poor customer service

[#1]

The cynical side of me suggests that the response times on tickets was forever outside of the envelope. Therefore the mechanism of fixing that was to remove the asynchronous interaction channel and push people into a real-time interaction channel which delivers answers there and then. Whilst this removes visibility of the backlog it might not be seen as an improvement to customer service by everyone.

However, we are were we are.

[#2]

[CSA Removed] was supposed to get someone to call me on Saturday (yesterday), i waited all day for that call which never came. I can only assume that they don't want my money, since i have tried to contact them through here, online chat, phone calls, and the online ticket system - all avenues have failed, they simply will not resolve the issue and take my payment.

I have had to deal with Plusnet's poor customer service for the past 7 months now, and it's not just this one issue they fail to resolve, it's been several issues which have taken ages to resolve and cost me a fortune in lost time. The whole experience has caused me a lot of stress dealing with them, and left me feeling quite worn out from it all.

I simply don't have the time to waste on this anymore, and don't feel like being pushed to the doctors for stress relating to this, so i have arranged for Now Broadband to install fibre which is only £2 per month more than plusnet. I can only hope that Now Broadband are better.

Plusnet will just have to lose out on the previous 3 months broadband that i owe them, i will take that as compensation for the wasted time i have had to deal with them (and my time is worth far more than what is owed, plus all the time they wasted beforehand it's run into the hundreds and hundreds of pounds).

I hope you other guys get your issues resolved, but i fear not since PN CS will likely never improve.

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): CSA name(s) removed (to an area staff can see) as per Forum rules.

[#3]

Hi Steve

If you have spent 7 months trying to resolve a problem without success, then you are left with little other choice than to vote with your feet. I had a similar experience with VM.

NOW seems to be a new kid on the block so hopefully you will get better service from them, at least for the first year  when the number of CS staff is large in proportion to the number of Customers. I think all ISPs start off this way, but it all then depends upon how fast the complaints grow, which depends upon the quality of service provided and the growth in customer base, and most importantly how quickly  a company recruits, trains and then retains further CS staff in relation to increasing requests for CS support. This is the tricky balancing act that all ISPs have to juggle with in order to remain competitive.

So please let us know how well it goes.

[#4]

Incredible.

I had such high hopes that my existing broadband would just last 2 more days until NOW TV took over on the 4th September, but my hopes and dreams of working internet have been smashed today. Just randomly at around 14:00 my broadband suddenly stopped working, I plugged in the NOW hub hoping that maybe NOW activated it a couple of days early, but unfortunately not. So Plusnet have obviously killed my connection which coincides with my billing date i believe, so i have no broadband for a couple of days. No email notification to tell me they would cancel the broadband, no phone call out of courtesy, no response to my open ticket about not taking my payment...... just pure silence (and kind of bliss actually), I am very excited about having new fibre broadband by a new provider so i no longer have to deal with plusnet anymore. I never get excited about anything to be honest and being an expert in IT and networking - the internet doesn't exactly get me hanging on the edge of my seat, but i am relieved that in just 2 days i will hopefully have a working service.

Good riddance plusnet, you certainly haven't done me proud at all.

[#5]

Hi @stevemills84

Thank you for updating this thread with further details. I am sorry that you are unable to connect to your broadband today.

As the details of this are account specific I have responded via a ticket on your account. You can view these details on the link below and also through an email sent to the email address linked to your account.

https://www.plus.net/wizard/?p=view_question&id=182230710

I do apologise for any inconvenience this is causing you.

[#6]

It's really [-Censored-] poor that you raised a ticket relating to this AFTER i decided to move my supply which was AFTER i asked you to sort out the payment issues, I tried to make the payment several times but your systems were unable to take them. your management couldn't arrange a simple phone call to collect the payment on Saturday 18th August. I am done with you guys, you have cost me hundreds and hundreds of pounds of wasted time, i am not paying you a penny.

Plusnet own and operate these forums, they are reviewed and monitored and censored. Due to this fact, i know that you have reviewed the condition i laid out in this thread, by not resolving the payment issue (which i gave you almost a month to resolve) you have legally agreed to the conditions i put forth. I will never, ever ever deal with plusnet for as long as i live. You are THE WORST company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with.

for reference for other readers, this is the response plusnet and i have placed on the ticket

Thank you for contacting us through the Community.

I am sorry that you have been having issues connecting to your broadband today. I can advise that this is not as a result of you arranging to move your supply to another internet service provider.

Your account shows that there are previous invoices outstanding and as a result the account has been restricted on this basis and without payment of the full outstanding balance we are unable to reactivate your services.

I do apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Kind regards,

[CSA Removed]

My response:

That's fine, i tried to make the payments previously but you never took them nor did you respond to a previous ticket i had open, nor did you rectify the problems with the payment. You entered into an agreement to provide free broadband to me if the problems were not resolved. by not resolving the issue you have agreed to that condition (see page 2 of this thread https://community.plus.net/t5/Plusnet-Feedback/poor-customer-service/td-p/1553244/highlight/false/pa... posted at 19-07-2018 10:01 PM)
I will not be settling the balance of the account as i don't owe anything, in fact you owe me hundreds of pounds due to lost time i have wasted dealing with your customer services. so you can waive the balance on my account and i'll waive the amount you owe me and be done with it.

