PLUSNET: Left without a phone line for 5 days now

sasparillo

I am posting this on behalf of a pensioner in her 80s who has been left without a phone line by Plusnet, even for emergencies, since the evening of last Friday. She has only briefly had the Internet so I cannot even set up Skype for her. It surely cannot be correct to leave anyone, pensioner or not, without an essential utility for five days? Plusnet states that there is what it calls a 'common fault' and it is in the hands of BT but frankly this nothing to do with the customer who is stuck without a phone line, an essential utility, and cannot call out in the event of an emergency. Are there no rules and regulations about this? It cannot be correct.

sasparillo

After six days, the pensioner still does not have a phone line, a vital utility to phone emergency services, or internet.. Plusnet has not provided her with a substitute phone and has not answered on the official fault reporting thread for a couple of days, only on the Plusnet community forum as follows:

'I understand your concerns, but I assure you that we try to resolve all issues as soon as we can. As Adam said, this was a 'common fault' which if anything would generally help to speed matters up.

'We've had a clear message this lunch time confirming the phone should be resolved now. If you could confirm, we can then look at the broadband in more depth for you if this is still playing up.

'Tony'

Despite what Tony states, she has neither a phone line nor internet after six days. If anything happened, she would not be able to phone the emergency services. A phone is a vital utility and this cannot be correct. Her phone line is dead and when people call her, the phone rings a couple times, rings which do not come through to her phone which remains dead, and then switches to voicemail which she cannot access because her phone line is dead. So for six days now she can neither phone out nor receive calls and Plusnet has not even insured that she has a substitute in case of an emergency. Plusnet has left her without any phone whatsoever. Plusnet also appears to be waiting for her to get access to an outside phone instead of checking itself, compounding the danger of leaving someone without a phone line.

miniemma

Can you lend her a mobile phone?

Heinz

Did she register he age and medical condition(s) with Plusnet? If not, how would they know her age and circumstances?

sasparillo

Hi Heinz,

Thanks for your response. She told them when she logged the fault that she is a pensioner in her 80s. In any case, nobody who has a phone provider should ever be left without access to the emergency services!

The phone (and internet) is still not fixed and via my phone when I am available, she is picking up these computerised-type messages from Plusnet, even saying she shouldn't hesitate to contact Plusnet - by phone!


Phil Prestwood - BOT - DSL Logged Faults
1:43pm, Thursday 20 Nov 2014


I'm sorry to hear of the problems you have experienced with your phone line. I have looked in to your issues in depth with our supplier and they have advised there was a major underground cabling fault that was affecting several customers. To resolve this issue our supplier had to arrange several specialist engineers to clear the underground ducting and replace the cables, and this unfortunately delayed the fixing of your line and meant a temporary service couldn't be provided.

Due to the inconvenience you have experienced I will refund £10 back to you, which should be back to your account within 10 working days.

Please do not hesitate to get back in touch online at http://contactus.plus.net or by phone on 0800 432 0200 or 0345 140 0200 if we can be of further assistance.

Kind regards,

Phil

QUOTE« Reply #10 on Today at 13:21 »
Hello there,

Really sorry to hear that this is still an issue.

Our suppliers informed us at 12:57 that they believe the fault should now be fixed.

I've just tried calling to test this but there was no answer.

Can you confirm if this has been resolved please?
Adam Walker
Plusnet Customer Relations Team


Your Response
3:42pm, Thursday 20 Nov 2014


No, it is NOT fixed and if I did not have a friend who allows me to use her mobile phone, I would not even have seen your message. Plusnet has left me in a very dangerous situation without a phone line, even to make emergency calls. I certainly do not accept £10 for the danger this puts me in and if I now have to buy a pay as you go mobile phone to access the emergency services if necessary, to make essential calls and use the Internet it will cost me much more than £10. A phone line is an essential utility not a financial instrument.

LazyTyper

sasparillo wrote: »

Thanks for your response. She told them when she logged the fault that she is a pensioner in her 80s. In any case, nobody who has a phone provider should ever be left without access to the emergency services!

