After 10 years with Plusnet I am leaving ASAP - the company has become a nightmare.

[#1]

@Baldrick1 my point was that when I read this thread it sounded like some ambiguous statements being correlated (2+3=4), I imagine the billing system doesn't care about data watch, it will bill what it's told to by the data watch application/service.

Therefore I think if we ask the question of Plusnet if they're aware of any issues with data watch, we may get a better answer and outcome .

[#2]

@mjones07 let me start of by apologising for the problems you've had with our Data Transfer Watch and the subsequent customer service (that i'll be reviewing and providing feedback on to the managers of the individuals involved)

There is an issue with Data Transfer Watch, we're aware of it internally, the fix has been written by our engineers, has passed internal testing and we're aiming to deploy it on Tuesday. 

Regarding any extra payments you've made I'll make sure they're refunded to you.

I'd also like to clarify with you that you're not in any minimum term contract and that should you wish to, you'd be eligible to leave at any time without penalty. We'd love you to stay though and if you're interested I'm pretty sure we can offer you a tempting deal on an Unlimited product.

[#3]

I have not yet commented (or switched providers) because I am curious to see how this all pans out.

I state my position again:

Complaint #1.

The account I have had for more than 10 years no longer allows me to cap my extra monthly spend at £0. I suspect it will not allow me to cap my extra monthly spend at all (but I am testing this). This constitutes a change in the terms of our agreement which I have not agreed to. Unilateral changes in a mutual agreement are rarely legal.

https://www.plus.net/data_transfer_watch/ which previously erased my extra monthly spend cap of £0, has for 4 days retained my extra monthly spend cap of £5. I am approaching the 15GB allowance that allows me. I am interested to see how that pans out. Is one allowed to cap one’s spend at £5, but not at £0?

@JonoH says “the fix has been written by our engineers, has passed internal testing and we're aiming to deploy it on Tuesday”, i.e., tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

Complaint #2.

Emails of 26 October, 25 October and 23 October, have each given me £5 refund during the last week to apologise for failings in customer service. That is a total refund of £15. It is also an acknowledgement that when a failure is detected, a £5 refund is given, only to be followed by yet another failure in customer service.

The same staff member who made me feel like a parasite and said Plusnet was not willing to ‘subsidise’ my account further, also tried to upsell me to a monthly account of £12.99, i.e., the same as a extra monthly spend cap of £5. Does Plusnet only consider customers who pay less than £12.99 per month to be parasites, or would the attitude persist if I bought the more expensive package?

As said, I have been a customer for over 10 years. The moderators rule I cannot list the staff who have dealt with my complaint, only @JonoH and @Mads (my Support Question 183841963 identifies 2 others, although one might be the proper name of @Mads). Some of the above clearly have contempt for customers. I would like to assure them the contempt is mutual. I have made a request on this forum, via the support question, and over the phone, for a hard mail address to which I can write regarding my complaint. No address is forthcoming. Can I presume Plusnet is inundated with such complaints?

Like everyone else I have many accounts with many companies and occasionally I have had cause for complaint against some – it happens. I can remember years ago, when my webspace was hosted by Plusnet, and again when I moved house just 5 years ago, thinking Plusnet was determined to maintain good customer relations. But it is now difficult to politely express the anger and indignation I currently feel towards Plusnet based purely on the customer support I have received over this last week.

[#4]

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Thanks for coming back, I'll try to answer each point of your post but please let me know if I've missed a piece. I'm also happy should you wish for us to discuss this over the telephone. The choice is you'rs but I want to make it as easy as possible for you to get this resolved and to make a decision about who you'd like to be your service provider.

@mjones07 wrote:

Complaint #1.

The account I have had for more than 10 years no longer allows me to cap my extra monthly spend at £0. I suspect it will not allow me to cap my extra monthly spend at all (but I am testing this).

The problem impacts all users on "metered" products, basically, if you have a set amount of usage included in your package and you want to make sure you don't spend any extra or want your extra usage payments to never exceed a certain amount then there's a chance you may be affected. 

This constitutes a change in the terms of our agreement which I have not agreed to. Unilateral changes in a mutual agreement are rarely legal.

The terms of the agreement were to provide a certain amount of usage for a certain amount of money, and that any extra usage would be charged at £5.00 per 5gb of usage charged in complete 5gb blocks, meaning should you use 1mb over your limit £5.00 would be added to your bill.