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): CSA name(s) removed (to an area staff can see) as per Forum rules.

Moderator's note by Dick (Strat): Insult(s) removed as per Forum rules.

[#7]

The debt collectors will be in touch with you very soon.

[#8]

I tried to pay them, for three months i tried to pay them, they didn't take my money, they didn't resolve the issue. so screw them, i'm not wasting any more time on them. send the debt collectors, legally i don't owe them anything, it's written in black and white on a platform they own and operate, if they don't resolve the issue in a few days i will take it as being a free contract. they didn't resolve the issue, the contract is therefore free. I'll charge them for wasting countless hours of my life for all the issues i have had with them this year, im sick of dealing with them. They're heading the same way as Bulldog internet, gosh they were bad, but i think plusnet are possibly worse.

""

[#9]

Wading in maybe a little late here, but you're going to be on pretty thin ground trying to press that one.

For any agreement to be legally binding, there has to be agreement indicated on both sides. You writing something on a forum and laying conditions for their acceptance will count for nothing legally even with your term that no response is deemed acceptance. A contract of any type has to be agreed by both parties-either written or with some kind of record, like a call recording. Otherwise it doesn't count.

You laid your terms, Plusnet gave no indication of agreement either to the term of the free contract for failure to sort a problem, or the term that no response is an acceptance-you can't set that as a method of acceptance anyway.

I'm not taking any sides here-I don't have anywhere near the detail to do that, but thought it'd be decent to advise-regardless of the reasoning, if you have an outstanding balance and you refuse to pay, Plusnet-or any company would have the right to engage debt collection, and you would legally be liable for it. Just consider if it goes that far it's not just arguments with debt collectors etc but any possible damage to credit files, CCJ's etc down the line. As much as this is no doubt the last thing you want to do, you really need to get this dealt with with pnet themselves-be that pushing against them to wipe the charges or raising complaints higher up the chain-maybe going as far as ombudsmen if needs be. One thing I was always advised when I had issues with a company is always keeps the bills paid-even if you pay them in protest. If necessary, an ombudsmen can force the company to refund you (and then some) if they later find you shouldn't have been made to pay and it keeps the other issues at bay.

[#10]

Never in my entire life have I got a single black mark against my credit rating, never have i ever defaulted on any payment,not even 1 day late. Never have I had to deal with debt recovery either.

I tried to pay them, for 3 months i tried to pay them. The direct debit was created, it even got created with the bank, PN never drew down on it.

If i walk into a shop and offer cash on the counter for a chocolate bar, and shop keeper refuses to take my money - he is renegotiating the contract of sale. This is exactly what PN have done, I have offered payment and they have not taken it. I have tried to make contact with them to get the issue resolved via forums, online chat, ticket system and phone calls - NOBODY is interested in sorted it out, even management can't be bothered to phone me up on the agreed date and collect the payment (which I was quite willing to get done, that direct action of not giving the phone call resulted in my leaving the next day). I have been without internet now for 2 days because of this, and thankfully i timed things right and NOW broadband have taken over. I am not longer a customer of PN.

I tried to make the payments -i don't know what else i can do, my time is simply worth more than the bill, it's worth more than the entire annual contract - i dont have time for hours and hours on the phone trying to get this sorted. if they wanted the money they should have made sure they got it out of me.

If i did a job for someone (anything, electrical work, plumbing, whatever) you think that customer is going to be chasing me to pay their bill? No, that's just not how it works. the supplier of goods and services is the one who chases, why am I (the customer) making so much effort to pay a bill when the supplier isn't even interested in taking the payment? Why should I be wasting yet more and more of my time paying for a service which is non-existent (customer service is part of what i am paying for).

So, if the matter does go further, then I will have to take it to the financial ombudsman - what choice do I have? they don't pick up the phone, they won't even call me, they won't respond to the tickets on the system..... what am I supposed to do?

There's also a big back story to this of several failings throughout the year, sending engineers which weren't needed, wasting more and more of my time, threatening to charge me for engineer visits which never took place (which is why the original DD got cancelled in the first place because I know full well once they have my money there is no way I would possibly get it back - look at how much trouble I am having trying to GIVE them money, you think I have ANY hope of getting a refund for wrongful charges????)

PN caused this entire situation in the first place, sorry but that's just business - you win some you lose some, this time PN lost some, it's a fact of business.

[#11]

Like I said I'm not saying it's right or wrong, just that pointing anyone to this forum board if it comes to collection won't do any favours from a legal perspective-trying to help you not get any marks against your otherwise impeccable rating over this.

