Desperate to know whether Plusnet cares for customer

[#1]

I was with Plusnet for years before spending 18 months with another provider. On coming back in February I told the sales agent that I wanted to transfer my landline number back and was told that it would have to be set up with a new number but it would be changed to the number we have had for 40-odd years in a day or so.

It turned not to be true and the order should have been set up with the correct number straight away. it was fortunate that I called support to check because nothing had been put in place to make the change. The number was lost for 14 days while it was quarantined. There were also other ridiculous errors made while the number was resolved.

No one has explained how a presumably trained agent in a customer-facing organisation can make such a basic service error.

I then received my first bill which was still raised against the temporary number. It was for £275. Despite the fact that I had just re-joined Plusnet I had been charged £200+ early termination fee. The bill for March is £72.77 which may or not be right but because of all the adjustments I found difficult to reconcile an did not have the energy to address.

The support agent apologised for the early termination charge but then required me to contact my bank to cancel the direct debit despite the fact that Plusnet had a week to correct the error and take the right amount from the direct debit.

I have since received 5 (five) identical emails to that I am being credited £14.30 for

"Incorrect charging - One Time Charge credit " I have no idea what this is for and makes checking whether the bill is correct even more difficult.

Again how can an organisation that cares about its customers raise a early termination charge on someone who has just taken out a new contract, and expect customers to cope with impenetrable billing information?

I re-joined Plusnet mainly because I was impressed with the support given by the Community help team but the rest of the organisation appears not to care about customer service.

I would like this sorted out without me feeling that I have to watch every step to capture all the potential things going wrong. Can anyone help?

[#2]

My sympathies, I joined Plusnet eight years ago and have encountered similar mis-billings at every renewal. I would say that the problems seemed to be with the accounts system (software?) rather than the hard-working staff, who have done their best to sort things out eventually. They do their best and more than once I have been told that they would far rather be helping customers with their BB tech difficulties rather than investigating accounting errors.

Our service itself has always been excellent and good value for money, but I cannot understand why our other utility companies have no problems with renewals/bill payments. 

[#3]

Yeah, thanks. I am writing more in sorrow than anger and understand that Plusnet usually provide decent service despite system problems. However, it sometimes goes spectacularly wrong and the customer suffers.

In my case, I do not believe that the total mismanagement of my number transfer can be put down to system problems or over-worked staff. Also. during the attempts to fix the problem the original support  person entered the phone number wrongly in the action message by leaving a digit off, the help team person tried to attach my forum comments to the question but inserted the wrong link, and the person who called to discuss the problem when I was out of the house and failed security didn't want to call me back but sent a email instead. 

Then there's the puzzle of how the Plusnet system decides to charge a termination fee on a new contract. Perhaps I am just unlucky but it feels as though there is a lack of care.

[#4]

Update to this. I looked at the bill raised and can see it is a complete mess of incorrect charges on top of the £202 early termination charge. The bill for the month should be a standard month's payment for line and broadband (£23.95) less credit for the partial first month, instead of £275.01, an overcharge of £250.

I assumed that the bill would be withdrawn and replaced with a correct one and then Plusnet would take the right payment from the existing direct debit.

However I checked the tickets on the account and there are now 4 tickets raising credits of £59.19 and one raising a credit of £14,30. This brings the charge levied to £23.95, which I think is still wrong because there is no credit for the part month.

I had no emails relating to the tickets which were raised on the 4th and 5t March.

I was told to cancel my direct debit and wait for the situation to be resolved which would probably be by 9 March.

I have cancelled my direct debit so the the bill has not been paid and believe it or not I don't want a £275 charge taken from my bank because of an incorrect bill until Plusnet pays me back over the next 10 or so bills.

I also wanted to raise a complaint about this but all of the tickets have been closed already.

I would like some assistance from the help team in resolving this to my satisfaction because the steps taken by Plusnet so far are completely unsatisfactory.

[#5]

Hi @mac51, I'm really sorry about the issues with both the incorrect charging and porting your phone number across to us. I've just taken ownership of this for you as a matter of complaint and both issues should have been put right now, I've added an update to your account with a full response which you can check here: https://www.plus.net/wizard/?p=view_question&id=221735038