PN's future

[#1]

Nearly 1/3 rd of customers who took the poll felt that PN were no going to get better. That is a staggering rate of unhappiness and ought to make PN think again.
But I have been with PN through some bad times and I fear another major disaster is around the corner, so I reckon it's getting to be time to leave. PN seem keen for that, when I mentioned in a ticket complaint that I was looking around, I was wished by the PN rep "good luck with your new provider". I said I was looking!!!

[#2]

Quote from: Anon

Nearly 1/3 rd of customers who took the poll felt that PN were no going to get better.

48 responses (at time of writing). Hardly statistically representative of 750 000(?) customer base.

[#3]

Quote from: Anon

Nearly 1/3 rd of customers who took the poll felt that PN were no going to get better.

By the same gross assessment, around half believe PN will tough this out and come good.  Seems some people only want to see the negative side of a situation, irrespective of the actual views expressed by those responding.

[#4]

hmm ive been a residential customer with plusnet for 3 years now and i think they do just fine

[#5]

Quote

Nearly 1/3 rd of customers who took the poll felt that PN were no going to get better. That is a staggering rate of unhappiness and ought to make PN think again.

This is just silly. Not only is it it a very low number of responses, it is a self-selected set of responses. Anyone who understands anything about polls will realise that this "result" is not worth any thought whatsoever.
Of course Plusnet can do some things a lot better and even the majority of basically content customers will be pleased to see some improvements. Plusnet has no god-given right to exist and if it does not satisfy the majority of its customer then it will quite rightly struggle. However people with a more balanced attitude will realise that for the issues that are often discussed on this forum to be an existential threat to Plusnet, customers have to be convinced that alternative providers will give equal or better service and value for money. Unless I have missed something I do not believe that Plusnet numbers are falling rapidly as customers desert to competitors.
What we tend to get is a lot of heat and light from a small number of people - many with a genuine grievance, some not quite as reasonable - who then want to assume that because Plusnet has under-performed for them that they are incapable of providing a reliable, reasonably priced service to the majority. I don't believe that to be true.

[#6]

So is it the fault of the poll that not many people replied or is it that few people visit and read PN forms. But to have customers who have been long term customers expressing dissatisfaction and talking about leaving IS very significant people like Jelv and if you check when I started on here it goes back to these forums starting in 2007 and I was registered with PN before that. But recently the issues get more and more and my MAC is not far away. So the poll might not be statistically significant but long term users starting to complain is, IMO.

[#7]

The options in the poll are biased towards a negative result, hence the small number of responses. Why not an option "I am more than happy with the service from PN"? That gets my vote.

[#8]

My vote too, tijara33.  I don’t often contribute to forums, but I saw this thread and wondered what on earth the fuss was about.   So 20% of 48 people (at the time of writing) think that Plus Net has had its day.  Wow.   Out of more than 700,00 customers that’s some statistic.  I wonder what the remaining 699,952 or whatever the number is, think ?   Well as one of them, I’m very happy with the service,  
Not perfect, they did have difficulty with my direct debit when I switched banks, but that’s a known problem and was sorted amicably.  I’ve also just had my bill reduced, without asking, when I rang about something else - a commitment to a further 12 months after 9+ years was not difficult.   Well done PN and thank you.  Some of us appreciate your good efforts and I hope those with problems get them sorted soon.

[#9]

No prob`s here, just signed up for another 12 months with  a very competitive deal 

[#10]

Yes, I think the questions could have been worded differently to get a better response, but the point I was making is that it is virtually impossible to get a meaningful result from a poll like this because there is no way of getting a representative sample of replies. Almost by definition, a large number of the people that use the forum will have problems that they believe have not been sorted out properly.
Any mass market organisation will have customers that are upset at any given time. Some of them will be long-term, loyal customers, and some of them will be upset enough to leave. That is regrettable but in itself does not mean the organisation is in terminal decline. I think you're right that PN should be aware of the feelings of its long-term experienced users (and I am sure that they are through this forum) though I do not know how these are fed into in business decisions.
All ISPs selling consumer market products will be controlling support costs very carefully and operating a balancing act between customer satisfaction and product price. I am sure that PN will have a view on the satisfaction levels across their customer base and will use that to make decisions on resourcing support.
For the forum to have impact I think it needs to focus on specifics rather than general views on whether the business is falling apart. I just don’t think we can see that from where we are. I actually like Kevin’s approach of trying to identify processes that appear to be failing and causing significant customer problems.

[#11]

I agree; the questions are biased.

[#12]

I found a calculator that suggests for a population of 70000 ( mentioned earllier) a sample of 383 is needed to achieve 95% confidence with 5% error margin.
Seems to prove the poll's worth NOT.
BTW what's the membership of the community, who are still PN customers?

[#13]

Forums  currently have 29127 Members https://community.plus.net/forum/index.php?action=stats but no idea how many are PN subscribers.

[#14]

@ 29000it's still around 380.

[#15]

I cannot complain about PN's service at all. I did have a torrid time a few years ago but, with the expert help from Anotherone, a new router and a visit from a second OR engineer who knew what to look for (the first one did not have the right gear, or how to use it and found no fault!); my line stats have been absolutely static for many months this year with a down speed of 7,616K on a 8.182K line 6db SNR margin. Long may it renain...no chance of astonomic speeds on optiical cables ever reaching this neck of the woods!!