VAT Increase & Price Changes - January 2011

[#1]

Maybe we can expect a reply from Jamie Ford 

[#2]

Any update on when PN are going to fix the sign-up procedure to Talk Anytime?  It's still saying the charge will be £26/month after 3 months rather than the £14.75 it should state, which actually is wrong anyhow, it says the line rental is £11.25/month not £11.99/month.

[#3]

I'm in the same pos'n too - just signed up to Plusnet then they change the goalposts, quite unbelievable. If any normal supplier, eg a local shop or tradesman, did this to their customers they soon wouldn't have any.......
Of course we will not get a sensible or reasonable answer from PN, as there isn't one, so the only thing I can think of is to make as much adverse publicity about this through key consumer sites, so that people are aware of this 'we really don't care about the customer' situation.
Impossible to print what I, and I imagine many other new customers, feel about all this......

[#4]

Quote from: Oldjim

Partially fixed but not entirely

Thanks Jim, I'll get back onto our developers.

Quote from: fishrow

Quote from: Bob It's certainly a minority that would find themselves in this situation. As I've mentioned elsewhere, a good 85% or so of the customer base are Direct Debit payers. I'd warrant a guess that the percentage is higher for Value customers too. In addition to this the £1.50 can easily be avoided by switching to Direct Debit. We've also frozen broadband prices for Value customers. And 85% is what in customer numbers?

Not sure, and whilst I could find out I'm struggling to see what relevance it has?

Quote from: fishrow

And what is the profit part of the £1.50 because we doubt that even 50p is anywhere near the actual cost there _might_ be to process payment by Credit Card.

It depends on the card but it's around the 35-40p mark I think. It isn't about just the cost of a single transaction though. The failure rate of taking payments by card is more than ten times what it is on Direct Debit. This means the transactions need resubmitting. This increases the cost of processing, and also the man hours resubmitting payments/chasing customers for failed payments. One thing I don't think I've mentioned yet is the amount of 'chargebacks' we get from customers paying by card. Again, it's significantly higher when compared to Direct Debit payers (of which there are far more) and each card chargeback costs us about a fiver. The surcharge we've introduced is intended to help cover the *cumulative* costs of the credit card payments we process.

Quote from: BertCoules

I'm currently on the Unlimited plan, broadband only.  £20.42 per month.  The email informing me of the price increases says: Why not take a look at your usage with our View My Broadband Usage tool and see if you could save by making the switch today? but though I've looked at both the pages linked to, I can't work out if the change would actually be a good one for me.  Clearly, I could save but would it be at the expense of my everyday internet use?  What differences would I see?

After a quick glance, I'd have to say that I don't think you'd benefit from switching. You use a comparatively large amount of bandwidth so would risk exceeding the allowance on Extra. The vast majority of your traffic is also Peer-2-Peer which I think is rate limited for larger periods of the day on Extra.

Quote from: chappers1

A Quick question - hopefully someone can answer Is the current 25% discount on call rates to mobiles (Talk Anytime package) being removed for existing customers or only new customers after 4th jan?

It's going for existing customers too I'm afraid.

Quote from: chappers1

If the mobile discount is going for all customers and as we do not use the 300 inclusive mins international calls on the current talk anytime package would we be better off changing to the new talk anytime deal?

Yes, IMO you would.

Quote from: mitchell20

Still waiting for a response as to how much it actually cost PN to process a card payment and why ALL other transactions apart from monthly payments ARE NOT subject to the £1.50 CC charge?

The first point I've answered above. Applying the fee to *all* card transactions would be unwieldy, impractical and confusing.

Quote from: mitchell20

Also any particular reason why PN are refusing to acknowledge my complaint via your ticket system (even though the response back from complaints is always via the same ticket system)???? I'm referring to ticket # 37685014, where after asking to have my comments taken further and passed to the customer service director.  The typical robot response I got back was just a link to the code of practice page (and even then it wasn't hyperlinked)

I'll see if I can get somebody form the complaints team to take a look. The hyperlink thing may be a known problem as I'm aware ticket attachments are broken at the moment.

