Diabolical Speed, Customer Service and Payment issues......

[#1]

Back in Febuary My wife and i decided to switch from Virgin broadband (non cable), and looked around at the possibles.
After much discussion we decided to give PLUSnet a try, and oh how i wish i hadnt.
SInce Febuary i have not been able to view youtube videos, stream anything online at all, use my PS3 or XBOX online, receive an average of half a meg broadband speed and frequent line drop outs, oh, and not forgetting the huge issue of bills that have been taken out of my wifes account yet plusnet dont seem to have acknowledged that, despite my wife sending copy's of her bank statments (twice, the first ones were apparantly lost) and keep suspending our services.
The Customer Support Teams are nigh on useless, the technical team never reply to tickets and overall its the worst support network ive ever had the unfortunate task of dealing with.
Can somebody please explain how one company can get it so wrong?

[#2]

Hi CMR,
I can see that your line profile has lifted to 4000kb/s, I have altered your profile on our side to match. This should improve the speeds you're seeing, given that the connection is stable I suspect this will lift further in a week or so.
With regard to the billing issues your ticket is with our finance team currently who will update shortly. I'm sorry for the delay in replying.

[#3]

no, the line speed has not increased, nor have the payment issues been resolved, and now we are receiving VERY disgusting letters from yourselves demanding payment that you have already had.
all in all the worst major company related experience i have ever encountered.
your on hold speil states that plusnet is award winning. the only award it receives is an ofcom investigation and immediate shutdown.

[#4]

You may need to do a disconnect / reconnect of your router to pick up the increased speed.

[#5]

Quote

............ and now we are receiving VERY disgusting letters from yourselves demanding payment that you have already had.

Don't like that sort of attitude it's not very professional.

[#6]

Hi CMR,
I can see from the ticket on your account that the payment issue has been escalated to a manager to call you back as per your request.
Hopefully the engineer tomorrow will sort out your connection issues.

[#7]

We keep getting told that the billing system is fine, yet more and more people seem to be having problems.
Is there really an increase, or is just that more people complain here than used to?

[#8]

we have had problems with plusnet since day one, diabolical speed (half a meg), charges that were not declared prior to sign up, and finally the incapability to take payment without losing it. not only that, last week i phoned up because we had been disconnected, the person on the phone looked at the proof we had sent in, and agreed that something was wrong. 2 days later mysteriously the proof had 'dissapeared' of the system and now we are back to square one.
as ive said to them, i work from home running a small internet based motorcycle buisness and my takings have halved since joining plusnet due to not  havinf service or not being able to load certain sites, in fact i find myself using my Iphone more and more.

[#9]

Hi CMR,
With regard to the fault I can see an engineer is due tomorrow, hopefully the fault will be resolved during the visit - we'll update the ticket as soon as the notes are available though if you could post back advising what happened that'd be great.
As for the billing, I'm sorry about this - I can't see any record of the statement being added to the account at all, though I can see it is being looked into by our finance team. It would help things a great deal if you could attach a scan of the statement (or a screen capture of the online statement) with any personal information blanked out.

[#10]

Good evening, today the BT engineer attended, walked in half drunk, plugged his computer into the master socket, checked it, said we had 6 meg, then checked at the router, and said we had 4 meg, our problems were due to the cable. we have never had 4 meg at the router, as plusnets and our own speedtest results have shown.
To prove what a liar the chap from bt is, i have today, at a cost of 18 pounds, gone out and bought a superfast broadband cable, even though i had already purchased a new one.
since fitting it, i have done several speedtests, all of which i have changed things around to check everything he claimed was wrong. as was my first thought he was indeed wrong.

here are the results from the several tests i have done this evening since fitting the new cable, the final one was done with only the broadband line straight into the master phone socket and the phone disconnected.
Download speedachieved during the test was - 932 Kbps
For your connection, the acceptable range of speeds is 600-7150 Kbps.
Additional Information:
Your DSL Connection Rate :5792 Kbps(DOWN-STREAM), 448 Kbps(UP-STREAM)
IP Profile for your line is - 3500 Kbps

If you wish to discuss these results please contact your ISP.
If you are experiencing problems with specific applications, servers or websites please contact your ISP for assistance.
Your test has completed please close this window to exit the performance tester.
Please visit FAQ section if you are unable To understand the test results.



