Damaged cable taking a long time to fix - can we leave?

Minerva69

We're with Plusnet for phone/broadband and we've been having problems with both over the past month. The phone line is noisy and keeps losing dial tone, our broadband speed is down to 0.2mbps. We lose both phone and broadband every time it rains.

After 2 engineer's visits we've been told that 40m of cable needs to be replaced at the back of our house, as it looks like it has been damaged by trees. We've been told today by Plusnet that BT are not intending to look at our case again until the end of April, in the meantime we have no broadband/phone which we are still paying for.

Our daughter has exams coming up and needs to do revision and other schoolwork online. Would it be possible for us to leave Plusnet and go to Virgin for our broadband, even with the ongoing line issue? (We can't get a Virgin bundle as they don't have any spare capacity on phone lines in our area). We aren't in a contract with Plusnet as we've been with them for over 2 years.

At the moment it doesn't look like BT are going to charge us for the cable repairs, but if we leave and go to Virgin for broadband are BT likely to charge us for the repairs? (The engineer said it would be at least £1,500 which we can't afford).

molerat

The cable will be the same cable repaired by Openreach whoever your provider is. If you are out of contract you can move but it will unlikely get the line fixed any more quickly so you will still be in the same boat (unless you are referring to Virgin cable service). You should be pushing for a refund of charges due to poor service though.

Bigphil1474

I'd be contacting plusnet telling them you want a refund for the period you haven't had phone and broadband, and you want them to stop charging you for a service you aren't getting. Unfortunately, if the line to your house is cream crackered, they aren't going to be able to do much more. As molerat says, it won't matter who your provider is. We don't get Virgin in our area, but I thought their BB was through a cable connection, not via your phone line?

Minerva69

Bigphil1474 wrote: »

I'd be contacting plusnet telling them you want a refund for the period you haven't had phone and broadband, and you want them to stop charging you for a service you aren't getting. Unfortunately, if the line to your house is cream crackered, they aren't going to be able to do much more. As molerat says, it won't matter who your provider is. We don't get Virgin in our area, but I thought their BB was through a cable connection, not via your phone line?

Yes you're right, Virgin broadband would be through a cable connection so wouldn't need a phone line. We enquired about getting a Virgin bundle last year but were told we could only have BB with them and not phone due to lack of capacity in the cabinet at the end of our street. We could stay with Plusnet for the landline and I don't suppose it would matter if it took a while to fix the damaged cable as we could use mobiles in the meantime, we just really need the broadband back asap.

Cycrow

even if you go with Virgin, it could take weeks before you actually get the broadband so you may end up waiting the same amount of time.

another option, depending on the mobile signal, is to get mobile broadband temporarily while you wait

glennstar

Minerva69 wrote: »

Yes you're right, Virgin broadband would be through a cable connection so wouldn't need a phone line. We enquired about getting a Virgin bundle last year but were told we could only have BB with them and not phone due to lack of capacity in the cabinet at the end of our street. We could stay with Plusnet for the landline and I don't suppose it would matter if it took a while to fix the damaged cable as we could use mobiles in the meantime, we just really need the broadband back asap.

It is not a given that a Virgin BB connection would go via Fibre. Virgin doesn't actually have good Cable coverage and resell normal ADSL quite a lot.

littleboo

glennstar wrote: »

It is not a given that a Virgin BB connection would go via Fibre. Virgin doesn't actually have good Cable coverage and resell normal ADSL quite a lot.

Virgin stopped selling their ADSL product several years ago and have since sold the customers to Talk Talk. So if its provided by virgin, it will be cable

Mister_G

Just to confirm. Generally, Virgin provide their service to a street cabinet by fibre. It is then distributed to the individual premises by a coaxial cable.

With regards to the dumping of their 'Offnet' customers onto TalkTalk last year (I was one!), TT have now pushed the ones that are not connected to a TT LLU exchange onto Fleur Telecom.

There are several posts on here about Fleur's abysmal customer service.