Quote from: Aggrieved

Quote from: Bob Quote from: Aggrieved I recently had my first bill after having changed my homephone to PlusNet. I left BT after 25 years because the sneakily made a change to the hours for free calls from 6 to 7pm, hiding the info on the back of a letter announcing "good news". Now PlusNet has done the same - I made the change over the phone (a change that cost me a £26 charge from BT for breaking my contract) and the guy dealing with my call didnt pass this info on to me When did you make the change? I believe it took effect on 9 November

Ah, fair enough. The only reason I ask is because we put a lightbox on the signup/upgrade pages shortly after this advising of the imminent price increase.

Quote from: AndrewD

I am very unimpressed with the package changes, having joined for the features and pricing in place a few weeks ago.  Now, within a very short space of time, Plusnet is i) increasing the price of my plan (evening and weekends incl line rental), ii) removing a key feature (300 mins international) and iii) changing the start time to 7pm.  All of these were key reasons for choosing plusnet in the first place! How can this leave customer's (including myself) feeling anything other than being taken advantaged of, especially as there was no mention at sign up on 15 November? VAT changes is one thing, charge me the extra 2.5% and I will happily pay, but changing key parts of the offer - this is unfair and unjustified!

The notices on the signup/upgrade journey were put in place on the 23rd or 30th November I believe. Regardless as to when we did this, there's always somebody whose going to be the wrong side of the cut-off

Quote from: AndrewD

Will Plusnet be releasing contractual obligations on the basis of the downgraded pricing and features?

That's answered here. If you want to question it further then I'd suggest giving our Customer Options Team a call on 0845 140 6002.

Quote from: David

Any update on when PN are going to fix the sign-up procedure to Talk Anytime?  It's still saying the charge will be £26/month after 3 months rather than the £14.75 it should state, which actually is wrong anyhow, it says the line rental is £11.25/month not £11.99/month.

See my reply to Jim at the top of this post.
On a final note, please can every body be mindful that I'm on leave for the rest of this week so may not be about to answer questions as readily.

[#5]

Quote from: Bob

After a quick glance, I'd have to say that I don't think you'd benefit from switching.

Bob, thanks for confirming that.

[#6]

Quote from: Lynda

You're in the exact same position I am, AndrewD. I only just signed up last month too and feel totally let down. I've had to re-register for the Anytime service now in order to retain the 300 free minutes I WAS getting as part of the package I agreed to. It would have been the decent thing to advise us of the impending changes. I shopped around for a while to ensure I chose the ISP offering JUST what I needed and probably would have gone elsewhere if I'd known this was coming............. Lynda~

I have upgraded from dialup connect lite to broadband value 4 months ago. At the time, I was looking whether I was going to pay BT for my line rental one year in advance or take the evening and weekend package with plusnet as I was interested about the 300 minutes of international calls, but decided at the end to go for the yearly payment with BT. And now I know I have made the right decision, as now the worthwhile features of the package I was interested in has been removed. But I knew that the price of the line rental would rise anyway, as BT was advertising the line rental saver partly as a way to save on the forthcoming line rental rise.
When I moved package, there were a few mistakes made with the billing, therefore I will not change anything just in case it goes pear shaped again. I am leaving everything as it is.........(But I must say that I was impressed with the Plusnet customer service as those mistakes were dealt with promptly by the Plusnet team).
I saw an interesting notice at my local newsagents, it says :
Charges for payment with debit card : £0.50
Charges for payments with credit card : £1.50
So, it seems that the charge for debit card payments of £1.50 is definitively a money making rip off, after all........

[#7]

Quote from: Bob

............... On a final note, please can every body be mindful that I'm on leave for the rest of this week so may not be about to answer questions as readily.

