Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Chrysalis]

I agree the system stinks, but you have two realistic options, suck up what plusnet are offering, or move to aaisp who are more likely to chase the problem down.

Also sky have a cooling off period which doesnt expire when line live, I didnt know until someone used it a few days ago on the sky forums.  So sky might be an option, migrate, report a fault when below estimate, if they dont do anything migrate out again penalty free.  Apparently sky have a higher openreach support contract because they LLU.

[Busa]

Well that's not how I think.

I think, and I may be in the weird minority here, that when you sign up to a contract both parties should uphold their end of the contract.

I will not walk away from this unless it is in my interests financially, I will stay put and make life very difficult for PlusNet, at least in the short term.

Let's face it there are plenty of high profile forums I can post on, it hurts them far more than it hurts me.

This is the response I got from PlusNet today:

Dear Mr XXX,

 I called about 1pm and missed you. A voice mail was left as I’ll be in a meeting later today.

 I mentioned ADSL because I was trying to emphasise the difference in speeds, and that you were achieving a fibre speed, hence the cost of the service. I apologise if this didn’t come across as I wished it to.

 Your estimate is very relevant. As more people get fibre in your area, the estimate will become more accurate, and the sync speeds may well drop. Based on the last engineers visits, you were lucky to get the speeds which you initially did.

 Pairs won’t be continually swapped until a better pair is found unless a verified fault is found on the line.

 If you want us to arrange further engineers, I’m happy to do this for you. However, there will be a charge if the engineers don’t find anything wrong.

 I will cancel your fees now, but cannot leave them permanently off the account. I will reply apply them if you remain with us.

 If you want me to proceed with the visit, please leave suitable times and I'll try to arrange them for you.



 Kind regards,

 XXX XXXXX

My response to this was:

XXXX,

 Let me get this straight, I have to pay for Openreach to not find the fault they caused in the first place? I do not think so!

 Did you read any of the above I've just posted, my speed has dropped and as you can see from the BTW Speedtest my download speed is now below the FTTC A Clean Low level, my upload is also still below the FTTC A Low level, my ping has massively increased, my attenuation has increased, power levels on the line have dropped. This is a total failure on every aspect of my line.

 If Openreach cannot find a fault that they have caused that has lost me some 13Mbps in actual download speed, has not rectified the upload speed and has left me with the lowest level of service in some 4 years on FTTC then I fail to see why I should have to pay for their lack of ability, I'd like PlusNet to explain this to me.

 Regarding the removal of exit fees from my account, may I also point out you are not meeting the obligation of the contract I signed up too so I expect this to be removed permanently regardless of my decision to stay or leave.

 I look forward to your response and would very much like to discuss this with you after 4pm today if possible.

[ejs]

I don't think the low end of your estimate is supposed to be a minimum guaranteed speed. BT.com offers me a FTTC estimate of 20 - 30 Mb (which is my A range), and a minimum guaranteed speed of 17 Mb, which is in the middle of by B range (which is 23 - 11 Mb). I don't think Plusnet offer any minimum guaranteed speeds.

I think the contract you signed up to might not actually be what you want it to be or think it should be.

I am not disputing what you've said about one or more of the Openreach visits having reduced your speed, and therefore I expect it will require another Openreach visit to restore your speed to what is was before.

[Chrysalis]

judging by their reply that suggests you still within your estimate? As the CS agent is saying its relevant.

If you are within your estimate range, sadly legally you probably have a weak case, your graphs with half the signal missing suggests a fault, the problem is openreach dont use that data to diagnose the line, they do a very simplistic JDSU test that is designed to only fail in extreme cases.  Openreach dont care about snrm, bitloading, hlog etc.  All they look at is line stability and if speed is within a reasonable range, their reasonable range is clearly different to what you consider reasonable.

Also whats the bit about the fee's? 

End of the day what matters more? your wallet or service quality? it seems your wallet does.

ejs likewise sky's guaranteed speed is below the clean range also, I think mine was 40 something mbit, well below my BTw speed estimate.

