A few tips on how not to severely irk a customer.

[#1]

1)  Try not to leave the customer without any broadband and a crossed telephone line for 3 weeks.
2)  When the customer goes through the proper complaints procedure and selects the option of a reply by telephone (with number kindly supplied just in case), don't leave it for 8 days to reply with a scripted non-answer via the "complaint ticket".
3)  When one of your complaints advisors gives an actual reply to a question (which was all of 2 lines of text) please have them try to read the question and answer it. Seemingly scripted apologies and promises of refunds/compensation are nice, but actually answering the question was what I was looking for.
4)  Don't assign a customer with their own special faults advisor if that advisor is unwilling or unable to give the customer a basic heads up, even leaving a message on the fault ticket so your poor customer advisors can relay it onto to the customer seemed to much to ask for.
There's much more but this will have to suffice for now.
Mark

[#2]

Hi Mark,
I'm sorry to see that you're still in the process of having a resolution applied to what looks to be a very serious and complex fault with your service.
I'm going to take a look through the details of this and see if we can get you some updates on how the fix is progressing although I note that there were updates received yesterday on where the fix stands. Please accept our apologies for the length of time this has taken to get this far but I can assure you that we're working as best we can with our supplier to resolve the fault for you.
Regarding the complaint you mentioned, I note that you didn't get the response you wanted from the Complaints Agent and I will now have this fed back for you however it seems that you may have accidentally closed the support ticket after querying the response which is why this hasn't been updated for you since (ticket number 87536117).
I'll drop you some details on a new ticket and will address the questions for you now. If you need anything more then please don't hesitate to update me by way of a reply to this thread and i'll be more than happy to help.

[#3]

Hello Adam C,
Thank you for taking the time to reply to this forum post and for your further post via the "internal/private" ticket you opened.
I wasn't expecting a reply to this forum post as I was just giving you (Plusnet) feedback, so thanks once again for taking the time to look into things and trying to to do what your system/colleagues failed to in my case.
Unfortunately though, your good self also appears to misunderstand my complaint/question. I have copied/pasted & edited out personal information from the complaints ticket correspondence so you, or any bored  forum peruser, can enlighten me on where I have not been clear.
Hopefully I won't come across as facetious as I am genuinely trying not to, hence my original request to be contacted by telephone. Intonation can too easily be misconstrued when reading text.
As you have alluded to in your forum reply, yes, I do seem to have a "very serious and complex issue".  If Plusnet gave out monthly awards such as "The customer with most disconnects" I'd have strongly fancied my chances for the months of April, May & June. 
I will call that issue; Problem A. 
Now to re-iterate, I am not referring to, nor complaining about Problem A.
I am referring to Problem B.  This is where (unbeknownst to me) an off-site "fix" was attempted by our friends at BTOpenreach. This "fix" resulted in me losing broadband connection for 21 days and 20 days of having someone else's telephone number, them having mine.
Yes, Problem B did stem from Problem A, but as I have not complained either privately or publicly via any of the means available to me about Problem A, it is safe to assume I think Plusnet are doing their best in regards to that issue.
I closed the original "complaints ticket" on purpose as I was of mind to seek an amicable divorce with Plusnet due to the frustastion of Problem B, especially in regards to item number 4 (see above post). The exchange below with your complaints dept just added to my frustation/exasperation.
If the lastest attempt to fix Problem A bore no fruit I would certainly have been looking to go elsewhere, for mine and your customer advisors sake of sanity. We'll put that on hold for now.
Anyways, here goes...
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Response
7:55pm, Monday 23 Jun 2014
[Support Wizard Journey]
[Making a complaint]
[Customer Services]

[Additional Information]
RE: Ticket number 83554430

Hello, could you please contact me on [Home Telephone] with regards to why it took 3 weeks to reconnect my internet & phone services. I would also like to know why I was left out of the loop information wise, despite numerous requests and several (unfulfilled) promises to be contacted.
Regards,

Mark


[Name Removed] - Complaints Advisor
11:11am, Tuesday 1 Jul 2014
Dear Mr [Customer],

Thanks for taking the time to get in touch. I'm really sorry to hear about the problems you've had getting connected. We'll be in touch shortly to discuss your
complaint.

If you have any further questions please do not hesitate to get back in touch online at http://contactus.plus.net

Kind regards,



[Name Removed] - Complaints Advisor
10:59am, Wednesday 2 Jul 2014
Dear Mr [Customer]

Thank you for getting in touch,

Let me first of all offer my sincerest apologies for the inconvenience and frustration caused in regards to the provisioning of your services.

I can see that our faults team are continually working to get the service up and running for you, but we have come across several issues that I understand must be very frustrating.

I will chase the matter with our faults team this morning and request that they update you shortly with the progress on this matter.

Once the service is finally up and running and the matter is resolved, I would like to offer you some form of good will gesture for the trouble you have encountered.

Kind regards,


Your Response
11:33am, Thursday 3 Jul 2014
Dear Mr [Complaints Advisor],

Thanks for replying. My complaint seems fairly succinct.

It isn't about the ongoing intermittent disconnecting of my broadband service, inconvenient and frustrating as that is.
It is specifically about the events from 2nd/3rd June to the 23rd June.

You are not addressing this, please do.