Have a well earned rest Bob and thank you for the answers to the many and varied questions raised here.
Best Wishes, R

[#8]

Quote from: Lolaan

I saw an interesting notice at my local newsagents, it says : Charges for payment with debit card : £0.50 Charges for payments with credit card : £1.50 So, it seems that the charge for debit card payments of £1.50 is definitively a money making rip off, after all........

Rubbish! That is the cost when the customer is present and you get an instant answer. Plusnet are not doing that they are attempting to take a payment and there are significant administrative overheads when a payment fails - plus they will incur a second fee. The £1.50 is the average cost to the company taking in to account all costs.

[#9]

Quote from: jelv

Quote from: mitchell20 Still waiting for a response as to how much it actually cost PN to process a card payment It's not just the cost of processing the card payment charged by the bank each time which will be considerably less than £1.50, it's all the associated admin costs, particularly if the payment fails. Taking all that in to consideration (from the figures we've been given I'd estimate they will be dealing with well in excess of 5000* failed card payments every month), £1.50 does not seem at all unreasonable. Don't forget that having to re-attempt the payment doubles the bank fee.

Yes and as I've already mentioned, in the 7 years I've been a PN customer and paid by card, there has never been a single occasion I all that time I've had a failed payment so why should I pay for other peoples mistakes?
Also using your argument then why are ALL PN customers not paying for this then?  Why only CC payers?
Stop making excuses PN and tell the truth.  The fact of the matter is PN want to increase their margins by forcing as many customers onto the cheaper DD payment option by charging this card fee and thus making card payments less attractive to customers.
As usual PN are doing this in an under-handed way.

[#10]

To be fair in this case that's why our insurance premiums rocket every year-we pay for other peoples' mistakes, sadly....
Lynda~

[#11]

Indeed yes, BUT the increases are across the board and NOT just for selected people picked out because of the way they choose to pay.
jim:quote

[#12]

Quote from: jelv

Quote from: Lolaan I saw an interesting notice at my local newsagents, it says : Charges for payment with debit card : £0.50 Charges for payments with credit card : £1.50 So, it seems that the charge for debit card payments of £1.50 is definitively a money making rip off, after all........ Rubbish! That is the cost when the customer is present and you get an instant answer. Plusnet are not doing that they are attempting to take a payment and there are significant administrative overheads when a payment fails - plus they will incur a second fee. The £1.50 is the average cost to the company taking in to account all costs.

Are you saying that every payments made with a card is a failed payment? It seems that you are rubishing anyone who dare to suggest that £1.50  is an overcharge. I am still NOT CONVINCED that it costs that amount to pay with a card.
No company will work at a loss, and will include any charges for card payment processing and all administrative costs etc....in the price of their goods or services. I don't think that Plusnet wouldn't have included those charges already in the price of the packages.

[#13]

Quote from: Lolaan

.... No company will work at a loss, and will include any charges for card payment processing and all administrative costs etc....in the price of their goods or services. I don't think that Plusnet wouldn't have included those charges already in the price of the packages.

Well you have got something right, the first seven words in extract of your post.
However your assumption that a business will factor in all costs in general pricing is not necessarily so. may be PN by placing the costs of special services such as dealing with failed card payments has decided those costs on the sector that uses the special service rather than the generality of customers, so keeping base prices down.
Sorry but that seems very fair,
TBH you either live it, or as the old saying goes, "if you want a better 'ole find it".

[#14]

PN can clearly absorb a 2.5% price increase without having to pass on the increase to the customer with then not increasing prices in line with the VAT increase.  After all PN will have to hand over 20% VAT from Jan 4th 2011.  If they can absorb this increase why can they not continue to absorb card transaction costs?
Again proving that card processing costs are simply a smoke-screen to what's actually going on here.

[#15]

Quote from: mitchell20

.................................  If they can absorb this increase why can they not continue to absorb card transaction costs?

I would support PlusNet passing on additional costs incurred on a customer account such as:

• Payment Transaction Costs


• Excessive Usage Costs


• Fault investigation costs for faults proven to be with Customer equipment


• etc.

Rather than spread thes costs across the customer base.