New accounts system
These are some of the issues/needed improvements that have been discussed/promised over the years waiting for the new accounts system to emerge. How many of these have been delivered?
- Ability to select/change billing date
- Correction/cancellation of Direct Debit if user contacts Plusnet immediately on receipt of notification email
- Display contract end date
- Discounts maximum of 12 months when contracts can be 18
- Emailed statements or availability of pdf downloads
- Single account for multiple lines
If you've left Plusnet, why would you worry what has been implemented and what has not? After all, I use to be with BT (and a fair number of ISP's before that) but haven't been back to any of them since. No interest at all. It's called moving on. Maybe you regret leaving. 🙂
I'm only concerned about my current ISP i.e. Plusnet. I get a bill and it gets paid each month, I haven't been totally off line since I joined Plusnet back in 2015. Last time the line speed just slowed down. Line fault - took 3 OR engineers a week to sort. I use quite a lot of GB's each month. Plusnet have never written to me to say I have used too much. I suppose I'm what they call a satisfied customer. Yes, they could be better but no doubt the price would increase.
The point of emailing invoices is this:
Some years ago I managed an office in Crawley which had a Plusnet business line. We required VAT invoices for the accounts department in the Bristol head office. The choice was:
- I had to print to PDF and forward the invoice every month
- I give the account login and password to someone in the accounts department so they could print the invoices themselves
Neither option was good. I'm sure Plusnet would prefer login details and passwords not being given out willy nilly to staff who had no need to get at anything else on the account. It would have been preferable to receive them automatically with a mail rule forwarding them.
If Plusnet are not going to email invoices they should allow a second login on business accounts that just accesses the account and billing information, and does not allow any technical access such as mail setup.
Display contract end date ... timely reminder where I’d seen reference to it ... https://community.plus.net/t5/Service-Information/Member-Centre-Improvements/m-p/1585677#M324
Not billing but the user portal changes!!
@jelv wrote:
- Ability to select/change billing date
Yes, but you can't choose the 29,30,31 or 1st. There are also rules about how often you can change it and it can't be done with 7 days of your next invoice
- Correction/cancellation of Direct Debit if user contacts Plusnet immediately on receipt of notification email
No, if we've submitted a Direct Debit request to the bank we can't amend it as the request has already been made.
- Display contract end date
This is much more prominent now thankfully and shows clearly on the landing page when you log into the member centre.
- Discounts maximum of 12 months when contracts can be 18
We've been able to discount for the entirety of the contract period for a few years now, there have been a few outliers where we weren't able to but that wasn't anything to do with the billing system.
- Emailed statements or availability of pdf downloads
No, we floated the idea but it was rejected by our security team.
- Single account for multiple lines
No we don't do this
@JonoH wrote:
- Correction/cancellation of Direct Debit if user contacts Plusnet immediately on receipt of notification email
No, if we've submitted a Direct Debit request to the bank we can't amend it as the request has already been made.
I think you've missed the point of what was suggested. Obviously once it has been submitted to the bank it cannot be changed. If you emailed notice say 8 days in advance and only submitted 3 days in advance there would be a 5 day window for the user to contact you and get the bill corrected. You could put the deadline for contacting you in the email notice.
Sorry Jelv, my misunderstanding.
The new billing engine includes the ability for us to be able to edit a Bill if the customer disputes the amount with us prior to us requesting it from the bank. (this functionality is currently unavailable due to a bug we're working on now) We also have a new team about to start who monitor bills for spikes and should the bill spike the bill will be held whilst we investigate and contact the account holder. If all is well it will slot back into the billing run. If not the account will be billed the non-disputed amount and the account would remain active whilst the dispute is investigated.
That is good news.
How long is the gap between sending the email notification and sending the request to the bank?
I don't see the contract dates on two accounts I have access too.