Regards,

Mark


[Name Removed] - Complaints Advisor
11:04am, Friday 4 Jul 2014
Dear Mr [Customer],

Thank you for getting back in touch,

I am sorry that my previous response wasn't aimed the specific dates in question.

I accept that losing your connection for nearly 3 weeks must have been very frustrating for yourself, and we should have been keeping you up to date more often in regards to the progress of this issue.

As previously stated, I will take this into account when the fault has been resolved ,and I am arranging the refunds and compensation for you

Kind regards,
[Complaints Advisor]

Your Response
12:13pm, Friday 4 Jul 2014
Dear Mr [Complaints Advisor],

Thanks for the prompt reply.

It isn't about the refund/compensation (that would be expected as I had no service).
It's about whether the length of time to resolve the issue was acceptable/normal.
From your reply it appears that you think it is.

I don't. We should probably part ways soon.

Regards,

Mark
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So Adam, I am basically saying that I think 3 weeks was too long to resolve Problem B.  I am looking for an answer to that query.
If indeed 3 weeks is a normal/average length of time to remedy such an issue...say so.  If not..say so.
I'm interested in accountability, not accounts ability.  I strongly believe yourselves were culpable in prolonging the time to resolve Problem B and I'm looking for that to be either acknowledeged or denied.
You, yourself have fallen into the mindset of referring to Problem A.  Where I have enquired about what transpired BETWEEN 2/3 June UNTIL the 23rd June, yourself and the complaints advisor have fixated on those actual dates.
I know what happened ON those dates already, my service went off....it came back on again.  Tell me what happened in between please!   
Kind Regards,
Mark

[#4]

Quote from: TDM66

or any bored  forum peruser, can enlighten me on where I have not been clear.

Hey Im bored!
From what I can see, and I have read it but not studied it is that there is a bit of misunderstanding from both sides. By the end it seems clear what you want, and to be fair it is what you asked earlier but I think it got lost somewhere.
What I gather from you is the following. Problem B is a sort of a meta problem, its not the fault itself, but the events surrounding the fault, i.e how it was handled, why did it take so long, what SPECIFICALLY and in DETAIL actually happened to prolong it. In addition why this information you are requesting now was not made available to you during the 3 weeks. i.e keeping you up to date.
Is that right?
If so.....
I can see the question was not answered satisfactory but at the same time I can see they haven't been fixated on A and not B because both appear to be complaints about two separate but related faults, so the responses are about the fault referred to in B, but what you want is the overall picture surrounding "fault B".
If not....
I'm obviously talking rubbish and I have failed to understand, please do let the board know because I dont want to confuse things more.
One other point though is I think it was unfair to conclude that they find three weeks acceptable because they wouldn't offer compo or talk about "what we should have done" if they did. 

[#5]

If you look through your open and closed tickets you should find information relating to Problem B. It is normal for Plusnet to add comments to the tickets as the fault progresses, including such things as when they have contacted OpenReach or received responses. Perhaps someone from Plusnet could point you to the ticket number where the actions taken between the two dates are recorded. If you can't find it and Plusnet can't point you to it I'd conclude that the direct answer to your question is "not a lot" because the Plusnet support organisation is totally overstretched.

[#6]

Hi Mark,
Thanks for getting back to us on this one and apologies if I missed the point on which information you were looking for.
I have now updated the support ticket with the details of my findings after investigating the segment of time you requested, I've tried to give an overview that doesn't contain too many boring acronyms and line statistics so if you need more detail that let me know

[#7]

Hi Empirical, thanks for your input 
You hit the nail on the head in regards to what I was after.  Though you are wrong in thinking it unfair to conclude that Plusnet regard "Problem B"
as acceptable.  This is from the subsequent reply I got from Adam C via the "private" message/ticket;
"Plusnet did fail to a degree as we should have kept you informed on a few occasions which you ended up chasing yourself however the amount of attention given to this fault overall is above the standard you would normally see."
I guess I fortunate it wasn't below the normal standard eh!   

Hi Jelv, Yep, Looking through the fault ticket was the 1st thing I did on being reconnected.  On reading it the 2nd thing I did was search out  complaints 
The fault ticket can be useful for seeing communication between customer>customer advisor>faults advisor.  Not so great for faults advisor>BT or vice versa.  Though I did glean some pertinent info from the sparse exchanges there.

Hi Adam C,  Thanks for todays internal/private message. I will await a reply to my further reply 

[#8]

Well, I just stumbled across this thread, via another issue and all I can say is I am disgusted. This is not the Plusnet we used to know.
It seems to me that the level of priority and urgency given to the issue of OR getting your line crossed with someone else's as mentioned in point 1) of your OP was not dealt with by an experienced enough agent or at a high enough level. And if the advisor mentioned in point 4) was said person, then clearly they were not senior enough to deal with it. Nor would it seem that the Complaints adviser had much of a clue, which leads me to think that their training has something to be desired.
I hope that both aspects of the way this was handled have been studied by Plusnet and lessons learnt so that things like this do not arise again.

[#9]

Not much consolation, but as a point of reference, on the occasion that BTOR undertook a major cable repair and gave me the phone line / number of the pub in the next village and them mine it took nearly 2 weeks for them to get it fixed.  BT Retail did not consider it to be a continuation of the previous fault, nor a priority for them to rectify.