I've posted this under Plusnet feedback, but mods please feel free to move it if you think there is somewhere more appropriate. I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but I believe that what is below needs saying.
I would like to thank the Plusnet community staff and volunteers for taking the time and getting stuck into this forum and picking up issues on here and running with them. It doesn't go unnoticed and I for one are grateful for the knowledge and support that the staff and volunteers provide on this forum.
Recently the Plusnet team have taken quite a bit of angry criticism on here from a minority of new customers. To those few I say that the staff and volunteers who look after this forum are fellow human beings and they deserve to be treated the same way you would like to be treated.
If you have just come of the phone and you are angry because you’ve been on hold for 45 mins, take some time out and calm down before you vent on here. If you ask politely and treat people how you would like to be treat, I’ve found that you will get a much better response.
In my opinion, Plusnet is unfairly copping flack from customers transferring in when they are being constrained by the limitations of the BT Wholesale ordering systems and / or the customers previous ISP has not followed the correct process. If the previous ISP places cease orders on the line, this stops Plusnet from doing anything until the line has been cut off. These issues are not unique to Plusnet, check out the BT Forums and the Thinkbroadband forums. There is a common denominator in these forums and it isn’t Plusnet. One thing Plusnet could do better, is use less industry jargon, I doubt there are few lay customers who would know what and MPF line is.
Like any system the BT Wholesale ordering system that Plusnet and other ISPs use is far from perfect. I’ve been on the receiving end of this several times in the past and have twice spent a month with no internet. Yes, being without internet is inconvenient but these things do happen and its often that the issue is outside of Plusnet’s direct control, needing BTW or Openreach to sort it out which inevitably means waiting for a response.
However I have found that Plusnet support staff genuinely listen and try to help and not just regurgitate some call centre script like some other providers I could mention. Yes, it takes longer to answer the phone but in my past experience the issues are identified quicker than other ISPs I could care to mention. Which would you rather have, the phone answered quickly be someone who can’t deviate from a script and tries to fob you off or having to wait to talk to someone who listens and takes appropriate action. Having experienced the former at another ISP, I know which I’d rather have.
One thing Plusnet could do, but I don’t know if their call centre setup supports it, is a call back function if the wait exceeds a certain time, the user presses a touchtone button to initiate the callback and the software handles the rest. I’ve seen it work quite well with some other companies and it may help alleviate some of the frustrations of being on hold for a period of time.
I also feel that there needs to be a sense of perspective, I don’t know how many services Plusnet successfully provision every week, but what we see on this forum is probably less than a dozen provisioning issues per week. Give that this is primarily a help forum then you would expect to see the more difficult cases popping up on here.
I would just like to express my thanks again to the staff and volunteers who make this forum worthwhile.
I'll definitely take this on board the next time I explain things.
