How has Plusnet support gone so badly wrong?

[#1]

OK thanks Matthew! Thanks to you and colleagues for your help on here over the past couple of weeks. Good to see one tiny bit of the old Plusnet remains!

[#2]

@MatthewWheeler

Great news that Peter’s issue is resolved but sad that BTOR are behind the curve on updating the notes which keep Plusnet informed. Would you know if this individual issue has been managed as part of a MSO by BTOR?

If it has, it’s my understanding that the “automatic” compensation system needs to be processed (triggered) manually by Plusnet. That understanding arises from personal experience and a specific comment from a staff member on the forum. Will the CA Team catch that without prompting or does a flag need to be raised to avoid further disappointment here?

[#3]

@Townman As far as I can see even though it was a wider issue affecting multiple customers it wasn't classed as a MSO so the compensation should be added automatically without any issues.

We have to give 30 days from when the fault is cleared before we can add it on manually if we need to

[#4]

@MatthewWheeler 

Thank you for the clarifications here - much appreciated.

@paulspeller 

Keep a watch until early Feb for the application of the automatic compensation (credit to your account).

[#5]

Thanks both, all very much appreciated!
Can I just check @Townman, when you say to keep a watch, where would I see this, would it come through as an email, or is it somewhere in my account online or something?
Thanks again!

[#6]

You need to keep an eye on your tickets - see the link below.

If there is a ticket, you should receive an email.

[#7]

I see, OK thanks, so basically when they do the credit it'll raise a ticket to tell me? Makes sense, thanks!

[#8]

I wanted to give another big thanks to all the forum users who've been so helpful over the past few weeks - thanks very much to you all!

I also wondered whether Openreach ever gave any details of what actually was wrong/what got fixed, as this was never added to my ticket, and I'm certainly curious to know what caused all this trouble.

I'm also curious as to whether it had any relation to the 24-hour outage I had at an exchange level the week before, seeing as that started pretty much exactly a week before this did, which would be a weird coincidence (but perhaps doesn't make sense to be anything other than a weird coincidence!).

Thanks again everyone. It's been good to be back online!

[#9]

Dredging up my old thread to circle back to my original question: "how has Plusnet support gone so badly wrong?" because I just had a call about my compensation, in response to me pointing out that the relevant period of downtime was 22 days, not the 19 days I've been compensated for. The agent refused to engage with anything I was saying and just kept repeating themselves that the compensation was correct. (They also kept bringing up a small goodwill gesture I was given in relation to some expenditure I incurred, which should absolutely not be related to or substituted for any of this compensation!)

Plusnet agreed on a call with me in mid-December (and we all know calls are recorded for quality and training purposes...) that they would count the issue as being logged on 12 Dec (when it started), not 13 Dec, because the outage began at 2pm on 12 Dec and I only found it after your hours for reporting the fault had finished for the day (and I found it absolutely incredible that an ISP would not have a way to report a fault at any particular time of day!).

I make it 22 days' compensation due when counting from two days after 12 Dec, until the outage was finally fixed on 5 January. But even if you count from two days after 13 Dec, I make it 21 days, not the 19 days I've been given.

It's one thing for them to make a mistake, or for there to be some detail/technicality that explains what appears to be a mistake. But it's quite another to respond to me summarising all this on a ticket by calling me up and offering no explanation but just an insistence that 19 days is correct. Talk about throwing your support agents to the wolves! The one I was speaking to had no information to reassure me with at all, just an antagonising insistence they were right and I was wrong.

I'm now waiting for a manager to call back, and hoping they can offer a better (any!) explanation of what's going on here!

[#10]

I don't know whether @MatthewWheeler or @willcutforth could perhaps have a look at this 👆🏻 - I really don't have much faith in anyone at Plusnet outside this forum at this stage tbh, whereas you've been extremely helpful throughout!

[#11]

Update: I had a call back from a manager and tbh I was quite shocked when they finally admitted that (ignoring my quibble about the starting date) the auto compensation *had* actually been miscalculated by one day. Makes this morning's rude call insisting that they were right and I was wrong with no explanation even more frustrating!

Anyway, as well as correcting that by one day, after a lot of resistance, they've agreed to meet me in the middle between the 'correct' 20 days and my anticipated 22 days with an extra £10 and I just want to never have to think about this again so I'm taking it and shutting up about this now. You can draw your own conclusions on whether I'm likely to renew my contract when it ends after 23 years with Plusnet in the summer!

Thanks again to everyone on this forum, you were great.

[#12]

Paul,

Did you get any indication of if the calculation was done manually or automatically?

It is usually done automatically, though as I hinted at a while back, sometimes these things need to be processed manually.

[#13]

Glad to hear you got sorted @paulspeller 

If you need anything else let us know

[#14]

@Townman I didn't get any helpful information at all really, but I think it was probably calculated automatically, based mainly on how little thought anyone who spoke to me seemed to have put into it before calling me! So it seems something had gone a bit wrong with the automatic calculation, if so, because it had done it for a day less than they said it should have done.

[#15]

Oh, one final query which I had forgotten about after a long call trying to get the compensation sorted.

On multiple occasions recently, Plusnet support staff, including the manager today, have told me that you can report outages online. I am convinced you cannot, having tried very thoroughly to find a way to do this at the start of both my outages in December (5 Dec and 12 Dec). Can anyone confirm who is right?

It's my understanding you can only log a fault between certain hours, either by calling Plusnet, or by using the SMS fault bot (which didn't work for me because it claimed my number was not associated with my account, even though it was).

There's not a way to report a fault at, say, 11.30pm, on a website, is there?