I realise I'm a new customer, but...

[#1]

... I'm not exactly brimming over with confidence so far regarding Plusnet.
Having never had the internet at home, I skimmed around looking for a good deal and since BT and Virgin wanted £39 to even connect my phone line I steered well clear.. Came across Plusnet, liked what I saw and signed up.
So on Monday, at 10 am, I registered.
The problems thus far are:
- My order tracker is still showing as being no farther along progress wise than it was on Monday afternoon.  I sent a question to plusnet yesterday morning at just after 8 am..  The main point of my question was around the fact that my order seemed to have not moved and the debit card payment I had made for my initial payment wasn't taken.  I added a little thing at the end asking for my DD date to be changed.
I saw that my question would be answered in around 6 hours.. not too bad I thought.
I finally received an answer at 2.53 this morning only saying my DD date could not be moved.  Thats it! No order information, no debit card response, nothing.
-  I also queried the fact that after setting up the service, the following question appeared in my closed questions;
"Our records indicate that your telephone number may already be in use for Home Phone. This is a possible inconsistency with our records. If you wish to add Home Phone to your service please raise a question to our support centre and we will be happy to progress this for you.""
Again, no answer to this.  Puzzling, as in the 3 years I've been in my property, there has been no phone line used at all, as we use mobiles for calls.
I know plusnet say 2-4 days for homephone setup, followed by another 5-7 days to get broadband on, but you would think they would answer questions they are asked and at least keep me up to date if there's a problem.
Sorry for the ramble, just not overly impressed with the first few days...

[#2]

Welcome to the Forums
The credit card for the first payment speeds things up, a DD has to be submitted and authorised before the order is placed with BT.
There is another problem at this moment that BT in a lot of areas are running a backlog of work, it affects not just PN but a lot os other ISP.
Unless it is a simultaneous supply, the phone install then 5-7 Working bays for broadband is normal

[#3]

Thanks pierre_pierre
I realise that 5 -7 working days is the broadband connection date, but it would be nice if someone from Plusnet would keep me updated on whats happening with the phoneline activation side of things.
I read somewhere else on this forum that Plusnet phone someone throughout their set up to keep them updated as to what is happening.  I've had NOTHING so far, and on just checking tracker and e mails, my order still hasnt budged one inch.
If there are BT backlogs, a simple e mail, text or call to advise me that this is holding things up would have helped tremendously.
The lack of this means I'm still in the dark and no further forward from when I ordered Plusnet on Monday morning...

[#4]

Hi and welcome to the forums.
I'm sorry to hear that your first impressions haven't been good. I've sent feedback to the manager of the agent who failed to answer most of your ticket, please rest assured that these things are noted and not allowed to slip under the radar.
With regards to the order status, you're looking at the broadband order tracker. We can't submit your broadband order until your telephone goes active which is why there has been no change. To head off a likely question - there isn't a telephone order tracker and I don't think we plan to make one, there's a big change happening to a new telephone ordering system in the future but I haven't been involved in that project to know the details.
Your telephone is due to go active tomorrow so the broadband order should be submitted tomorrow or Friday then go active in 5-7 working days.
I'd just like to draw your attention to the 'what happens next page' (first thing you see when you log in to the Member Centre) which says:

Quote

We'll arrange for your phone service to start. This will take 2-4 working days. We'll then arrange for your broadband service to be activated. This will take 5-7 working days from when your phone service has started.

Can you get me a ticket number for the message 'Our records indicate that your telephone number may already be in use for Home Phone. This is a possible inconsistency with our records. If you wish to add Home Phone to your service please raise a question to our support centre and we will be happy to progress this for you'? I've had a search through your account both form our internal systems and from the Member Centre and the only reference to this is the ticket that you have raised. If you have received this message then there's definitely a problem and I'll raise it to our Development Team.
Despite all this, everything's proceeding exactly as we would expect with your order and there's no need to worry at all.

[#5]

I am a recent joiner of Plusnet too, I can confirm that the joining process is broken, I've been charged multiple times for the same thing, orders have failed to be processed when paid for, DD instructions have gone missing, emails, sms, web site status and customer agents all at odds with each other and themselves, confirmations claiming to be about one thing are actually about another entirely.
Here's my advice and observations:
1) Deal with things on the phone by calling Plusnet and make sure you get through the agent your talking to that you want ALL the problems solved and for them to take ownership of the issues.
2) Don't use the ticketing system, when issues become complex and splinter into many different subjects (payments, confirmaiton, order progress, phone, broadband, etc) you will find the ticket system both annoying as it forces you through a series of totally irrelevant Q&A pages, and then when you have 3 open tickets will refuse to open or display more (I currently have at least 3 open and can only see the extra open tickets if I close one of the three it shows me).
3) Paying by credit card for initial payments just works for Plusnet, whereas paying by DD (as I attempted to do) is just broken for Plusnet, neither their automated systems or their operators understand what that really means and both will mislead about whats going off because of it.
4) Don't get dishearten when they say they've fixed it, and they have not, or they "fix" something that wasn't broken and fail to address the real issue, it will be sorted if you persist.
Jason

[#6]

Quote

Your telephone is due to go active tomorrow so the broadband order should be submitted tomorrow or Friday then go active in 5-7 working days.

Ben, Out of interest why does simultaneous provide seem never to be used ? Does it just not work at all or do BT just get it wrong ? 

