Really terrible customer service

[#1]

I signed up for the new unlimited fibre service at the end of last month. I thought I'd found such a good deal, I even posted about it on the popular HUKD website, where it was voted one of the top offers of that week:
http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/plusnet-new-unlimited-76mb-fibre-broadband-9-99-a-month-13-99-line-r...
I called to give my MAC code, and I was given my install date. The router arrived 3 days before install just as planned so it was all looking great and I was really looking forward to getting fibre. On the day of the install I booked the day off work, and I cleared a load of stuff in my house that was in the way of the install, and I then waited for the engineer. And I waited. And I waited.
The engineer did not arrive, so I called customer services. After sitting in a call queue for a very long time, I eventually got to speak to someone who told me that my install had been cancelled due to a member of your staff trying to book the engineer too soon. She said that I should have received a text message informing me of this, but it was obvious from what she said, that the text message was not sent and I certainly didn't receive one.
I told her that I wished to cancel my order as I had no intention of signing up to this kind of "service" for the next 18 months. She said that I had to speak to someone else, but that the call queue was over 30 minutes. I told her I did not wish to waste more of my time and asked if it was possible to get them to call me? She said no. Could I e-mail my cancellation? Again the answer was no.  I told her I would write a letter instead as I wasn't going to waste another 30 mins+ sat in a call queue.
After the call, I went onto the online "Help assistant" to make a complaint about my wasted time and terrible customer service. That was 6 days ago. Have I received a reply? I'll let you guess.
Really poor show Plusnet. Rather than recommending you, I really should have waited. I most certainly will not be recommending you to anyone in the future - in fact quite the opposite.

[#2]

Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant. 

[#3]

Hi there,
I'm really really sorry about that - as I'm sure you can appreciate it's been a very busy time for both us and our suppliers, which has led to some complications like this. I feel doubly bad as it was myself posting in that thread and we're incredibly grateful to you for both posting the deal and for defending us all the way through it - only to have this happen!
If there is anything at all we could do to restore your confidence please do let us know, I assure you we'd like nothing better than to restore your confidence and gain you as a customer.
I'll see if there's anything I can do to hurry the complaint ticket along for you in the mean time, but please do pop back and let us know.

[#4]

BT Openreach have been letting ISPs like Plusnet and hence their customers down frequently in recent times.
Plusnet will do whatever they can to sort out your problem as quickly as possible.

[#5]

Quote from: tijara33

Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant.

I'm quite calm, but thanks for your concern    If you think that it should be me "giving them another call" (current wait time 30 mins), then you have a different concept of customer service to me! I've been with almost all the major ISP's over the years and they all have excellent service once it's installed. It's tends to be the installation which is the problem, and that is the case here as well.

Quote from: Matt

Hi there, I'm really really sorry about that - as I'm sure you can appreciate it's been a very busy time for both us and our suppliers, which has led to some complications like this. I feel doubly bad as it was myself posting in that thread and we're incredibly grateful to you for both posting the deal and for defending us all the way through it - only to have this happen! If there is anything at all we could do to restore your confidence please do let us know, I assure you we'd like nothing better than to restore your confidence and gain you as a customer. I'll see if there's anything I can do to hurry the complaint ticket along for you in the mean time, but please do pop back and let us know.

I'm quite understanding when things go wrong, and companies can actually turn a negative experience into a positive experience with good customer service. But when you have one bad experience, and then another, and then another - before the service is even up and running! - that makes alarm bells ring.

Quote from: Strat

BT Openreach have been letting ISPs like Plusnet and hence their customers down frequently in recent times. Plusnet will do whatever they can to sort out your problem as quickly as possible.

I realise the situation that ISP's are in with BTOR, but I think it's a little disingenuous to blame them on this occasion. I believe the problem was caused by a Plusnet staff member trying to make the appointment earlier than BTOR allow. It was Plusnet who failed to inform me when it was cancelled. It was Plusnets call queues which I sat in. It is Plusnet that make it hard to cancel. It is Plusnet that have failed to respond to my support ticket for 6 days.

