Very Frustrated new Plusnet User

[#1]

Having seen reports, such as those by USwitch, saying how wonderful Plusnet are, I decided to install them as my ISP.  I wish I'd never heard of them!  Since my account became active I have not been able to access email in any way shape or form.  Not through Outlook and not through Webmail.  This problem was first reported on 3rd May, I am still awaiting a fix.  I cannot believe how shockingly bad the level of support has been.  The support I have recieved is a joke!!!!
The support system seems to be an ever widening recursive circle, report  problem to First Line, they look at the problem (eventually!) and agree with my diagnosis. They suggest the problem needs to be escalated to the Network Team.  The Network Team agree with my own diagnosis (again this is an eventual outcome) and delete my mail account then recreate it.  They respond to me by saying that I need to retry my email in 4 hours time and send the problem back to First Line.  After 4 hours, I report back to First Line that the problem has not changed in any sense, they (on an ever increasing response time, lastly 5.5 hours) agree with me and send the problem off to the Network Team again who (when they bother, in excess of 12 hours now) delete the email account again and so on......
Honestly, choosing to use Plusnet has been a huge mistake, I have not had the service to which I subscribed and seem unable to find any way of finding anybody who will offer me any help at all. The helpline told me that ther problem is because they are in South Africa and the Network Team are in the UK, very helpful!  The whole situation is ridiculous, I just cannot believe that this problem has been allowed to carry on for this long and the lack of communication is appalling!!!!  I shall be taking the matter up with Oftel because nobody will even bother to respond to me.  In terms of recommendations......FORGET IT!  The whole support system is a joke!!!
[Moderator's note by Adie (Adiewoo) amended  attachment to remove CSA names]

[#2]

Hi PRElla - Oh boy how I agree & sympathise with you & I joined 16 days ago from Tiscali & still not got wireless.  First they tell you you need  one thing, then tell you another, then refer you to Microsoft (where I got charged £46) & still could not get me wireless.  Dell wanted me to join for a year before they could help.  Now Plusnet have told me to take it to computer shop??  Reading on the Forum here I think it must be the router, no wonder they gave free routers - prob bought up a job lot of duff ones that didnt work & offered free to attract more customers!!    PN have made mistakes with my billing, mistakes with call features, cut my phone for over a day, mobile texts telling me to look online for updates when they knew I could not get online, etc. etc.  Spent a fortune on mobile phone calls to support, calls to Dell, Microsoft etc.  Still not wireless - then they mail you with fictitious speeds available.    My actual speed for last few days has been 100.0 mbps having to use Ethernet cable to connect!!  The lack & quality of support is appalling & what you do get is absolutely useless.  I agree with you - Tiscali or now TalkTalk are wonderful compared to PN!!  You feel so abandoned - once you have signed up with em PN  they just seem not to care a fig!! 
:)*Re your prob with email - funnily enough I set mine up myself - there is doc on support page called 'Hello & Welcome' (haha) about setting up mail & gives instructions there which I printed off.  (Tho I had set it up previously with Tiscali).  Then I went to Outlook Ex, click tools, Internet a/cs, delete previous entries (if you dont want them) & add new, following instructions given .  Finally in 'advanced' tab I usually tick the last 3 boxes:  'leave a copy of msgs on server' box + 'delete after...days' + delete from server when doc deleted' and then you will get mail both in OE and PN mail pages (hopefully).  Then when away from home you can use the Webmail but not OE (I have desktop only).  If you study the instructions it's quite easy to set up mail yourself without their help.  Providing, of course, you don't have a deeper problem.  Good luck with it 
Hope this has been of help, its nice to know there are many others who agree with you about the awful Support & regret signing up with PN!!  I wonder how they have supposedly got awards????  Also Martin Lewis has got a lot to answer to for recommending them!!??!!   

[#3]

Quote

Hi PRElla - Oh boy how I agree & sympathise with you & I joined 16 days ago from Tiscali & still not got wireless.  First they tell you you need  one thing, then tell you another, then refer you to Microsoft (where I got charged £46) & still could not get me wireless.

Hi there pumpkin,
If you could possibly reply to the questions raised in your other thread ( http://community.plus.net/forum/index.php/topic,85806.0.html ) then the forum community may be able to help you sort out your wireless problem.

[#4]

Pumpkin, thanks for your reply, maybe there's comfort in numbers!  They're not just picking on me, they're just plain CARP to everyone!
Anyhow, I did set up the email myself, the problem is, as you suggested, deeper than that and they don't seem to have a clue themselves.  It's not just Outlook that doesn't work, when I try and login via Webmail the connection is dropped by the Imap server.
I too have spent time and money on pointless calls to the support line and when they then tell you that the problem is because of country barriers (CS being in South Africa and TS being in UK) it is just unbelievable.  They further promised on my last call that somebody would come back to me and I would receive a reply to my ticket by 4am this morning (relevance to time must be something to do with SA time I guess?!), strangely enough even this hasn't happened, so in the last 24 hours, despite raising extra tickets asking for response and despite posting on teh forums and despite phoning CS, still nothing at all has happened, no contact, no responses absolutely nothing!!!!!
I really am beside myself, never do I feel that I have been treated so shoddily by somebody who is supposed to be providing me with a service, which I am paying for!

[#5]

@PRElla
I've taken a look over your account and it seems the problem may have stemmed from the fact that you didn't choose to have a Plusnet email address during the signup process, they are no longer added as standard and need to be selected during signup. After you raised your first ticket one of my colleagues in the CSC added the mailboxes manually to your account, however that doesn't seem to have worked correctly.  
I'll ask someone to take another look at your ticket and see what's going on there.

[#6]

Chris
Wow, there really is somebody there!!!!  Honestly thought it was a fully automated system which just transfers you round and round in circles until you give up!!!!
I signed up over the telephone (as stated in my ticket) as I didn't, at that time, even have access to the Internet.  Nobody said anything about having to setup a mailbox when I was giving my card details!!!
Not only that but, yes, you are right one of your colleagues did suggest the concept of setting up a mailbox , which I did (this too is in the trail), but having done exactly as suggested it still doesn't work and they have since then (yet again) deleted the account and set it up again and passed it back to CS asking me to wait (another) 4 hours.  By the way, that suggestion was made 2 days ago and was probably the last meaningful contact I have had at all.
You do say that it doesn't seem to have worked correctly, yippee, you speak the truth! Unfortunately, all of your colleagues have said the same (see the trail yet again!) but none of them have been able to resolve it and since a response from CS saying that they were going to send it back to NT, yet again (how many times???), nobody has even had the courtesy to even update me, not even from CS who promised to do so.

[#7]

Hi there,
I've resolved the issue and it's working from here now.
I tried calling you to discuss but unfortunately you're not around.
Please see my responses to your tickets and give me a shout if you have any further questions.

[#8]

Credit where credit is due......
Once Chris read my posts here (and despite my sarcasm) he got people moving.  WIthin 10 mins Mand was on the case and had found a succesful resolution to my problem.
Whilst it is a shame that I had to resort to ranting like this, especially as the problem was obviously so simple to resolve, I am extremely grateful to both Chris and Mand and wanted to say a great big thank you to you both, I am now a happy bunny 
Regards
Paul

[#9]

It is a shame you had to raise it here to get it progressed. However, as I said in the ticket, feedback has been given to the agents involved (in fairness to them what they did worked in the past, it's just that things changed recently and they obviously needed a little reminder of the new process :mand: ;)).
In any case, sorted now.