Having been a longtime user of Plusnet (>10years) I've had no problems and rarely had to deal with their customer service team which I believed was excellent given all the awards they seem to win for customer service.
However over the last 8 months I've had the misfortune of having to deal with them twice (current issue ongoing) and both times have been a story of misinformation and handoffs. Both times have ultimately been caused by their suppliers (Openreach) systems, which can only be described as a complete disaster, but ultimately the blame has to lie on the customer support team for not being able to resolve these issues correctly and quickly.
The first time I was attempting to upgrade to FTTC as my cabinet had been upgraded and a problem arose when Plusnet tried to place the order and they got an error. I was then passed from Agent to Agent over the next few weeks whose sole contributions seemed to be - Open Ticket, I don't know what to do with this, place ticket back on system for review (by someone else hopefully who might know what to do) in 2 days time. In total something like 15 different agents handled my ticket. In the end it was only after complaining publicly on one of the forums that my ticket was finally taken on by a single Agent who saw it though to resolution (it still took them 2 weeks). Total time to resolution: 10 weeks!
My second and current time was what I thought was a simple home move. Keeping same providers/phone number and services. Appointments booked 3 1/2 weeks in advance for telephone line to be installed in the morning and fibre to be connected in the afternoon. Telephone line was installed without a hitch. Then the problems began. I get a message from Plusnet in the late afternoon saying "It appears that our previous adsl order to your new address has completed, although our fibre order has been cancelled and now will not take place as planned. We would be able to place a modify order to place you onto the correct fibre package, although at this moment in time our supplier is having problem with these orders not syncing. Therefore although not ideal, I suggest that we wait for this issue to be solved before we place your modify order, as at least you would still have a service. "
So I think, ok well I don't have fibre but at least there is an ADSL connection. So I try to connect an no joy.
I then phone customer support and after a nice 30 minute! wait get told "The only order I am able to see this evening is the cancelled fibre order, I am unable to locate the ADSL order which my colleague referred to previously."
My next message on the ticket reads "I can confirm that at present you are still on an ADSL service." Which is it? I can't connect to an ADSL service that's for sure.
I've now managed to get the ticket assigned to a single agent again as this seems to be the only way to get anything resolved. Otherwise you just get told conflicting things and handed off to the next agent to try figure out whats going on and get nowhere.
2 weeks in, and this time with no broadband service, and I'm seriously questioning my decision to stay with Plusnet.
Ticket Ids for anyone interested are:
69902587
72093858
78843332
So my feedback is - Once an agent has picked up a ticket, they should see it through to completion or at the very least once a ticket has been open more than a week it should be assigned to a dedicated person to see through to completion.
