How To Leave Plusnet When You Have A Medical Condition That Prevents A Phone Conversation?

[#1]

Over a barrel here.

I've found out that for the past four months PN have been charging me 30% more for an expired contract on traditional BB with telephone line.

My problem is that I can't actually talk to anyone about trying to strike a deal to stay with PlusNet because I had a serious throat injury earlier this summer and can't manage to speak above a whisper for more than a few seconds at present.

PN have clearly discontinued support tickets. They have no support email address. I've been DM'ing the X account all day. LiveChat is just BotChat and doesn't get me a support agent.

I've got other ISP's offering me deals (VM vigorously so, having moved into my region recently) and I'm at the place where I need a new solution.

I like the idea of speed, but if I'm going to stay with PN I want a better price than they're offering me to 'upgrade' to Full Fibre, because VM are offering me a lower price for their higher 1100Mbps package, even without all the TV gubbins.

I've also had a decent enough offer from IDNET.

But there are also complications.

I do need to keep my old landline number active and migrate it across to a VOIP service which I have to budget into the price I want to pay for my Full Fibre broadband.

So how do I get my landline number ported out from PlusNet to take across to AAnet?

I also do self-host a hobby server at home and have StaticIP and rDNS with PlusNet which I'd rather like to keep and not have to reconfigure or work around, but if worst comes to it I can lease a cheap VM or Docker host and just reconfigure the home network.

It's really only convenience and a sense of better the devil that is keeping me open to striking a retention deal and signing another 18 or 24 months away with PN...

And if I could just get them to respond to me in a written form, I can discuss it out with them.

Is there any other means of contacting them? I can't believe how hard they make this. I've left service providers before for enforcing telephone conversations in the digital online age. It's primitive and restrictive.

Does anyone please have any tips on dealing with this, and also with porting a landline phone number out of PN Broadband & Phone prior to attempting a broadband service migration or service upgrade?

Assistance really appreciated.

Croaky Pete.

[#2]

Moderator's note(s):

I have moved this thread to My Account/Billing from Broadband.

I have also escalated to the Superuser board in the hope a member of staff can pick this up

[#3]

Hey there @ThreeSixteenAE and sorry you are having a torrid time with it all at the minute. The best way I would suggest getting in contact is via the text relay service. You can find the link to this and all the accessibility issues we have on Hearing - accessibility needs | Help | Plusnet I know it's more the speaking side but this will help to give you some more options. The only other thing is you can write in via post.

[#4]

Thank you.

I'm recovering from COVID and at the moment doing anything is tiring, especially trying to chase Live Chats and Twitter Support in circles while trying to urgently research my options. An extra £20 a month for four months while I was ill caught me right off guard, and I can do without it.

I'm sure if I was thinking clearly I'd realise I picked the wrong support category, but thank you for setting it straight and I do apologise for getting it in the wrong place.

Merci.

[#5]

Oh no! I hope you feel better soon! I myself didn't get COVID as bad as others but I know people who had long covid who had to leave the job due to the amount of time they were off work.

Don't worry about picking the wrong category, it happens to the best of us and sometimes I do it myself and then give up. We're only human after all! 

Let me know if you need anything else.

[#6]

OK, well, that's a shame that I have to go to the trouble of being actually disabled in order to get some assistance and in all honesty if I have to write a letter and send it with a stamp in order to arouse the interest of someone who might discuss retention and my rights and needs in respect of my account, I think that letter will be a termination instruction and be followed by a nice letter to Ofcom, because in the day of high tech and cyber to find that it is easier to control whether my money keeps coming to PlusNet from my digital bank than it is to get tech support at my ISP, that ISP really needs to be a thing of the past along with messages by carrier pigeon.

It really is ridiculous that I can communicate with my mobile phone provider by LiveChat, and I can communicate with the companies wanting to sell me new broadband by LiveChat, but if I want to get something out of the ISP that used to be famed for a quick turnaround on online support tickets, it's not possible.

That kind of answers my question about whether I want to be retained by PlusNet.

Such a shame.

I can't imagine a more ridiculous paradox that a PlusNet support agent will faff around proxying through a third party to rely information from my typed responses in order to get them read to them and then speak a response that I can then type a reply back to.... but no one is sat on a ZenDesk install just doing this thing directly.

That is.... really outrageous. What a waste of everyone's time and resources.

I really am paying PlusNet too much.

Moderator's note by Mike (Mav): Post released from Spam Filter.

[#7]

Thanks for that. I had LC when it first came around in Feb 2020 and that took a year out of me.

I'm fortunate that I can mostly work from home, although that comes with plenty of downsides too, not least a humidifier permanently making everything damp so I don't dry out and rip my throat again.

This year's strain has been more unusual for me than any of the others. The long lasting scratchy throat/airways thing is just maddening.

Still... a relief for all those who are used to hearing me sing while I work...