Extremely poor customer service - seeking compensation

[#1]

Hi All,

In the past two weeks I have had the absolutely worst, without a shadow of doubt, customer service experience with Plusnet I have ever had with a company, bar none.

I have recently moved homes. Prior to moving the home I received an email saying my Plusnet account had been cancelled and I owned Plusnet 90 something pounds. I did not cancel the account but I assume the person moving into the property I was vacating hard ordered internet for it and thus Plusnet had decided that meant I had cancelled my account. Which in and of itself was a breach of contract by Plusnet. I though okay, mistakes are made, let me phone them. 

So, I phoned Plusnet to tell them about my house move and order internet for my new property which seemed okay. However, a few days later I received a panicked email from Plusnet saying there was something wrong with my order but no details on the problem. I phoned back to work out what the problem was, only to be told there was no problem and someone had put in the wrong information. Okay...

Fast forward to the day the engineer was set put in the internet (Tuesday), that went all okay and the internet was working, if only 80mbs instead of the 200 to 300mb I ordered. I thought nothing of it, again, until 10pm when suddenly the internet is shut off. The next morning, at 7:30 AM, I had to attend an extremely important conference call. I immediately called the Plusnet helpline (when it opened at 8am) only to be told that my new package had not been activated properly and that I would need to wait to 11am at the latest to see it active.

I wait until 11am to see it activated, nothing happens. I phone Plusnet only to be told there is a major fault in the line which would be resolved at 5pm. Okay... a bit dodgy, but okay.

Guess what happens at 5pm? Nothing. I phone Plusnet again and I am now told the fault would be fixed by 9am the next day (today). I'm not getting angry because I'm being treated like absolute dirt by Plusnet. I ask what the compensation is and I'm fobbed off with being told I can apply for £8 a day (I've spent more than that at the Starbucks I've been forced to work at today).

So now today 9am comes, and guess what? Still no internet. I phone again and I'm now told the fault will be fixed with 24 to 48 hours. This isn't acceptable at all and I am livid with the way I'm being treated by Plusnet. They are clearly not providing the service I have contracted them to provide and I'm going to have to ask for substantially more compensation, compensation which is commensurate with the actual loss I'm making from Plusnet. Does anyone know how to do this? Do I need to take it to small claims court, or is there an ombudsman I can reach out to?

Thank you,

Signed - someone very angry with their broadband provider.

[#2]

Hi @frasermacd. Thank you for getting in touch. I'm very sorry to read of the poor experience that you've had. It's disappointing that there was a problem with your activation and then a subsequent fault and I appreciate how inconvenient this must be in regards to your work. Whilst we wouldn't be able to compensate for any costs that you have incurred, I'd be happy to look into a gesture of goodwill on top of the automatic compensation once the fault has been resolved.

I'm sorry that your internet isn't working today despite you being told that it would be fixed by 9am today. Please can you send me your account username over on a private message and I'll try and get to the bottom of what's happening here.

[#3]

Hi Emily - when I try to send you a private message it says I do not have permission to do so. My account usename is the same as my message board username.

[#4]

Ah sorry about that, I think you have to have made at least three posts on the forum to send a private message! Many thanks for confirming that your account username is the same as your username on here. 

I can see that you have raised this as a complaint and a member of our Customer Advocates team will investigate and respond to your complaint within five working days. They'll be able to look into arranging a gesture of goodwill for the inconvenience that the issues have caused.

In terms of the fault, I've checked with our suppliers and they have confirmed that the major service outage in your area was resolved in the early hours of this morning. However, I can see that your router still isn't connecting to the network and it appears that the correct connection details dropped out of the router during the outage. This can normally be fixed by a factory reset - there's a reset pinhole on the back of the router and you'd need to push something into it for at least fifteen seconds whilst your router is powered on. Please let me know whether you are able to get online following the reset.

[#5]

Moderators Note

This topic has been moved from Broadband to Full Fibre

[#6]

@EmilyD Ah sorry about that, I think you have to have made at least three posts on the forum to send a private message!

I believe the criteria is three posts, but in addition you need to have been logged in twice or more and have been logged in for at least 10 minutes.

[#7]

Hi Emily, I now have internet connection, albeit substantially slower than what is the guaranteed minimum speed.

[#8]

Hi there,

Emily's left the team now so I've picked this up for you. What speed do you get? Is that on a wireless or wired connection?