Notes:
If your download speed lies in this range then your connection seems to be working fine.
Notes:
The Download Speed is the average rate that was achieved during this test.
Notes:
Your line is configured to the maximum rate that it can support or at your chosen fixed rate, this is known as the line rate and would be viewed through your CPE software or in your router configuration.
Your IP profile is always less than the line rate and is normal on any network.

http://www.speedtest.net/result/814516202.png

http://www.broadbandspeedchecker.co.uk/bimages/22671938.jpg
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/button/12738552042733632026.png
just broadband
http://www.speedtest.net/result/814526651.png
this is not acceptable, it simply shows that the engineer who attended the house this morning was so inept at his job that he could not find the correct problem.
if this is not resolved within 7 days i will taking things further.
regards
craig

[#11]

I'm just updating this thread to say that updates have been added to ticket 33350383 for your attention.
I will be providing further updates following 2pm which is when the engineer's notes who has been visiting today should be available to us, I need to make you aware in relation to your billing I have double checked this with a member of our finance team and it would seem that the payments have not actually cleared. If you do have anything you can send by way of a bank statement we urge you to do so, as commented by Matt previously please feel free to blank out any sensitive information you may not wish for us to see, however we would ask for you to leave visible the account number, sort code any any payments that you believe we have taken.
Just to echo some of my comments in response to the ticket you raised we are of course taking you tell us about the engineer visit last Friday very serious indeed and awareness of this has been raised at a high level with our suppliers now. I will keep you updated as to the nature of the responses we receive about this.

[#12]

Just to make those who have read this problem aware, this is how the land lies at this time.
this week we had our broadband cut off AGAIN. this is despite us sending in a 3RD!!! set of bank statement as eveidence, so despite us sending 3, notes on plusnets system confirming at least one set being seen on the system by an agent named [mremoved] on the 19th april and numerous conversations with 'senior management', this is not proof enough.
i am now in the process of taking the complaint to OFCOM, i have contacted watchdog with who have got back to me, they have had numerous complaints about plusnet recently and i will now within 14 days if anything is to come of it. i have also contacted trading standards for some advice who have also said it is not the first time plusnet's name has popped up.
oh, and plusnet refused to give me my mac code, so i cant transfer to a reliable, fast broadband supplier who is capable of taking payments from people once then not trying to commit fraud by asking for that money again.
dick:csa

[#13]

CMR,
Having thoroughly checked your account we can see no log of a bank statement being received and payments still show as outstanding. As advised when I phoned you on the 19th I have spent time with our finance team too to check our billing systems directly and no evidence of payment can be found, could you please advise us when the last bank statement was sent as I did advise you to send one when we spoke 2 days ago so it may just be that the last one has not reached us yet.
We have agreed to a 7 day grace period from here for this to get to us so your service will remain active in the meantime and its most likely that from our point of view that we may just need to wait for the last statement sent to us to arrive by post.
With regards to a MAC there is a log of a call from you on your account requesting on on 8/04/10, we then supplied you with a MAC key on 12/4/10 (within 5 days as per OFCOMs guidelines which was never used and hence the service is still with us. Please contact our customer operations team again on 0845 140 6002 if you need to request another one.
With regards to the fault could you please advise if you have received the test router I sent you on the 19th and if you have had the chance to try this out yet?

[#14]

All gone quiet just as it was getting exciting!  Has someone been paying money to the wrong account?  The penny dropped and the mistake become clear............we may never know.

[#15]

I can't give specific details as it is sensitive to the customer who started this thread but this issue has been resolved.