Did she state her position when she signed up with Plusnet originally? The person taking the order should have advised accordingly.

No provider offers a "fault free" service, and it does state in the terms and conditions there are sometimes situations outside the direct control of the provider. The explanation provided by Plusnet does make quite clear what has happened and why there was a delay.

As for contacting Plusnet getting a cheap mobile phone with some calling credit is very easy to get, and the 0345 number is standard rate or counts towards any inclusive minutes.

If having a phone line is as critical as you said then, in my opinion, a standard residential product is not suitable. You should have went with a service with elevated care levels and expedited repair.

The £10 goodwill offer seems fairly reasonable to me.

[Deleted User]

LazyTyper wrote: »

If having a phone line is as critical as you said then, in my opinion, a standard residential product is not suitable. You should have went with a service with elevated care levels and expedited repair.

I think the OP is under the impression this should come as standard if the customer is elderly.

Of course it doesn't. The customer needs to let the provider know such circumstance, but there are never any guarantees that a phone line will not become faulty and need repair. There are also no guarantees over timescales for repair.

I doubt very much the provider will be paying for the mobile phone which supposedly had to be purchased.

Retrogamer

It depends what's causing the fault.

If for example (very common) someone has dug up the road and stolen 400 meters of copper cabling then they can't just hit a button to resolve it.

New cabling has to be ordered. Planning permission has to be obtained to dig up the road. Traffic lights sometimes have to be deployed.
BT don't dig roads so they need contractors to do it.
Sometimes they're fully booked for a few days.
After all of that, when new cables are laid it can take a few days to wire up as you usually have 2 engineers reconnecting a couple of hundred customers individually in the rain / cold with wires as thin as string.

The bottom line is some faults take days hours to fix and some faults take weeks.
Most of the time it's physical constraints holding them back

If a means of communication is so import to the person without service a cheap £10 PAYG from Asda or similar would be a good idea to keep around.

sasparillo

Hi,

Thanks for your responses.

No provider of a basic utility such as a phone should leave anybody, I emphasise anybody, without access to emergency services for more than a day or a day and a half.

The outage has now been for a week with no indication when it will be resolved.

As a side note, there seems to be nothing on the Plusnet website about the service outage apart from my friend's correspondence with Plusnet even though Plusnet maintain it is a 'common fault' (they seem very fond of quoting this internal jargon and even put it in quote marks!) affecting a significant number of people in the area. Nor can I find any BT Outreach report.

Nor does anything come up when I google or go on Twitter.

But that is all by-the-by.

That people have been conditioned to think that an outage of a week is a norm and believe that everyone should spend money on a landline provider and then also in addition a mobile and then pay for pay as you go for a phone line and Internet (Internet is often also an essential now for people to manage their financial affairs as is a phone) because of outages on landlines is a very sorry state of affairs.

And this all costs a lot more than £10, not to mention the stress and aggravation.

In fact if you all think it's necessary to have an active mobile phone on standby for voice calls and Internet just in case of such lengthy outages, then the telephone landline providers should then work out a system of providing mobile phones and a means of them paying for pay as you go.

I expect there are discussions about these phone companies expanding beyond their capacity but for the customer it's about having a telephone line, a basic utility and at the very least access to emergency services. The internal workings of telephone companies are nothing to do with the customer.

System

No provider of a basic utility such as a phone should leave anybody, I emphasise anybody, without access to emergency services for more than a day or a day and a half.

If that is the level of service that you expect then you need to look at services with defined SLAs and pay the costs that go with that level of service. Telephone is not and never has been an essential service.

brewerdave

@sasparillo -20 or 25 years ago, I would have agreed with you to some extent -pre mobiles, if the phone was down ,one had to find a red box to make a call -HOWEVER, with the ready availability of cheap mobiles on PAYG tariffs it cannot possibly be considered to be one of life's essentials. My mother is 90 and has a mobile with large numbers on the keypad by her bedside for emergencies.
My daughters have landlines but don't ever have handsets plugged in -they are 100% mobile oriented.
Retrogamer has explained the potential issues most succinctly.