Pretty poor service/communication Plusnet

[#1]

Will try to keep this short.

My fibre to the cabinet is pretty flakey. God knows how it will perform from day to day. I don't usually complain as it tends to just be a waste of a good hour or two, and it mostly good enough (though not as promised).

This morning internet is terrible.Very slow. So start the normal debug:

- Reset the router - No improvement

- Router and Modem off/on - No improvement

- Run some speed tests on BT and speedtest.net - Show very poor performance

- Check Plusnet website. States planned maintenance but that it was due to finish 3 hours ago. No mention of any issues. Service Status page shows no issues.

- Start a Chat request, 105 people in the waiting list - Is this normal? I don't know.

- Wait 1.5 hours to get to the head of the queue. Talk to Kieran (or something similar). 3 questions in and the chat dies. Yip typical. Try to restart chat. Won't re-start - just waiting.... After 5 mins trying I figure out the plusnet chat system is offline. Why did Keiran not call me back? or email me? when the system crashed?

- Try old school and telephone - Message saying Major issues - all/most customers effected - 45 min wait. So my question is Why was this not on the service status page on the website? Plusnet want the website to be primary form of contact but don't even use it themselves.

So 3 hours later -  and the service is still bad. Have to assume hundreds of people had a similar experience to me this morning. Still have no idea of a resolution. But since I now know there is a major issue, I'll wait and see.

Plusnet - you need to up your game - no reason I should have wasted so much time this morning. I'm not talking about the service issue - I'm talking about you not communicating properly - and not calling me back when the chat disconnected. Off to see when my contract expires.

[#2]

Plusnet support is so bad at the moment it might as well be non-existent. I have high speed FTTC and it has gone very flaky. Download speed, which used to be a steady 75 Mb/s is now wind dependent. When the wind blows it drops right down, sometimes to zero. When it is calm it goes back up to 75. Loose connection somewhere I guess. But a call to Plusnet lets me know that "Due to heavy demand, waiting times are in excess of 30 minutes." More like more than and hour I'd say.

I tried Real Time Chat but was 34th in the queue and gave up after half an hour.

It was like this yesterday as well! I don't have the time to sit around waiting this long to report a problem. So went to "Contact Us" on the web site to find a way to raise a ticket online. Can't find a way. Technical Support email address? Doesn't exist!

Come on Plusnet. You just upped my monthly payments. Spend some of the money on getting a couple of extra technical support guys. Then you might "Do me proud!"

[#3]

I have to disagree about one major thing here: Pretty poor service and communication implies that there has to be some service/communication to begin with for it to be pretty poor. With regards to this morning's ongoing issues, there has been zero communication anywhere...so we have no clue what the issue is, whether it is being investigated or not (or whether PN staff are just ignoring it hoping it resolves itself), when it may or may not be resolved or anything else about it...as far as we know it could be an issue that will go on for hours more or days more or weeks more!

It is just symptomatic of the rapidly deteriorating service Plusnet is now offering to anyone that isn't an important customer (ie a business customer). I am starting to regret signing up to a new 2 years contract when I moved a few months ago and PN have fallen way outside the handful of companies that I trust and respect

[#4]

Ah...apparently we can only get communication via Twitter or Facebook and not on the Plusnet website itself. However, the communication is "we are aware of an issue and trying hard to fix it"...not exactly a revelation but better than nothing I suppose

[#5]

This was the reply I got to the email I sent to support@plus.net...

Hi,

Thank you for your email. Unfortunately we don't pick up any emails sent to this address. That's because emails can easily be lost, misdirected or even deleted and we think it's better if this doesn't happen.

Depending on your enquiry you may find your answer conveniently online - either from our support pages, or through the Help Assistant (http://help.plus.net). These have lots of easy to follow guides to help you with all your broadband and Internet questions (http://support.plus.net).

We prefer electronic 'tickets' to emails, this means that you can always see what updates have been made and check back over previous tickets too.

If you do prefer to contact us by phone you can call our support line on 0800 432 0200 or 0345 140 0200. We're open 365 days a year.

If you're a new customer, and want to know more about Plusnet, you can send us a message from our website (use the sales link at the foot of the page) or call our Sales Team on 0800 432 0080

Kind regards,

So bearing in mind there is no answer to my question on their website, I cannot find a way to create an electronic ticket and I haven't got the patience to wait for an agent to become free on the telephone, it looks like I'm stuffed!

Incidentally I wonder if Plusnet realise how stupid it sounds suggesting that the employees of my ISP are so technically inept they might accidentally lose or delete customers' emails! Year 7s in the school in which I teach have managed to get the hang of this new fangled communication method!