Engineer is booked this morning, but Yodel delivering router tomorrow

[jmoorey1]

Morning -

I have had notification from Yodel this morning that my router will not be delivered until tomorrow. The Openreach engineer is due to arrive any minute (8am-1pm slot booked for today).

Can you confirm that I'll be able to use my existing router temporarily until the new one arrives?

I'm currently using my DSL via the TalkTalk-supplied Huawei EchoLife DG8041W Home Gateway. It has a gigabit WAN port that the ONT should be able to connect to, I just need to know what config (if any) I need to do in order to switch it from using DSL to the FutureFibre connection, or whether it'll just work.

This is the second attempt to have FF fitted as your team made errors when scheduling the first one, and this engineer slot has been booked since the 3rd February. The external work was completed by Openreach on 2nd February.

[Arne-TalkTalk]

Hi jmoorey1

I have asked the Auto compensation team to investigate,

Once the investigation is complete you will receive an SMS/Email.

Regards

[Gliwmaeden2]

Often staff advise posting in the billing section when it is about the automatic compensation being applied, @jmoorey1.

It's a different issue from the actual loss of service, but maybe add a link to this thread for them to cross refer.

Head for the billing section and click on start a topic. 

[jmoorey1]

Hi @Michelle-TalkTalk -

I have now had my second bill since upgrading to FutureFibre and there's no mention anywhere of any automated compensation.

Is two bill cycles longer than customers normally have to wait?

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

I've included a help guide below which has more information.

About your auto compensation credit - TalkTalk Help & Support

Thanks

[jmoorey1]

Hi Michelle -

Thank you for your response. Do you know how long the automatic compensation takes to be added to my bill..?

I had fourteen days of no service from TalkTalk and I’d like to make sure that doesn’t get forgotten.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hello,

I'm really sorry, I'm not sure why you last replies didn't automatically escalate your topic back to us. I'm really glad to hear that this is now working for you and thanks for keeping us updated.

Thanks

[jmoorey1]

The internet has returned..! And it's back with a vengeance..!

Speedtest on 28th February

Thank you to all who helped me on this mammoth 14-day journey, it's been stressful and ridiculous, but we're finally done with it.

[jmoorey1]

Tahir called me back. He's had to book another engineer, but is now aware of what is causing the issue.

Third time's a charm, we'll see whether Openreach can fix it this time. He'll be here at 8am tomorrow, fingers crossed.

[jmoorey1]

I called the Order Management Team back, spoke to Cassie (off-shore) who transferred me to Tech Support.

Anthony from Tech Support (on-shore) initially tried to transfer me straight back to Order Management since provisioning new lines is their remit, but I explained that they'd just transferred me to him.

He put me on hold and called Order Management himself to explain, and then transferred me back. Spoke to Ajay (off-shore). He told me that the reason I had no internet connectivity was because an engineer had tried to contact me on 15th February and was unable to, so asked to double-check my phone number. I could see Ajay was grasping at straws, and he was even prepared to make up phoney phone calls in order to get me off the phone, so I made him aware that the external and internal work had been completed on 15th February.

He disagreed, and said that I wasn't due to have the internal work done by Openreach until 7th March.

I kindly corrected him for a second time.

He put me on hold, stating he needed to speak with Tech Support. When he took me off hold he told me he needed to transfer me to Tech Support, but not to worry because this time he'd be explaining that it was this team that need to help me. Oh goodie.

He was trying for over 45 minutes to contact Tech Support because they wouldn't answer his call, checking back in with me every 2-3 minutes. He finally gave up, he was being reprimanded by his manager for the call taking as long as it was, and it was beginning to affect his performance. He asked if I'd mind being placed in the queue for the Tech Support team myself, which I said was fine.

In the meantime, while I was in the queue I rebooted the ONT and my router again, tried connecting a Windows box directly to the ONT. Still nothing is able to get an address at all, the connection is still broken.

Finally got through to Tech Support. Tahir (on-shore) answered. He began checking the history and running line checks which apparently all passed. He then asked me for the serial number of the eero device and which room it was in..!

He took the serial number of the ONT and discovered that there was a mismatch there as well. The original Openreach engineer who installed the ONT on 15th February initially tried replacing it with a second one while troubleshooting the connectivity issues, and never registered that new ONT with my account.

Tahir's system told him that he should book me another Openreach engineer, but disagreed with it since the line had already been checked on 25th February (two days ago) so placed me on hold while he went to speak with his supervisor. Two minutes of being on hold and the line went dead. Going to try to call back.

[jmoorey1]

Day 13 with no internet

Akeel (on-shore) called as he promised he would do at 12:15pm.

The misalignment between Openreach and TalkTalk had now been resolved. Openreach had confirmed this morning that the configuration change had been made.

Akeel explained that Openreach had kept rejecting TalkTalk's requests for the correction to be made which is what was taking so long. This is at odds with what the Openreach second-line engineer said on Day 11.

He told me to check to see whether I was now getting connectivity via the ONT. I wasn't. He told me to unplug the device for 20 minutes, power it back up and try again. And that I should call the Order Management Team again if there were further issues.

I followed his instructions, but still no connectivity on any device. DHCP addresses being requested but nothing being issued.

About to call again.