[Busa]

That was before the drop I once again suffered today.

As for the estimate I consider the range quoted by the DSLChecker to be reasonable, I'm below that level now and my cab has been pretty much full for some time and I was achieving 49Mbps until Openreach got involved so hardly think a sudden influx of new users is the issue. I would also find it hard to believe this happened on every day they visited me and progressively dropped my speed.

The bit about the fees is removing the penalty for early exit.

This is not as simple as a choice between my wallet or quality and your assumption is actually quite offensive as you know nothing about me at all. I expect to receive what I agree to contractually for the money that was also contractually agreed. I expect the people running the service to have a level of expertise and training to make the service meet those levels.

Is it wrong to expect the service you were promised and pay for?

[aesmith]

What a particularly unpleasant attitude from Plusnet! Even by the standards of the stuff I had from them.

[ejs]

If Plusnet learn anything from this fiasco, it'll be that they should be more careful about sending out engineers for non-problems in the first place!

[Busa]

Yes and not to try and fob off Geordie Engineers 

[Busa]

Well I have Openreach coming yet again tomorrow.

This should be interesting as my download speed is now only 33.8Mbps that's a drop of 15.2Mbps (31%) in a month.

Hopefully I get someone who knows and cares enough to fix this but based on the fact PlusNet could not guarantee I'll even get a Broadband Engineer I don't hold up much hope 

I really hope I'm wrong! 

[skyeci]

Have you had a pair swap? - I had lots of issues when I moved over to fibre. In the end after a number of visits I insisted on a pair swap. Gained on the sync and so far no loss of speed yet. Just thought it might be worth a shot if not already done..

[Busa]

A pair swap was IMHO what caused this in the first place. 

OK well another Openreach visit today and they did manage to recover most of my speed back to a connection rate of 47.5Mbps back up from under 35Mbps.

Not all good though as some of this will be down to interleaving coming off with the DLM reset, it's still below the 51Mbps I had before the first Openreach visit on 12/04/16 and not 1/2 hour after the guy left my SNR instantly dropped (N.B. Not a decline but a sudden drop) from 6.2dB to 5.5dB along with a sudden drop of some 1Mbps on the max achievable line rate. The max attainable line rate is currently sat at some 1.6Mbps less than the actual line rate.

As expected errors are through the roof again so no doubt once DLM introduces interleaving again I'll drop further.

So to sum up some improvement, I believe they are sending another Engineer out to check for REIN along the route to my cabinet but will have to wait and see I guess.

The sad thing is why Plusnet and Openreach put me through this in the first place, it's fairly obvious now I was right not just to put up with it or leave as there is actually a problem that needs fixing.

[Busa]

Still seeing sudden drops and increases in SNR and max attainable line rate, any ideas what could be causing this:

[aesmith]

Although that graph scale makes it look dramatic, if I read it correctly the variation is only around 1dB.   Does the drop correspond with a significant increase in errors?   

[Busa]

No errors are not consistent with the sudden SNR change.

I've never had sudden changes like this before, always very slow and usually no more than 1dB over the course of a 24 hour period.

Even worse it's happening all of the time, before I just usually got the slow decline in the evenings before it started to rise again around 10pm. During the day it's always been very stable but not since yesterday.

The strange thing is it's always a 0.7dB step change. So far today:

[ejs]

A pair swap was IMHO what caused this in the first place. 

So did they do another pair swap to swap you back to your original pair?

The sad thing is why Plusnet and Openreach put me through this in the first place, it's fairly obvious now I was right not just to put up with it or leave as there is actually a problem that needs fixing.

I don't really agree. It sounds like things are still worse than before the first pair swap. If it is a REIN issue, that's not something Openreach have any control over, no-one seems to have the authority to break down someone's door and confiscate some electrical device because it's reducing your SNR margin by 0.7 dB, if that's what's causing it.