[#7]

@MisterW
Transfers of a working line (from another BT based provider) are not compatible with SIM provides, transfers of a working line (from a full LLU provider) should be attempted but often don't complete. A start of a stopped line has insufficient lead time to place a SIM order so that only leaves new line installations as good to go with a SIM provide.
@fourfourdevon
Thanks for the feedback, is there any chance you could elaborate on your individual circumstances so that I can look a little deeper into what went wrong with your experience of our service?

[#8]

Quote from: Ben

@fourfourdevon Thanks for the feedback, is there any chance you could elaborate on your individual circumstances so that I can look a little deeper into what went wrong with your experience of our service?

lol 
OK, I  will see if I can remember them all.
1) I never received any emails confirming payment for internet, but I received one claiming to be for internet, but was actually for the phone service.
2) My DD details were lost, or not lost, or took a long time to process, or processed normally depending on which advisor I was talking to.
3) My DD payment failed, or didn't fail, or was messed up by a "known billing system issue" again depending on which advisor I was talking to.
4) Broadband phone charges (at a good whack I might add) for calls to your 0845 number
5) My upgrade to ANYTIME on the broadband phone had to processed manually due to the system failing to understand DD's
6) Even after manually taking payment my broadband phone account did not upgrade until I raised a ticket
7) I was charged for the ANYTIME package for 4 days when I couldn't use it and have yet to receive a refund
I received email telling me my broadband had been cancelled, I received a phone call telling me it had not
9) I have been charged 3 times for broadband activation, so far have been given one refund
10) I have email saying I will be charged extra on first full months bill to make up for the part of the period during which I have apparently received free broadband...  I asked for this to be explained as a) I have been charged 3 times already b) I was charged BEFORE service started and so have received no "free" time c) I believe the adjustment should be a credit to me, not a debit.
11) The broadband phone system headline rates when you signup are wrong (or were wrong) when compared to the actual charges.
Thats all I can remember right now, Im sure there were more.
Please note, in terms of being a Plusnet customer, thats nearly 1 point I raised for each day I've been a customer, yet despite calls, tickets and posts on this forum no one has offered me anything other than a promise it will be OK, which is wearing a bit thin now given that I think you guys now owe me money and not the other way around.
Jason

[#9]

Quote from: Ben

Hi and welcome to the forums. I'm sorry to hear that your first impressions haven't been good. I've sent feedback to the manager of the agent who failed to answer most of your ticket, please rest assured that these things are noted and not allowed to slip under the radar. With regards to the order status, you're looking at the broadband order tracker. We can't submit your broadband order until your telephone goes active which is why there has been no change. To head off a likely question - there isn't a telephone order tracker and I don't think we plan to make one, there's a big change happening to a new telephone ordering system in the future but I haven't been involved in that project to know the details. Your telephone is due to go active tomorrow so the broadband order should be submitted tomorrow or Friday then go active in 5-7 working days. I'd just like to draw your attention to the 'what happens next page' (first thing you see when you log in to the Member Centre) which says: Quote We'll arrange for your phone service to start. This will take 2-4 working days. We'll then arrange for your broadband service to be activated. This will take 5-7 working days from when your phone service has started. Can you get me a ticket number for the message 'Our records indicate that your telephone number may already be in use for Home Phone. This is a possible inconsistency with our records. If you wish to add Home Phone to your service please raise a question to our support centre and we will be happy to progress this for you'? I've had a search through your account both form our internal systems and from the Member Centre and the only reference to this is the ticket that you have raised. If you have received this message then there's definitely a problem and I'll raise it to our Development Team. Despite all this, everything's proceeding exactly as we would expect with your order and there's no need to worry at all.

Thanks for the response.  Good to hear the phone service will be good to go tomorrow.
I still haven't received confirmation whether or not my initial debit card payment has been received?  I would have thought this was a fairly instantaneous process..
Thanks for all the info so far Ben, and from everyone else.
Hope your issues get resolved soon Jason.
Edit to say, I just checked transactions on my account page and it looks like the debit card payment still hasn't came off.
Does it really take over 2 1/2 days to take a debit card payment?
And why is it not possible to change my DD details?  I'm sure I'm not alone in NEEDING direct debits to come out on a specific date..
Thanks

[#10]

@fourfourdevon
Thanks for all that, it'll take me a little time to digest, investigate and feedback but it's really important that we take your comments on board so that we can improve our support.
@Grant17375
We don't process your initial payment until your broadband order is placed so that will go out over the next few days.The payment does go through instantly and you'll see this on your 'view all transactions' page as soon as it's processed. As has been discussed in numerous threads, we can't change a Direct Debit date because our system was never built with this functionality in mind. In order to allow this we'd need to rip out the whole billing system and rebuilt it from the ground up. Whilst there may be proponents of that approach, we don't have the resource available in our Development Team to do this.

[#11]

Just to be clear Ben, all these issues have been reported and either are, or should be, or should be going to be dealt with, but it would be good to know somebody was on top of the whole signup process and that my issues were not in the "should" or "will" category, but in the "closed to everyones satisfaction" category.

[#12]

Thanks for the reply Ben, I appreciate the effort.
Perhaps it would be beneficial if, somewhere in the ordering process, it's made clear that the debit card payment won't be taken until the broadband order is placed?  I realise I'm going to make myself look pretty stupid if this is already the case, but I couldn't see anything to this effect when signing up.
I'd hope at least then that we are giving advance notice of the Direct Debit date.  No one likes bank charges due to unforeseen DD payments leaving your bank when you're not expecting it...

[#13]

You are bu e-mail, but only a couple of days before taken