The Data Transfer Cap was something we added to help customers budget better but as far as I'm aware (and I don't claim to have any legal knowledge) never formed part of our agreement with you.

I'm sorry that the Data Transfer Cap isn't working correctly currently but it's reasonable to expect for things to break from time to time, what's not reasonable is for you to have to pay extra when that happens and that's why I've committed to you that whatever extra usage you use between now and the date that the fix rolls out will be refunded.

This offer is available to anyone else that has this problem if you do then please create a thread advising of your problem and we will do the same for you.

https://www.plus.net/data_transfer_watch/ which previously erased my extra monthly spend cap of £0, has for 4 days retained my extra monthly spend cap of £5. I am approaching the 15GB allowance that allows me. I am interested to see how that pans out. Is one allowed to cap one’s spend at £5, but not at £0?

You're allowed to cap it anywhere you like, with no minimum, remember this isn't a change to what you've had previously, it's not a deliberate attempt to extract additional money from the customer it's a bug and one that we've identified and written a fix for already.

@JonoH says “the fix has been written by our engineers, has passed internal testing and we're aiming to deploy it on Tuesday”, i.e., tomorrow. It will be interesting to see how that pans out.

We're expecting it to go tomorrow evening, but as always this can change depending on any last minute problems that are identified with the fix or if something else breaks.

Complaint #2.

Emails of 26 October, 25 October and 23 October, have each given me £5 refund during the last week to apologise for failings in customer service. That is a total refund of £15. It is also an acknowledgement that when a failure is detected, a £5 refund is given, only to be followed by yet another failure in customer service.

I totally understand your point of view here, but it's not that someone goes in and adds an additional £5.00 of usage every time you go over your limit. It's an automatic procedure that we're having to manually resolve by refunding.

The same staff member who made me feel like a parasite and said Plusnet was not willing to ‘subsidise’ my account further, also tried to upsell me to a monthly account of £12.99, i.e., the same as a extra monthly spend cap of £5. Does Plusnet only consider customers who pay less than £12.99 per month to be parasites, or would the attitude persist if I bought the more expensive package?

It's not acceptable that you were made to feel this way, and feedback has been provided to the managers of the people you've interacted with, training will be provided where appropriate. As a Plusnet employee, I'm trained to assist you in the resolution of your query and offer you the best support that I'm able, and that requirement to me should be just as important if you're on a free email account as it is if you're on our top priced product.

 I have made a request on this forum, via the support question, and over the phone, for a hard mail address to which I can write regarding my complaint. No address is forthcoming. Can I presume Plusnet is inundated with such complaints?

Plusnet doesn't have a direct email address from complaints, so that's why you haven't been provided with one. I can assure you though that we've marked the ticket number you've referenced above as a complaint and that the social media team will be taking direct ownership of it from here on out and should email be an easier method for you I'll happily provide mine should it be easier for you.

I'd also really like to point out that if you've used 15gb per month over the 4 days listed above you really would benefit from an unlimited package. There are loads of options available to you and I'm happy to discuss them anytime.

[#5]

@JonoH I thank you for your responses which seem considered, polite and reasonable. I shall wait and see how things pan out until the end of my billing month 14 November.

[#6]

Just one slight ps, to avoid confusion:
No, I haven't used 15GB in 4 days (that would be silly, in my case) so I don't believe the 3 x £5 refunds have been due to manually resolving a series of three 5GB data usage over runs.

[#7]

This fix has been deployed, would it be possible for you to try to add the Data Transfer Watch for me and let us know how you get on? Thanks in advance.

[#8]

@JonoH , I can't actually tell from my end what is happening, not yet. 

Has the fix worked? It is impossible for me to tell until the end of the billing month, ie, 14 November (and possibly not even then because the bill is not itemised and I have received automatic refunds).

It is only on 15 November that we will have a clean slate. On 15 November I will try to reinstate my extra monthly usage as £0. If that works as it should (like earlier this year) we probably have a fix. But again, it won't be until later in the billing month (14 November-14 December) that I will approach 10GB usage and we will know if problems kick off again.

best wishes, M

[#9]

We believe it's worked and we have had no reports yet of failure, however, very few customers remain on our metered products and fewer still use the Data Transfer Watch and fewer still use enough data for it to kick in so our confidence isn't 100%

*edit*

Please let me know if and when you're free to talk about moving off of our metered product and to a newer unlimited one.