Based on what you've given about the back story a few things I do need to note-did you ever try making the payments by card? If the direct debit failed often there could have been other issues-maybe even at the bank. It should have been possible to use the card instead.

Again just playing devils advocate here but if you haven't tried other methods to make the payment (whether or not you should have to is irrelavent) there's an argument that could be laid that you simply refused to pay as the other methods could have worked. It also won't have helped cancelling the direct debit over a potential engineer charge, and again I understand your reasoning, but it comes back to the paying in protest-if you even ended up being charged.

Also got to ask-this 3 month outstanding, I assume this is from after the direct debit cancelled? Did you set it back up or just ask Plusnet to start drawing on the original one again because if it's the latter, Plusnet can't do that as the bank would always refuse it-you've cancelled the mandate. You would have had to resend you bank details-even if they were the same to allow pnet to start a new one.

It's the way most things like this work-whether you think you owe it or not it's always best to pay it then seek to have it returned than refuse because no company is ever going to just let it go.

And coming back on would they refund-if they refused, and you did go to ombudsmen who found in your favour they'd have no choice. And they'd be digging their own pit if they didn't with fines etc (much as is being pushed at you at the minute).

Like I said yesterday, you clearly don't want to chase this, but for the sake of your financial record don't just ignore this and expect a forum post to cover you if the collectors come knocking-it won't.

[#12]

Sorry for the late response, had a lot of things to do this week.

The first month the payment was missed, I phoned them up several times (after I first tried to get it resolved via chat if I recall) and eventually when I did get through to someone they just said leave it a few days it’s definitely going through don’t worry, and no late payment charges would be placed on the account.

The second month failed again this time my internet got restricted, again I tried to get it resolved and the person I spoke to told me that it should go through, but to try updating the direct debit details. He said for me to pay by card when I signed in, which I was very well prepared to do but once the restrictions had been lifted the option to pay by card was gone, I couldn’t find the option anywhere on the account (logged a ticket about that). I can’t remember whether I updated the direct debit details before or after this phone call, but I did try to update them. A few days after that I called them again to tell them the payment still hadn’t been taken, and I was told to just leave it for a few days and it will automatically collect it.

The third time failed yet again and this time my account had a late payment charge applied. I managed to speak to someone on the online chat and they said to try cancelling it with the bank (I am fairly sure the past two months didn’t have an entry on my bank to cancel but this time there was an entry), so I logged into my bank, removed the DD order, a few days later it removed from my PN account. I logged a ticket yet again, to tell them to remove the late payment charge and I will gladly re-establish the DD. I got no response on it, until 10 days later when they completely ignored what I had placed on the ticket and simply threatened me with debt recovery. I was fuming.

So I was back on the phone AGAIN, I demanded to speak to a manager, he said that it would be resolved on Saturday 18^th someone would call me to take the payment and get it all cleared up – phone call never came. Next day I signed up for NOW TV Broadband, because I knew this was a lost cause.

There was never at any point where I refused to pay what I genuinely owed them for each months broadband, and now somehow they have told me I owe £67 in the latest email, excluding the late payment charges – not sure how that’s calculated since I’ve only missed three at less than £20 each.

It’s an absolute joke, they are a bunch of clowns. I have never ever once received a single phone call or response on my tickets to try and get this matter resolved, not one in 3 months of late payments, and we’re now into the 4^th month where this has gone unresolved.

I can’t get the matter resolved, and nobody picks up the phone to take payment, nobody calls me to take payment. So I give up, I’ll just have to wait and see what happens I guess. I am far too busy to be chasing them all the time, it’s taken me days just to respond to this, I am really up to my eye balls in work at the moment, I just don’t have the time to deal with a problem which isn’t even mine, it’s theirs.

[#13]

It gets even more hilarious, I got an email only the other day stating i have 14 days to pay.... yet they have now removed my account access, i don't even have options to pay the bill, i don't have any option to raise support tickets, i got nothing. they are making EVERY possible attempt to make contact as difficult as they can, i really give up - i just don't know what to do. i can't get in contact with them and nobody will contact me.

i'm not going to worry about 3 months of unpaid bills for broadband, it's such a small amount it's not even worth chasing me for it, it will cost them more to chase it than what they will make from it assuming i would even pay it.

time to move onto more important things, i have plenty of evidence to show that i tried to pay it (im not short of money and I've not had any intentions not to pay for what i owed, and if it weren't for their mess ups i would still be a customer of theirs so they've lost out). They mess up, they should foot the bill -  financial penalties is the only language these people understand.

maybe their CEO should clear my three months of unpaid bills since he's ultimately responsible for employing incompetent fools that work there.

[#14]

I'm really sorry to read this.

Are you free for a call this weekend?

[#15]

very shocking i am new customer join plus net mobile. i phone them due some help. i phone in 7 time because them don't understand me due speech disability, plus not like that as well them taking the mick out me being rude on the phone. when i ask i want talk to manager them won't allowed me. i think plus need training to how deal with people who got disability very shocking.