Plusnet Losing Sales, are they aware?

[#1]

Afternoon, I used to be AverageWhiteBloke on this community board but now I can't sign in because there's a 15 character limit on it. Hopefully I can get my account back.....

Anyway, back to the point. Are Plusnet aware that the phone number on their main page for sales sticks you in a loop? When it asks for residential or business and you press 1 for residential it flips you back to the same question and so on. Really needs sorted! If that's what you want potential customers to ring. Been like that for over two weeks now.

Is there an alternate number to ring? I had a sales call from PN to discuss my renewing options but I needed time to look into what I needed and compare packages with other providers, they said they would ring me back and haven't and I can't get in touch with them.

[#2]

Thanks for flagging that up, I believe you should be able to get through to them on 0800 432 0080. Could you confirm which one is showing for you on the home page so I am flagging up the correct number (Currently shows 0800 073 1120 for me)

In regards to your other (Original) account, it looks like the email address was a googlemail.com address, if you've tried recovering it by entering gmail.com the system won't have picked up on that as it's worded differently (Although I appreciate sending emails to either address would both come through to the same place) I hope that helps.

EDIT: In regards to the 2 numbers I've mentioned above, I've just tried calling both and they seem to be working fine for me.

[#3]

If you are on the https://www.plus.net/home-broadband/contact/ and click on "contact sales team" this is the faulty number. Press 1 for residential and it loops back to the same question. I got round it by contacting the TV sales number.

0800 432 0080 (from within the UK)

[#4 · Accepted solution]

Weird, appears to be from my landline. When I ring the number ending 0080 every time I press 1 it loops back to "Welcome to Plusnet, if you're a residential customer press 1" just tried from my mobile and it appeared to work maybe its not acknowledging the ket tone from the phone.

Regarding my account, how do I recover this if 15 characters aren't allowed? my email and username both have more than 15 characters. I notice all my previous posts have my username as AverageWhiteBlo, tried that but no good. Maybe would be easier to keep this new account but I've spent many, many years in this forum and it's handy when I forget how to do something to come back in here a re-read a post.

Nothing lost though, signed up for another contract so there's one sale recovered today I should get free BB by PN by now after over 15 years service. Maybe a letter off the Queen if you could sort that out.

[#5]

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Glad to hear you've managed to get signed up

@AWB70 wrote:
Regarding my account, how do I recover this if 15 characters aren't allowed? my email and username both have more than 15 characters. I notice all my previous posts have my username as AverageWhiteBlo, tried that but no good.

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Sorry, should have probably mentioned in my initial response, but you'd need to reset your password if you haven't done that since we migrated to the new forums.

The forgot password page doesn't actually ask for the username, it would just go off the email address and then send a password reset link to the email address entered providing it can find an account on that email address.

I hope that helps get you back on the other account.

[#6]

Thanks, I'm back. however, I don't think AverageWhiteBlo has the same ring to it . I'm assuming it can't be changed or the two accounts linked?

If not I guess I'll just use the AWB70 account and have to login to this old one to find previous posts.

[#7]

We disabled the ability to change username literally today (We initially said the permission would be available for the first 30 days)

We can't link the accounts, however if you drop me a PM I can change the username for you

[#8]

Got your message via email Harry but can't login to reply because of the 15 limit but please go ahead and rename my AverageWhiteBlo account to AWB70 and delete this one if you can, many thanks.

[#9]

Partially done. Just need to delete the temp account now.

[#10]

Thanks Harry, was having an identity crisis there. All is good again

[#11]

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@HarryB wrote:

Partially done. Just need to delete the temp account now.

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@HarryB,

Is this another defect for reporting to lithium?  The loss of (or a failure to maintain) database referential integrity?  It ought not to be possible to delete a primary record (such a s a user account) whilst there are subordinate records (posts) which reference the account.  The consequence is that there are now posts (as in this topic) with apparently no owner.

Maybe the correct process here might have been to assign the posts of the old user to the new one (a database update (set userID = newuserID where userID=olduserID) before deleting the old account or just lock the old account to inhibit its use.

[#12]

Whooooosh right over my head. Things seem to be working again so I'm all good.

[#13]

Right over my head too, whatever "database referential integrity" means (and over 3 weeks since the previous post!).
I suspect there is a bit of confusion here anyway. The "old" account "AverageWhiteBloke" which got curtailed to "AverageWhiteBlo" on the visible posts because of the 15 character limit was indeed renamed as "AWB70" and so he's got all his posts back - correct me if I'm wrong AWB70

The question that I find that really comes out of the comment by Townman is whether the temporary account that is now 'Anonymous' could have been assigned/renamed to "AverageWhiteBlo" before that was renamed "AWB70". Maybe @HarryB may like to have a play about with some test accounts on the test site just to see
Not that I think it actually matters two hoots as it was only temporary and only used for those above posts, where the related information is all in this thread anyway.

Also, I can think of reasons where it may well be desirable to delete the name/account associated with its posts but there could be good reason to leave the posts in place. In any event, not an issue in my book.

[#14]

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@Anotherone wrote:

.......whatever "database referential integrity" means

Fairly standard database terminology?   Wiki. Gives a simple definition and example which highlights the potential problem.

Not that I think it actually matters two hoots as it was only temporary and only used for those above posts, where the related information is all in this thread anyway.

Deleting the temporary account would be OK (ish?) as long as there were no links to other posts / threads.  But deleting the old 'AverageWhiteBloke' account could generate a lot of problems.  It did occur several years back in the PUG Forum where Users were allowed to delete their own account.  One significant User had a 'hissy fit' and deleted his account and all his posts causing lots of failing links to appear across numerous threads.  Lots of effort required to make the system stable / reliable again after removing the capability for other Users to cause similar damage. 

The lesson learnt was carried forward into the the *New* (as it was then )  SMF forum.   So, unless the deleting a User process is aware of AND capable of intelligently managing the links - let's not test it.

A response from Lithium will be interesting and hopefully informative

[#15]

In instances like this it is now normal practice not to physically delete an account but simply set an account flag to say it's deleted, to maintain the integrity of the database. This reduces the chances of orphaned entries in the database eluded to by townman.