[#6]

Quote from: space

I realise the situation that ISP's are in with BTOR, but I think it's a little disingenuous to blame them on this occasion. I believe the problem was caused by a Plusnet staff member trying to make the appointment earlier than BTOR allow. It was Plusnet who failed to inform me when it was cancelled. It was Plusnets call queues which I sat in. It is Plusnet that make it hard to cancel. It is Plusnet that have failed to respond to my support ticket for 6 days.

Hands up. Unfortunately in this case it's true. All we can do is apologise - really sorry! - and feed back to the agents concerned in order to make sure we learn from this and to try and stop anything like this happening again.
As I'm sure you can appreciate it's been a very busy time since we released the Unlimited products, which will be the cause of the wait times and delayed reply from the complaints team, though I do want to look into the order further and find out how it came to be placed without the sufficient lead time - this I suspect is the root cause of everything else that happened.
I'll post back when I've looked into it a bit more and found out what happened there.

[#7]

Still no phone call, no text, no e-mail, no message on the help assistant. But I can't seem to be able to log into member centre, so hopefully my account has just been unceremoniously cancelled now? I can't know for sure, so I'll just have to guess that that is the case - alternatively it may just be a fault in member centre, so I'll have to keep checking to make sure.

Quote from: space

I'm quite understanding when things go wrong, and companies can actually turn a negative experience into a positive experience with good customer service. But when you have one bad experience, and then another, and then another - before the service is even up and running! - that makes alarm bells ring.

I suppose I'll just add it to my growing list of problems with Plusnet. Btw it would be nice to be given some idea of what is happening with the £150 I gave you guys? I'm fully expecting a long wait for it, as well as no doubt a further attempt to take payment in a months time, but even so, some kind of acknowledgement that the money is being returned, would be nice.

[#8]

Hi,
The ticket was answered this morning so should be in the help assistant there? I can see the agent who picked it up has also refunded the payment, that should go back onto your debit card - shouldn't be too long coming through, should arrive back in your account early next week.

[#9]

I can't see help assistant now my account has been cancelled, but yes, I did actually receive an e-mail this morning which I had missed. It confirmed that the account has been cancelled and that I will receive a refund in the next 5 days. Thanks for your help Matt.

[#10]

I know you feel you've had enough, and you've decided you're leaving
but I really think you should give Plus.net a chance to sort things out
I have been with them now for over 10 years, not always been perfect but usually better than most
I don't know of any other ISP where you can 'talk' directly to the guys who actually fix the problems
The 'great deal' you signed up for is still a great deal and you would benefit long term
I guess you've made up your mind, but just in case... plus.net really are very good (most of the time)

[#11]

The face that 'space' could not log in to the Member Centre to access the Complaint ticket rather sounds like the same issue as someone else had a few months back. I thought that Plusnet assured us that this type of issue had been sorted so that it would not occur to anyone else in future!
Explanation please Plusnet!

[#12]

Quote from: tijara33

Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant.

You must be the saddest person in the world to spend your time defending a corporation on their website. Either that or you are a plant.

[#13]

You're the sad one!

[#14]

@jfrankcom
I tend to agree with the last poster. Plusnet are an extremely good ISP/CP, however they aren't perfect (neither am I). That's not to say we wouldn't like them to be even better. We'll defend them when they are right and unfairly criticised, as I do also, and I will criticise them when I think it's justified.

[#15]

Quote from: jfrankcom

Quote from: tijara33 Once you've calmed down, why bot give them another call & try & sort it out. Believe me, overall they are a very good company with an excellent produc. I joined in June from AOL & have received excellent service. I'm now on unlimited fibre & it's brilliant.  You must be the saddest person in the world to spend your time defending a corporation on their website. Either that or you are a plant.

You're the plant, cabbage like I would respectfully suggest. PN have given me excellent service & I'm delighted to say so. After years as a customer of AOL/ Talk Talk I can assure you that PN are the best.