[jmoorey1]

Day 11 without internet

Openreach engineer named Ben arrived promptly at 8am and began to run line checks, which all passed.

He called Openreach second-line support to figure out what's going on. The first second-line engineer (Ella) rebuilt the entire link, but this didn't have any affect. She advised Ben that he should call TalkTalk support.

We got through to Akeel on the Order Management Team, who luckily was UK-based as yesterday I had to overcome some significant communication issues with some of TalkTalk's off-shore resources, and I suspect these communication hurdles are a large contributing factor to the resolution time of this fault.

He looked at the order and discovered (yet again) that there was a mismatch in configurations between TalkTalk and Openreach. The configuration setting that is set incorrectly is the S-VLAN (or sometimes referred to as S-tag). It's a separate VLAN tag that the standard provides to allow service-providers to double tag packets and not interrupt the true VLAN-tag of the data. Full explanation here.

Openreach have it currently set to 2, Akeel wasn't able to tell me what TalkTalk currently have it set to, but has raised a ticket with the TalkTalk second-line team to make the change. He has also escalated the call due to the length of time that this fault has currently been open. Unfortunately they don't work on weekends, so there was nothing more he could do today. Openreach may have to rebuild the line again after the change is made, but that can be done relatively quickly if needs be.

Akeel promised to call me by noon on Monday 27th February to give me an update on the status of the fault.

The on-site engineer called his second-line team back to make sure there was definitely nothing they could do to get me connectivity today. This second-line engineer (Nick) advised that there have been several orders made on this line. On my go-live date of the 15th February there were two orders made, one for copper and one for FTTP. Whoever raised the orders seems to have tried to cancel the incorrect copper order, but in fact cancelled the fibre order in error. Another fibre order was put in on the 15th February, and the engineer advised me that there is another engineer appointment scheduled for Tuesday 7th March to do a re-install. This is the first time I've been informed of this; if the issue lasts that long then that would be 21 days without internet.

There was nothing more that Ben could do so he left the property. This is the third engineer that has left my property apologising on TalkTalk's behalf.

I await Akeel's call on Monday to see how quickly TalkTalk second-line can change the S-VLAN and get me internet connectivity.

Interestingly, the Openreach second-line engineer was able to see that I was the first TalkTalk Full Fibre customer on my exchange, and the second one had a go-live date a week after mine. The second one also had exactly the same set of orders requested, cancelled, rejected, etc. so whatever has caused this mess seems to be repeating itself for more customers.

While I'm sure this pales into insignificance for TalkTalk since they clearly have an astonishingly low bar for Customer Service, or even competence, this saga really is diabolical. TalkTalk you ought to be ashamed of yourselves.

[jmoorey1]

I have just spoken to the Full Fibre Technical Team for the third time today. The first two said that the Openreach ticket was still in progress and promised to call me back within 30 minutes with an update on why it was taking so long.

The third agent said that the Openreach ticket was closed successfully eight days ago and has booked an engineer for tomorrow morning to come to fix the fault.

Every time I speak to a TalkTalk employee I get a different answer, most of which prove not to be anywhere near accurate. Maybe Openreach will have better luck in the morning, the last agent assured me that he wouldn't leave without me having internet.

I don't hold out much hope.

[Chris-TalkTalk]

Hi jmoorey1,

I'm sorry there isn't a direct number. We'll let you know when we have any more information

Chris

[jmoorey1]

Hi Michelle -

Can I ask when they re-escalated it? And whether Openreach have given an updated estimate on when this will be fixed?

Is it that they were late? Or that the fix that they implemented hasn't worked?

I am currently on hold to another one of your call centres and the agent has asked me to give him a day-by-day account of the issue since install day on 15th February. This truly is nonsense.

Is there a direct phone number for the team you're speaking with so I can get some real support?

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hello,

I'm really sorry for the delay with this. I have been in contact with the team and they advised me that they had re-escalated this to Openreach again and will contact with me an update as soon as possible. I will chase this again to see if they have more information as to when this will be resolved.

Thanks

[jmoorey1]

Day 10 without Internet

I have just returned to my home after being away for a few days and the internet has still not been connected properly.

On Wednesday 22nd February the fault page for my active fault REP-12513425 was no longer available, implying that you believe the issue to be fixed. This is not the case.

My ONT and router have been rebooted; the PON light on the ONT is still solid green, but no DHCP address is being allocated to any device that is connected.

This is now well past inconvenient and into the realms of ridiculousness.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Morning,

Apologies, I will request an update now.

Thanks

[jmoorey1]

Day 6 without internet

I have been testing periodically throughout the weekend to see if Openreach had made their change, but unfortunately to no avail, despite the 48hrs quoted in Message #21 expiring sometime around lunchtime yesterday.

I have tested once more this morning and the WAN DHCP service is still unreachable for any device connected via ethernet to the ONT. The ONT still has a solid green PON light.

We are leaving for a week's holiday at approx. 11:30am this morning and would have loved the line to be live whilst we're away so that the security systems could be monitored.

Please update me this morning on whether I can expect connectivity today.

[Michelle-TalkTalk]

Hi,

We will definitely re-check this again on Monday morning and will post back with an update.

Thanks

[jmoorey1]

OK, understood. That is the third different explanation that that team has given.

Thank you for following up for me, and I look forward to hearing from you again.