER Test - Result

The ADSL BER test completed successfully.

Tested Time 180
Total Transferred Bits 1038106368
Total Error Bits 1028
Error Ratio 9.90e-07 "

--
Ian

The from address is valid

On Mon, 11 Feb 2008 12:31:36 UTC, (E-Mail Removed) wrote:

> Surely the ISP knows the subscribers dotted quad IP address,
> and should be able to ping it.

My ISP does that all the time. And sends me an SMS if it fails.

> Provided that their customer
> hasn't turned off responding to echo requests.

I lied; they used to do that; now they use LCP echo which always works
if the line is up.

--
[ 7'ism - a condition by which the sufferer experiences an inability
to give concise answers, express reasoned argument or opinion.
Usually accompanied by silly noises and gestures - incurable, early
euthanasia recommended. ]

MeGgAhUrTz wrote:
> Well as "Bob" from Plus.net went all shy once provided with a username for
> my mothers old Plus.net account I thought I would post an update on how the
> Talk take over went..

OK, I got the chance to take a quick look at the account history earlier
today, so I've a little better understanding as to what happened now.

Looks like you raised the fault with us on the 16th. A number of
automated tests were then conducted and the ticket returned to you as no
obvious fault could be found.

On the 18th you got back to us to advise that the problem was still
evident and on the following day we raised it with BT Wholesale.
Unfortunately when we came to revisit the fault on the 21st (BT normally
take 24-48 hours to return a raised fault to us) we found that it had
been closed. Here are the notes copied directly from *BT Wholesale's*
faults systems:

[19-01-2008 12:46:22] 00 - GPMS Case 0518xxxx closed

[19-01-2008 12:42:41] 15 - No BTW fault found, Voice affecting Line
Fault identified please refer your
customer to their Voice Service Provider

[19-01-2008 12:41:45] 15 - NO BTW FAULT - Voice affecting Line Fault
identified please refer your
customer to their Voice Service Provider. Please do not re-report
unless there is still a fault when the
local network issue has been resolved

As you can see. BT Wholesale's diagnostic teams made it absolutely clear
that they expected us to ask you to report the fault to the Post Office.

From what I can gather you spoke to the Post Office and got back to us
a day or two later. Unfortunately the tools we have access to indicated
that there was still a problem.

Further diagnostics were conducted but at this stage I must admit things
became a little convoluted as there was confusion as to whether or not
your mother was moving to Talk Talk. In fact it looks as if this is the
reason we didn't send out replacement hardware.

As you're aware a fault was re-raised on your behalf and an engineer
appointment booked. This was subsequently cancelled however due to the
fact that Talk Talk had already placed an order to migrate the service.
We weren'tnotified in advance about this.

It can take some time to resolve ADSL faults epecially given the
ping-pong like nature of the wholesalers' fault reporting systems.

This example was unfortunate, partially due to the innacurate (?)
information provided by BT Wholesale and also because of the confusion
and problems created by the pending outbound migration request.

Apologies for the troubles your mother had and I'm sorry she felt the
only way to resolve things was to move.

Kind Rgds,

--
|Bob Pullen Broadband Solutions for
|Support Home & Business @
|PlusNet plc. www.plus.net
+------ PlusNet - The smarter way to broadband ------

(E-Mail Removed) wrote:
> On 11-Feb-2008, "The Simpsons"
> <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>
>> Yes I read your earlier posts and similar posts from others about
>> problems
>>
>> with their ISPs and often wonder who's really at fault.
>> I'm the local sucker that gets involved in sorting
>> computer/broadband problems for neighbours, friends, friends of
>> friends etc.
>
> I sympathise.
> I've long held that the basic failing of broadband is lack of either
> a BERT (Bit Error Rate) test that the subscriber can use, or,
> SNMP, or similar monitoring, whereby the ISP's support
> desk can get information from the subscribers router.
> Surely the ISP knows the subscribers dotted quad IP address,
> and should be able to ping it. Provided that their customer
> hasn't turned off responding to echo requests.
> If this were provided then all the customer would need to
> do would be to plug his router into the master socket, power
> it up, no PC needing to be connected.
> Then the exchange would report carrier, and the ISP
> could ping the router.
> Or choose to swap out a potentially faulty router.

ALL ISPs indeed do have this facility, the only problem is that it's
not on the front desk droids scripts & you have to force the issue
past these before you get to someone who could do this. I say force
as most ISPs front desk staff take it personally if you need/want to
talk to second, or even third, stage help & would rather hang on with
gritted teeth going round in circles getting no where than pass it up
the chain as they are supposed to.

> ALL ISPs indeed do have this facility,

And of course in the commercial world with SNMP
you can see who is connected in the Tokyo office,
well at least their IP address, or indeed anywhere
in the world. And if anything goes out of the network,
the Sun platform network monitioring console
screen turns red alarms sound.
Bit overkill for ADSL but if ISP's had some basic
problem solving tools, ok leaving us and as far
the subscribers exchange, then there are very few
possibilities, exchange fault, open pair to
the customer (voice should also have a problem)
or customers modem/router fault, same day ship out
a replacement router. No filter need if plugged
into test socket, no PC need to prove carrir/sync
or not.