Reporting Community Issues

[#1]

If you spot a bug or issue with the Community we'd really appreciate it if you could provide us with the following information.

• What browser and version number this was seen on
• The operating system
• A description of what is happening compared to what should be happening
• The steps needed to replicate the problem
• The URL where the problem occurs
• A screenshot (if possible) 
• Any additional information.

If you see a thread that has an issue on it that's like yours, but not quite, please open a separate thread.

Thanks for your support.

[#2]

Really ? - have Plusnet got a new development resource dedicated to maintaining the forum ?

Otherwise is there any point wasting our time reporting anything regarding this community ?

We have been doing that for two years and virtually nothing has been done !.

When we do we either get accused of being our equipment at fault, or Lithium does a reset,

but most of the fundamental problems reported since day one have not been addressed.

All that changes is cocking about to make using the forum more difficult to use, by restricting when edits can be done, more posts disappearing into the spam filter, notification emails getting delayed by many hours, and new posts frequently getting dumped at the very moment [Post] is pressed.

Has anyone actually chased up the fault reports that @jaread83  claimed to have submitted to Lithium - because I'd have a hard time saying if ANY issues have actually been solved.

To be honest I'm fed-up of reporting community problems into a vacuum, when NOTHING gets fixed.

Half the time it's not worth the effort of replying to other customers asking for help, as the chances are the 'Rich Text' editor will screw up, the page format will require an inordinate amount of time to get right, or the the effort of composing a post will be lost when the page crashes out for some inexplicable reason.

As has happened to many of the long time forum contributors that have given up contributing here, I'm inclined to spend my time helping on other platforms where the majority of the effort of composing a worthwhile, helpful and coherent reply isn't outweighed by the time wasted fighting the forum software.

This forum used to be a great community, but has dwindled into insignificance since Plusnet seem to have given up supporting what they already have or developing new products and technologies.

[#3]

I have a lot of empathy for your frustrations. Might we though document a few issues as has been requested then let’s see if Lithium delivers any improvement or simply hangs their neck in very visible nooses? On this occasion the message to Lithium needs to be do or die.

There are a lot of Lithium services out there - I’m not aware if they suffer the same issues as does this instance. I believe this instance was a new technology trail blazer ... one wonders if that has any bearing on our experience?

[#4]

@Anonymous Totally agree with you. Some people may wonder why I stopped posting here on a regular basis, you summed it up quite well there. That, and at the time I decided to stop posting regularly, support from PN staff had dropped to an all time low and when you need their input to carry on helping the customer but can't, that was the time to give up. Dear Oldjim (bless him) even had the decency to PM me and ask if it was the poor support from PN that had caused me to stop posting.

@Townman wrote:
. I believe this instance was a new technology trail blazer ... one wonders if that has any bearing on our experience?

Well it might have done at the time, but not now IMHO. It was a major upgrade at the time that was tested out with us, Lithium benefiting from the "free" bug testing that many of us gave it, because we wanted the first rate forum we used to have. But that has long been superceded, rolled out elsewhere, and has had various upgrades.

When I look at the number (and type of bugs) being reported on this board, things clearly haven't improved that much, if at all. Most of it  I would not expect from a Mature Forum technology especially from a company that is supposedly one of the large "professional" providers. That and the odd toxic post, doesn't make this an especially pleasant place, as it used to be, for me to visit.

I only came here today because I'd received a notification about a thread I was supposedly subscribed to, to only get the (fairly standard) error message that said "Access denied, you don't have.......".  I assumed that it was because the reply had been "removed" and investigated to find that appeared to be the case as the thread was still there with the previous posts.

Such an error message would likely confuse ordinary customers who don't post regularly, who might wonder if for some reason they weren't logged-in correctly or they'd made some other mistake. Frankly this is just another example of the poor way in which this forum software behaves. There is absolutely no reason why a more specific "error" message can't be provided which would give a clear reason (That the post had broken Forum Rules and had been removed).

I could go on, but there is little point.

[#5]

@Anotherone  nice to see that you're still around ! 

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@Anotherone wrote:

...at the time I decided to stop posting regularly, support from PN staff had dropped to an all time low and when you need their input to carry on helping the customer but can't, that was the time to give up.

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It is worse than that though !.  When you and I were regular contributors here, we were able to highlight technical and system problems to support staff who knew what they were talking about (i.e. Kelly, Bob, and the three Chris P.'s), and they actually worked with us (at all times of day and night !) to solve issues so that they wouldn't happen again - and everyone was happy.

Now Plusnet "support" appears to consist of unskilled non-technical call-centre bums-on-seats staff, who clearly don't understand many of the questions that customers come here to ask, often giving irrelevant and spurious replies that have no chance of helping the customer, and littering this forum with inaccurate and misleading so-called solutions.  I can't remember the last time that I saw any of the current staff actually fix a widespead problem once-and-for-all so that issue didn't continue to be reported by subsequent customers OVER and OVER and OVER again.

There are so many little things that Plusnet could have easily permanently fixed once-and-for-all, that would reduce the complaints reported on this forum and enquiries to their call centre, but the lack of ANY progress in the last five years makes it obvious that nobody at Plusnet cares.  Plusnet has lost the goodwill of many of us that used to make this forum a 'community', especially the likes of @Anotherone  and @jelv  who used to selflessly and patiently contribute many hours every week helping others, and made the Plusnet Forum a (once) useful technical resource.  How things are now, I will occasionally visit the forum and see a customer asking for help for which I have the answer, but more often than not I think "WHY BOTHER" because it is unlikely that Plusnet are bothered either.

As you say -

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@Anotherone wrote:

I could go on, but there is little point.

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[#6]

I've been keeping an eye on things here as it is likely that some time in the future I will neither need nor afford the extra security of the superb AAISP service. Nothing I've seen suggests that Plusnet would be on the list of possible suppliers. How much has changed since I posted my reasons for leaving here?

[#7]

I can't even ask a question on this so called support forum, so whats the point of it.

[#8]

@ki2 What is your question regarding?

[#9]

My question is about connecting to my corporate VPN. I can't access certain corporate sites on it but it does work if I tether to my phone using 4g.

[#10]

Then I would post with as much detail as possible on this board - https://community.plus.net/t5/Tech-Help-Software-Hardware-etc/bd-p/TechHelp . The help will probably come from fellow Community members, as Plusnet do not offer direct help on products outside their control.

[#11]

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@ki2 wrote:

I can't even ask a question on this so called support forum, so whats the point of it.

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Why do you think that you cannot ask a question on the forum?

You just did!

[#12]

@Townman Possibly because I pointed them in the right direction?😉